Contraband

My grandparents lived beside an orange orchard for a time. In my memory, I hopped the fence and strolled the neat rows of fruited orange trees, scoping routes through their branches. Choosing one, I lifted myself to the lowest-hanging branch, then the next, and the next. Reaching above me, I grabbed a plump fruit from the highest branch, then plunged my nails beneath its flesh, ripping the peel off in large chunks and letting them fall to the ground.

Returning to my grandparents, juice still dripping from the sides of my mouth, my grandmother told me: “You’ll get caught one of these days.”

No. 041

Focus

To focus on a run, I’ll go without my glasses. Some may call this dangerous, but there’s a freedom in turning the world around me into passing blurs of pastel motion. The action turns meditative. Then, returning to stasis, I place the glasses on the bridge of my nose. In the corner of my eye a flash of movement. I turn my head—a neighbor leans against his balcony, blowing vape smoke into the air. His eyes are fixed on me, dripping sweat in the courtyard.

No. 040

Rule of Three

I am superstitious only when it comes to the rule of three.

One: an SUV comes onto the highway and begins to merge, missing my front bumper by inches.

Two: a homeless woman stumbles backwards into the street.

Three: a truck backing out of a driveway does not look before accelerating into the street.

By the third, I considered myself lucky—I wouldn’t crash this week.

No. 039

Caught Staring

A man my age sat on a mound of grass against the trunk of a palm tree. With his hands he caressed a dog, shaking its golden-auburn ears and making faces at it. Caught staring. I rounded the corner quickly, and the man caught sight of me, suddenly leaning backwards, dropping his arms, and returning his expression to a blank stillness. An intimate moment disturbed. I would not judge him, though I could not blame him the impulse to think so.

No. 038

Gossamer

Round the corner and past a pole—unseen by my eyes a thin gossamer hangs taut between a stop sign and a streetlight. Caught on my glasses, I wiped it away hurriedly, brushing the web in frantic movements. It’s one of my pet peeves, breaking them. There’s the worry I didn’t remove it all, or had a spider in my hair, and the knowledge that I alone destroyed its creation.

No. 037

Clatter

Stepping out of my truck I carried a water bottle, a thermos, my sunglasses, the keys, my phone, and swung my legs out onto the pavement. At that moment, the sound of falling items: keys crashing, water bottle striking the floor, vibrations thundering off the parking garage ceiling. And for a moment my heart stopped—looking down, I had dropped nothing. I stepped forward, and saw a man crouching behind my truck, clutching at his things that had fallen onto the newly painted pavement. A relief, then, that clumsiness comes to others and not only myself. 

No. 036

On Patience

All around me the sound of ticking clocks. An alarm set, a goal established, a timeline created. In this constant time-awareness a pressure builds within me. It’s in this way I am always impatient. I’d resolve to remove myself from this time crunch, but I wouldn’t know where to begin.

No. 035

Iguana

“I like the way they creep,” the woman beside us said.

Behind her, an iguana, nearly four feet long (tail included), sauntered along the edge of the pool. Its dirty yellow claws scraped along the pavement as its reptilian limbs arced along the surface, barely a centimeter above the ground, step by step. Then, in a rush of movement, the iguana became vertical and stuck its claws into the bark of a palm tree. In a few quick strides, it climbed up to the canopy above. The tail caught on a browning, dead palm frond that swiftly fell to the ground below. 

No. 034

Streams

For ambience, as they put it, my parents prefer to watch security camera live streams on YouTube. We had planned a family trip to the Florida Keys, and in anticipation, they watched, daily, the live footage of Duval Street. They knew which bars left their TVs on all night. They knew how often the public trash cans were emptied. It became a part of their routine to monitor the routine of a town and people they did not know.

No. 033

Presence

In the corner of my eye I saw them. Two children sat perched on a staircase, shrouded in bushes and trees. Their muscles taut, they sat inhumanly rigid out of fear of being seen. And yet I saw them through the dark green leaves. I kept walking, allowing them their desired secrecy, but knowing their presence nonetheless. 

No. 032

Punch-Down

Pummeled grapes: the floating cap of skins and stems atop the fermenting wine is submerged again in a rotating process. This deepens the flavor and color, enhances the tannins. As the sugar converts to carbon dioxide, again the solids return to the surface, and again they are punched down into the liquid, until finally the skins rest along the bottom. It's essential, some say, to the creation of a full-bodied wine. 

No. 031

Seamount

Some bad news, or a minor inconvenience: start the clock. Ninety seconds.

An earthquake—then, an undersea volcano, jostled from slumber, erupts. Lava deposits, a seamount forms and climbs higher and higher. Eruption after eruption it rises until it breaches the surface of the ocean. An act of creation: an isolated island appears. 

I will find myself alone there in a place that I created. 

No. 030

No Events

Two men in lawn chairs smoke cigars. I smelled them before I saw them.

An older man in his yard, drawing pad across his crossed knees, sketches a tree.

A young guy in sweats and a ribbed tank negotiates a contract on the phone: “15% of gross profits…”

A couple walks their dog in front of me, arguing: “Cassandra said you would text me a photo once you finished in the study.”

A working actor’s support group meets up outside an apartment building. A young woman shows off her new headshot. Another woman approaches the group: “Gracie! Hugs all around!”

A man smokes a cigarette, pacing on the sidewalk beside them.

A pregnant woman walks a dog and eyes me warily.

A man bounces a baby on his knee on the balcony above.

Another man, shrouded by trees, leans over the roof of his building and looks down at the street below.

A woman idling in her car backs up to make room for a sedan exiting a garage. The sedan waits as several vehicles drive past; the streetlight must’ve just changed.

A runner keeps pace and moves around a couple pushing a stroller.

My dog rolls around in the grass beneath a no trespassing sign: “No events may be held in yard without permission of property owner.”

No. 029

A Recurrence

I had just missed the stoplight as I approached the main road leading out of our neighborhood. The cross-traffic teased me, and cars approached from the other direction making my eventual left turn more difficult. As I waited, I noticed a young couple push a stroller across the street. I only paid attention because they seemed very young, certainly younger than other new parents I knew across the city.

Returning from my errand trip an hour later, I waited to turn right back into the neighborhood. From the opposite direction from before, the same couple pushed the same stroller, and it was for them I waited. I wondered, then, what the couple were meant to signify to me, if anything—or was it simply a sign to stop searching for signs?

No. 028

A Search

The office building stood along a busy road in the valley that I used to take to get to my last job. On the first floor was a bank; I entered its lobby thinking it was for the building itself. Already late for my appointment, I hurried down the block to the front entrance. The two doors stood locked. 

I turned back, and went around the front side of the building, but I only saw the parking garage. I couldn’t park there since I never carried cash. Returning to the front door, I pulled out my phone to call the receptionist. One ring, two, then sent to voicemail. It was after hours; but, how did I get the appointment? Through the front door I could see across the lobby to a pair of doors at the rear of the building. This time I circled around the other way, and found myself at the correct door. This one, too, was locked, but I saw a security guard behind a front desk. He let me in. I told him the name of the office, and he thought for a second before recalling the floor and suite number for me. I would learn later his name was Ali.

Walking into the waiting room, I realized that the doctor was still in session with the patient before me. I considered myself lucky, and knocked on wood that the anxiety of my assumed lateness was misplaced.

No. 027

A Sidebar

“Did I ever tell you about when he died? We were working on the first season. His boss at the time was a real hard ass, a terrible boss. He didn’t give a shit what happened in any of his employees’ lives, just worked them to the bone. This was a few months after he tore his meniscus, you remember that? Still on bed rest. Working 18-odd hours a day. Which was because of us, sure, but if his boss had been managing it better… Anyway, you remember what it was like working here then, you can imagine what the artists were going through. One day, he decided he needed a break from work, so he went out for a hike. He called me on the phone, told me he was taking the afternoon. Of course, I told him, do whatever you need, but are you sure about your legs? They aren’t healed! He insisted he needed to be outside, see the trees, feel the sun. He needed to feel alive again, after so many months on bed rest and the long work days. Anyway, you know what happens next. He gets heat stroke, has a heart attack. Dies on the trail. The paramedics get there just in time and revive him. They get down to Cedars Sinai, and he passes again. Then he’s revived again. He calls me, asks me to come down to the hospital. What am I going to do, say no? I was one of his only friends. I go to Cedars Sinai. When I get there, he’s back in a coma. The nurses tell me it’s not looking good, there’s a big clot they don’t think they can get rid of. Blood pressure was 94 over 60. Skin was gray. He wasn’t going to make it. I get there, I tell him what a good job he’s doing, that the show looks great. Then right after me, his ex-girl walks in. Suddenly the charts start spiking, his heart rate goes up. It’s like he knew she was in there. He was waiting for her. He opens his eyes, wakes up from the coma, says hello to her, and then dies, again, for the third time, except this one was for real. I was there when he died. I held his ex-girl, and she told me he’d been stressed out, the job was killing him, turning his hair gray, ruining his blood pressure. I’ll say! It was the stress of the job and that horrible boss that killed him. I know stress; I’ve seen what it can do. And he was a great artist. It’s a shame he couldn’t work on season two.”

No. 026

Advice

The financial advisor called me a few minutes after our scheduled appointment. I sought advice on my investments—after years of throwing spaghetti at the wall, I was determined to approach my financial future with a stronger sense of purpose. 

He first gave an examination of my current holdings, then fell into a pitch for a robo-advisor: I fill out a questionnaire to assess my comfortable level of risk, the robot buys and sells my shares for me.

“We get a lot of complaints that people have worse returns than when they managed it themselves. And I always tell them: you have to give it time to work.”

I wondered, then, what would happen in the future, once these robots had been given enough time to “learn” the markets. Robotic stock brokers buying and selling representations of money they didn’t understand—in the end, it reminded me that nothing is infallible, and thus nothing should be taken seriously. I did sell my individual holdings. Perhaps the robo-advisor can send me a list of small-cap index funds to research. That must be a step forward from where I began.

No. 025

drought

A well in a drought: parched soil, brown grass, dried-out wooden bucket hanging from a frayed rope. Above in the sky sit white clouds that threaten continued dryness. As a kid I heard the sky is blue from reflecting the ocean, but that’s a misconception. The blue wavelengths scatter across the sky in all directions. Still, looking up I am reminded of vast oceans of water. Sometimes the myths are more comforting.

No. 024

Cultivation

Still the plants need water. Early spring hits Los Angeles and dries out the soil. Through winter: dormancy; then with the heat the promise of renewed growth. I’d been neglecting them, and could see in the slight browning leaves signs of parchedness.

Some for five, six years I’ve cared. They argue plants have no feelings, but tending them I’ve found a common language with mine. I can intuit when they need light, when they need water, when something is wrong. I know, too, that the vibrations in the room, my emotional register, the music I play, the mood of the dog, all the things that build the energy of life impact them too.

I’d like to own property. I’d like to plant a tree. I’d like to watch it grow. I’d like to lie on my death bed and look out at the tree ten, twenty, thirty feet in the air and know that it was there because of me, and that I sustained it, and that after my passing it continued. There’s a sense of the future in planting a tree. I’d like to cultivate the future.

Around the world moments of despair send a numbing shockwave and seem to pause time. History bends and suddenly there is a before and there is an after. And still the plants need water.

No. 023

Routine

Nightly digestive walks at dusk: establishment of a routine. It’s good for them, dogs, to have things to anticipate. The regularity of it (timing, route) provides a sense of security. They are creatures of habit.

From the apartments and the houses, dining room light filters out into the indigo sky with echoes of voices, a clatter of plates, the laughter from a friend. In the evening, life erupts from the otherwise sleepy buildings.

On the route, we pass other dogs, eager to greet him, but mine in his haughtiness rejects signs of friendship.

No. 022