Gasoline

A neighbor buys, restores, and resells classic cars and trucks, routinely cycling between different models that sit on our block for days at a time. The latest, a ‘77 Chevy Bonanza, sat outside the apartment three days when a passing couple noticed the street beneath coated in gasoline.

Within thirty minutes, the smell permeated the apartment. I had been cooking and thought I sprung a gas leak on the stove. Before I had a chance to call, a fire truck pulled up outside, and five men inspected the truck. Deeming it insignificant, they shoveled sand beneath the tank to soak up the oil. When the owner came by the next day, he commented on the dirt, but did not attempt to start the truck.

No. 021

Space Heater

A businessman in his middle fifties crossed Washington in the rain. It came down steadily, and had done so for several days. The lack of umbrella in his hand was not from lack of foresight. The trek through the rain was curious; the streets in Los Angeles were prone to flooding, and, certainly, there had been standing water in the roads for days. As he approached the curb to return to the sidewalk from the road, he misjudged the distance, then stepped his loafer into one standing puddle along the side of the road. The rainwater cascaded over the edge of the shoe, into its fleshy interior, surely soaking his socks and insoles. The businessman—but, really, it was impossible to tell whether he was of the founder ilk or the middle-management caste—ascended the stairs along the side of the building, just a few feet from the road. He almost survived the walk. As his shoes squished beneath his weight on each step, he daydreamed of getting to his office, removing his socks and shoes, and placing his feet as close to his space heater as possible. Perhaps he would rest his socks along the machine, watch as they steamed and smoked. That way they would dry before he had to make the return trek home. He would have to brainstorm ways to dry out the shoes.

No. 020

Orange flesh

Spiral recurrences: a life repeating, no—growing, changing, stepping up or down. Every moment is an opportunity for new beginnings. Mandarin orange peeled when the thumb presses into the bottom and breaks flesh. Eight even pieces, torn apart. Canine teeth pierce the membrane and juice comes spilling out. Always you can find a way to say, Now.

No. 019

Balance

Starling tiptoes across a telephone wire—squirrel rests along a metal fence—owl hoots into the night as the Santa Ana winds roll through the canyon, ruffling the leaves on the pines—housecat races across the road, dodging an oncoming car, slinking through the break in a wooden fence—sedans run stop signs in the night—skunks peer wearily from the drain that runs to the ocean, no dumping sign painted on the asphalt beside it—trash cans with duct-taped damage overflow into the road—everywhere I looked I saw reminders of a tightrope knife’s edge between two things and found myself, somehow, in a doorway—

No. 018

A.A.A. #5

When she was assigned the patient, the nurse was told: “This is a stubborn, brutal old bastard. Abdominal aortic aneurysm, and he pulled through out of pure spite.” 

Because of the numerous complications of his condition, W. had been assigned 24/7 at-home nurse care. An oxygen tank to roll around with him. Home hemodialysis six of the week’s seven days. A new wheelchair. And quarterly emptyings of the tube that now stuck out of the flesh of his stomach. It was always disorienting to the nurse to look at these tubes, see them flush with the skin, know how close the inside of this man was to her.

Looking around the home, at the ash trays and piles of newspapers, at the old mail and the computer from 1995 loading to-the-minute stock numbers, at the TV in the corner blaring Fox News, she wondered about the nature of human endurance and perseverance. To crawl to hell and back for what—for this? 

She hears a buzz; he’s calling her. She pushes the thoughts to the side. The beauty of life cannot be described, she reminds herself. We each must fight for our own solaces and keep them alive. She thought: Who am I to judge an old man? One day, I, too, will be old, and what will I do then? 

No. 017

A.A.A. #4

The morning of the second day, W. had regressed. Or, rather, the procedures in order to alleviate the initial arterial rupture had led to further complications: fluid in his lungs, acute kidney failure that required a dialysis machine, a gastrointestinal bleed the doctors could not locate. It seemed to the nurses like systematic organ failure.

M., his wife, couldn’t bear to wait around for him to die. When she walked in that morning, she was excited to tell him about the stock market—it had gone up one thousand points the day before. Through his oxygen mask, he offered her a smile at this news. Seeing him there, hooked up to machines, feeling pity and a queasy sickness in her stomach she couldn’t locate or name, she turned away from him and toward her eldest daughter. “Take me home,” she told her. “Let him rest.”

Really, she anticipated the satisfaction lighting a fresh cigarette would bring her. As the smoke tickled her throat, she imagined the queasy feeling in her would dissipate, and the world would feel calm again for at least a moment.

No. 016

A.A.A. #3

W.’s wife and A.E., his middle daughter, arrived early the morning after the surgery. They had been there the night before at the memorial hospital. The nurses wheeled W. down the hallway, ruptured artery sputtering, and then urged them to say their goodbyes. She coughed up the words to her father, choking on them as they came from her throat; her childhood had been one of difficulty. She kissed his hand, then held it as long as she could, until the nurses wheeled him too far away and he slipped from her grasp.

When she walked into his hospital room the next morning, she thought he was dead. It was difficult to see him as alive with shut eyes and sallow skin. When he awoke, he begged for water. It was not dehydration—he was hooked up to an I.V. with fluids—but post-surgery his mouth had dried out, and his stomach had been emptied. The nurse handed her a sponge the size of a quarter. “Dip this in, and squeeze out droplets into his mouth.” She did so, and watched as three drops of water fell onto his parched tongue. He begged her for more, and she quietly dipped the sponge and gave him three more drops against the nurse’s wishes. He choked on the drops of water, struggling to swallow them. 

She remembered the chief surgeon warning her that he wasn’t out of the woods yet. If he survived the first 24 to 48 hours, he would likely make it. Even then, survivors of the surgery only had a life expectancy of two years. W. begged her for more water, and she could not give it to him. That’s it, she thought as he coughed up the few droplets of water. Only 48 hours more.

No. 015

A.A.A. #2

D., a paramedic and W.’s grandson, met him at the hospital while he was halfway through the surgery. He had heard the name of the condition, and knew that it was likely his grandfather would die in the night. He spoke with the nurses, and they lamented the situation W. found himself in. A heavy smoker. Stomach cancer. Poor diet. D. had known these qualities of his grandfather, and had little hope that he would make a recovery. When the chief surgeon of the hospital had finished the surgery, he approached D. and said three words: “It’s a miracle.”

D. thought of W.’s parents—two people who immigrated to the U.S. and lived difficult lives. His father had lived to 100. His mother died a week shy of it. There was a strand of DNA in their lineage that strived for life. He thought, too, of W.’s wife, a lifelong smoker with zero damage to her lungs. How bizarre, he thought, to live against all the rules. Perhaps there were other things that encouraged a prolonged life. There was little time to consider the ramifications of this discovery; he had several phone calls to make.

No. 014

A.A.A. #1

In the afternoon, W. collapsed. An ambulance swiftly carried him to the nearest memorial hospital. First it was low blood pressure, then it was an aortic aneurysm in the stomach. The blood in his body rushed to his stomach, leaving it distended. The ruptured aorta spurted the blood from the cardiovascular system, leaving him gray-skinned and light-headed. After receiving medication for the pain and regaining consciousness, the emergency room doctor gave him his ultimatum. There was nobody else in the room.

“Listen,” he started. “There’s no two ways to say it. You have two options here. I can give you enough morphine to let you pass quietly in the night. Or we can transfer you to a hospital thirty minutes north. They can attempt a risky surgery, but there’s a very high mortality rate. Over 90%. You likely won’t make it. But you have to decide now, there isn’t much time.”

Still lightheaded from the day, and numbed from the medication, W. responded with muscle memory: “There’s only one option. Give me the surgery.”

No. 013

Clouds

Thoughts like clouds pass through my mind: amorphous, mutable, transforming into shapes, distinguishable for seconds then evaporated; darkness enveloping, intruding; dark rainclouds with horrible droplets—learning to let them pass, observe the shape, acknowledge the thought. Only something you experience. 

No. 012

Coyote

On the moonlit asphalt there came a coyote. Slender, slim-footed he scampered down the road, paws lightly grazing the ground, appearing almost to float across it as he stalked some prey. Then, he stopped beneath the hazy glow of a yellow stoplight. Ears perked up at the sound of my footsteps across uneven rocks. Slowly, he turned his head, eyes locking onto mine immediately. For a moment beneath the moon we considered each other. Then: a car alarm; a barking dog; a laugh from a party in the apartment across the street. My head turned at the noise, and upon returning to the spot beneath the lamp, found the coyote had already disappeared back into the night.

No. 011

Hands-on Learning

  “No—it’s one of those things where I put myself in rooms with people smarter than me, listen to what they say, then go into other rooms where the people won’t know any better, and repeat what I’ve heard.”

No. 010

Orion Descending

Then my dog took a detour, pulling me onto the grassy lawn outside the row of apartment buildings on my block. As he sniffed the base of a palm tree, my eyes drifted heavenward. Between the moonlit silhouetted heads of the palm trees sat the constellation Orion. I stared for want of things to do.

As I watched, the stars one by one fell from the sky and landed in the grass beside me, forming a plasmatic whole upon their earthly reunion. And there he was! The warrior stood before me accompanied by Sirius. For a moment, my dog and he assessed each other. Orion raised his sword in greeting, then they dissipated into the evening fog that had descended upon the neighborhood.

No. 009

bends

In the distance: Baldwin Hills rise on the horizon, southeast of our parking garage. Fire lanes drape the side of the mountain like a sash, or garland across a tree. From my vantage, I see two lanes, one above, one below; perhaps these are continuations of the same road, forced to curve along the mountain, rounding itself in rhythmic turns to aid the climb of motor vehicles. Just then, I notice along the top road a white vehicle descending, and at the same time, a black vehicle ascending. All at once a symphony of movement along the side of the hill, taken in through my soft-focus gaze.

No. 008

calculations

Today I counted all the cameras I encountered at work: one on parking garage level 3 (presumably one on every other level: P2, P1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6); one at the elevator from the parking garage to the main walkway; two outside the back door of the building; one at the security desk; one at each elevator bay separated by a series of badge-required gates; one at the vending machine in the kitchenette on the third floor (presumably one on every other level: 1, 2, and 4 and in the other two buildings, also four floors each); one on my laptop; one on the front of my phone; three on the back of my phone; four at the front gate of The Lot; two at the front doors of each building on either side of the courtyard; one in the focus room I accidentally walked into; one in the conference room I had a meeting in; one on each of my coworker’s computers; minimum one on each of my coworker’s cellphones; one rearview camera on my truck; one on every car in the parking lot manufactured after a certain year (total garage capacity: 1500); one front camera on certain models of certain cars manufactured after a certain year (total potential unknown).

As I calculated these amounts, B. approached me at my desk, coming to release his daily allotment of anger. It became a ritual of our relationship to vent—almost always the venting flowed one way: from the furnace of his anger to the icebox of my personality. Sometimes I felt similarly, and fueled the frustration. He complained about the actions of another team that had cross-dependencies with both of ours, going on, at length, about their lack of due diligence, of constantly turning to him and kicking the can.

“I can say this because I’m the kind of person that’s very self-critical. I’m very aware of my own flaws. It’s the only way I can get better. I guess it’s the Virgo in me.”

I understood his frustrations, and expressed my own discontent with the team in question. 

“When I have my yearly review next month, I’m going to go in on myself to D. I can sense all the ways that I’m failing, all the things I’m doing poorly. I can handle criticism from anyone; it’ll never be as hard on me as I am myself,” I said.

We continued at length on this subject; sometimes all it takes is another person who mirrors your personality to reflect back at you your own flaws. It’s one of the easiest ways to identify them.

No. 007

Fortune teller

A joy of city living is getting a glimpse of what other people own. On nighttime walks with my dog, I love to peek through windows, momentary glances at furniture, artwork, and paint choices. On the weekends, neighbors leave unwanted items on the curb for anyone to rescue. On certain blocks of Beachwood, makeshift flea markets have begun to appear: racks of clothing, boxes of books, weathered lampshades. On a recent walk, I passed a collection of books that overstayed their welcome. Atop the pile sat a golden-trimmed copy of Fortune Telling. I flipped to my birthday, and read the following prediction:

“You are uncommunicative.”

I stopped there; I didn’t need to read anymore. Was it meant to be a fortune, or indicative of my present nature? Was the fortune in attempting to perform the opposite of that—am I better off communicating? I decided not to think too much about it; after all, it was just a random book, neither purchased by nor left for me.

No. 006

Americana

It appears to me that the core tenet (or, a core tenet) of Americana as an existence is the act of self-creation. To change your life. To aspire to better–for yourself–for everyone. To atone and be forgiven. It’s in this way, then, that  a central goal of the American is to escape the past. The future, always, has to be better. It must be.

No. 005

riposte

A moving truck idles in the street. Two men exit the cab and wander aimlessly, scanning the houses and apartment buildings for the number they seek. Across the street, a young woman dressed in a robe steps onto her balcony.

“Can you turn off the truck?” she calls to the movers. “It’s very loud.”

“We’ll be five minutes,” they respond.

She repeats the sentence, and they theirs. Back and forth they repeat this dialogue, one side never making any further progress, all while the engine idles. The men remain distracted by the conversation and cannot reach their destination. Out of exhaustion, one climbs up into the cab and kills the engine.

No. 004

Lovers’ Teachings No. 1

There are flowers that bloom once every twelve years. At our University museum, there was one such plant, expected to bloom, finally, two months in the future. There were advertisements all over campus announcing the event; they expected such a large turnout that they sold tickets for designated blocks of time the days the flower would be full. That was all—twelve years of dormancy, two days to display. After that, the flower begins to wilt.

So he bought us tickets, and we anticipated the flower’s arrival. But that was folly; two months isn’t so long, really, in the grand scheme of twelve years. I never saw it. We didn’t speak the words, but the invitation was rescinded, and by then it was too late to buy a ticket myself. To the flower, it didn’t matter that my eyes did not perceive it. It bloomed, wilted, and receded on its own. It would have done so with or without me.

Bifurcation

A rupture: knife slices cloth, or worse. The seconds that separate conscious moments. Stolid, impassive window above my desk: peace broken by two birds, arced across the sky, visible to me behind a fluorescent glare for only a few seconds.

No. 003