Weeds

           There are planters in front of some of the buildings I walk past on my way to work. This morning I notice that a number of the plants have been yanked out and thrown on the sidewalk. This happens a lot these days, but they're hardy plants, mostly little clumps of grass and  ornamental cabbagey things, and usually if you stick them back in the dirt they'll take root again. We have planters outside the museum as well, and they too have been getting damaged on a regular basis. Just the other night a couple of dudes (it's always dudes) started attacking the conical shrubs on the south side of the building. They really pummeled the hell out of those shrubs, hurling themselves into the branches while doing what looked like kung fu moves. They finally staggered off -one them fell down in the gravel and had trouble standing up again- leaving the shrubs broken and battered. The footage was pretty entertaining. To be honest, a lot of this half-assed landscaping is pretty unattractive, a relatively cheap way of trying to cover up the ugliness of our urban surroundings. Of course, one could argue, why plant anything nicer, if it's inevitably going to become the victim of meth heads and drunken masters? 

          I don't know what has caused the recent uptick in violence towards vegetation. Maybe it's enough that people are stressed to the point of breaking, especially those living on the streets, many of whom were already struggling with drugs and mental illness before the pandemic. In any case, plants make soft, submissive targets to vent one's frustrations upon. And we just keep replanting, and dudes keep tearing them up, and we keep replanting.

End of the Trail

       The sky is a silvery gray, like an old tintype. So is the sea. So is the sand. I feel like I’m watching an old movie from the balcony of my room. I watch for a while then go in and slide the glass door shut and turn on the gas fireplace. 

I’ve never stayed in a place right on the beach, though I’ve always wanted to. I can barely believe I’m actually here, and that it’s just as nice as I imagined it. 

What is equally hard to believe is that I’m standing here not wearing a cast. I saw the foot doctor just about 24 hours ago. I was nervous and sat in the waiting room joking around with the receptionist, a plump, maternal woman whose name, honest to God, is Hope. When the doctor finally unwrapped my foot he beamed and said, “You’re all healed up. See me in two months.”

The next morning I got on the bus and watched the buildings turn into trees as we sped along the narrow highway toward the coast. Everything was shrouded in fog, it all looked eerie and mysterious. 

Check in wasn’t for hours, so I wandered around the little town of Seaside until then. A lot more was open than I had expected, considering it’s the dead of winter and the middle of the week besides. I had some coffee and a surprisingly good bagel with lox, checked out the antique mall. They had a display case filled with glass floats of all sizes. In Japan, they used these to keep their fishing nets afloat, and storms would cut them loose and they would drift all the way across the Pacific where people would find them washed up on the beach. There was a bowl full of tennis-ball sized ones which were inexpensive, but I couldn’t justify getting more useless baubles to sit around in my already cluttered apartment. 

I headed up to the beach. A paved promenade runs the length of the town, the closest to a boardwalk that Oregon offers. Right in the center of it is a roundabout with a statue of Lewis and Clark and their faithful dog Seaman. The inscription reads THE END OF THE TRAIL. I watched the whiteheads roll in as the line of the flag behind me banged against its pole like a gong. 

Eventually I plodded out to the edge of the surf. I kept thinking of Jasmine; she loved the ocean, though we never went there together. I wish we had. Aside from a few distant figures, we had the ocean to ourselves. I watched her run in and out of the surf, chasing gulls and screaming at how cold the water was. Then the fog erased her. I stood mesmerized by the foamy hem of the tide approaching and receding, until a. wave snuck up and rushed over my shoes. I hadn’t been able to wash my bad foot in months. I welcomed the chilly baptism.

And now here I am, damp clothes hung over a chair in front of the fire. Jasmine is still out dancing in the waves but there’s another ghost here, and I slip my arms around her as she too looks out at the gray. Eydie loved the ocean as well. She always said being near the water made her horny. We never came to the beach together either, and again I wish we had.

When it gets dark I walk back downtown and treat myself to crab cakes at a nice restaurant. Aside from the masks, it’s easy to pretend we’re not in the middle of a pandemic. Everything seems back to normal, even as the hospitals fill up and the state keeps breaking its record for cases. A woman at the next table scolds her granddaughter for coloring outside the lines of her coloring placemat. “And use some different colors,” she admonishes. “You can’t just use the same color all the time.”

As I walk back to the room, I pass a shooting gallery, where an animatronic bear calls out to me in a voice which is either supposed to be southern or Black or both, daring me to step up and try my luck. “Let’s see what kind of a shot you are,” he says, chuckling and jerking his paw at the targets around him.

Back at the room I change into my pyjamas and flop down on the bed with my sketchbook and a glass of wine. My plan is to stay up all night drawing and writing, but I soon find myself getting sleepy. I watch a little TV then finally give in and turn out the light. 

The next morning I’m up at five, as is usual for me these days. I draw for a while and when it gets light enough out to see where I’m going, I traipse out to the beach. Jasmine puts her arm through mine and we walk with our heads down into the wind. By the time I reach the water’s edge I’m alone again. The wind drives the rain against my face like ice. I feel like I should do something out here, perform some ritual, recite some incantation, but nothing comes to mind. The howling indifference of the ocean is devastating. I stand there and I face it.

                                                                     *

I have continental breakfast in the tiny kitchen behind the reception desk. Fox news vomits an endless stream of disaster from the TV as I munch my bagel; not as good as the one from the day before, but anything is tolerable if you slather enough cream cheese on it. It’s still early, so I go back to the room and lounge around, watching old movies until check out. 

I walk out to the beach again. The wind has died down but it’s raining so hard I can hardly see through my glasses. I hope to find some sand dollars to take back but they’re all broken. I do find some molted crab shells, which I gently slip into the pocket of my coat. 

I wander through the neighborhoods somewhat aimlessly. My legs are starting to ache; I’ve pushed a lot harder than I should, considering the state of my foot, but there aren’t any dry places to sit, so I just keep plodding along. I think of those glass floats, and suddenly feel the need to have some. They are lovely, after all; a cool, watery blue, like a soap bubble. The fact that these fragile globes travel so far, get tossed by the waves for thousands of miles, are splashed out of the way by leaping whales and ocean liners, then end up on the shore miraculously intact…. I change course and slowly make my way toward the antique mall.

The one place I’ve been looking forward to seeing is the aquarium. I’ve been there before, and it always struck me as a little sad, but this time I feel nothing but fondness for it. It’s basically just two rooms, one with seals which you can feed, though I don’t, and a larger room of black concrete, filled with the tanks. All the sea life is local, what you would find if you could just step into the waves and keep walking on the ocean floor. I move slowly from tank to tank, taking everything in, reading all the labels.There are swell sharks (so named because they swell up when threatened), elaborately tangled basket stars, phallic sea pens, delightful lumpsuckers. I learn that rockfish can live to be 110. I look at the preserved body of Victor, a 25 pound lobster who was the museum’s mascot until he was dropped by a would-be lobsternapper. A sweetly awkward young attendant tells me everything I could ever possibly want to know about baby sharks, and proudly shows me a tank full of their egg sacs, or mermaid purses. I ask him what they'll do with the sharks when they hatch. He says that most of the young fish born at the aquarium end up being used to feed other fish. 

     The best by far  are the octopuses. The aquarium has two, and they are spectacular. One is in a tank, hurling its tentacles against the glass as it circumnavigates its cell. The other is in an open concrete pool, blowing bubbles just below the surface of the water, so close I could reach down and stroke its bumpy, spiky head. I'm amazed that it doesn't try to get out. The attendant says it's too heavy to drag itself up the concrete walls.

As I step outside again, my head filled with the wonders of the deep, I notice two children scaling a steep path between the dunes, holding hands. I realize they’re not children at all, but adults with dwarfism, little people. I watch as they make their way stiffly up the incline together, their forms silhouetted against the silver sky. 

Prancer

Walking with the cast on is slow going, and I'm exhausted and sore from the effort. But I'm getting a little stronger every day, and my mood is not as black as it was. The holidays are a distant blip, a fading bruise.

What's more, after weeks of cold and rain, we're presented with the gift of a mild, sunny day. People are suddenly frolicking about in shorts and little skirts. You wouldn't know we're in the middle of a pandemic. The museum is full of visitors. It's the last week of the Egypt show, and the galleries are packed.

The show consists of a bunch of artifacts relating to Queen Nefertari (not to be confused with the more well-known Nefertiti, whose name brings a smile to schoolchildren and immature adults alike). Not much is known about her, aside from the fact that she lived thousands of years ago and was married to one of the Rameseses. It's all the typical Egyptian stuff; stone sculptures, wooden sarcophagi, bits of ancient detritus scavenged from some hole in the desert. If I was a kid or had never seen this kind of stuff before, I'd probably be thrilled; as it is, I've been spoiled by the Egyptian collections at the Met and the Brooklyn Museum, and in comparison these dusty relics look like props in a TV detective show. The lion-headed queen, carved of black stone, watches over the procedings, looking regal but somewhat disinterested as the crowds swarm around her. There exists a pair of mummified legs -unfortunately not included in this show- which are believed to belong to her. I imagine what my mummified legs could teach future archaeologists. "This poor sap had some serious foot issues," the scientists will say, shaking their heads at our primitive forms of medicine.

The show has been popular though, and I'm always glad to see people coming in to enjoy the art. Glad from a distance, that is. We do require that visitors wear masks, but even so, I personally wouldn't want to be in the middle of that throng, especially with the lateset variant spreading with breathtaking sped. I'm grateful that I'm able to watch from the safety of the control room. I feel for everyone working in the galleries.

In the early afternoon, the phone rings in the gift shop. One of the clerks answers. The man on the line says he's calling from inside the store and that he has COVID and is going to rip his mask off and infect everyone. He says he can see the clerk from where he's standing. The clerk looks around but doesn't see anyone on a cell phone. Regardless, the shop goes on lock down for an hour. The police are called; they suggest we block the number.

I take my break outside for the first time in months, perching on one of the gray concrete blocks that squat in a row outside the museum. They're meant to be used as benches but they are as uncomfortable as they are ugly. A hundred-year-old chestnut tree once shaded them but the wind took it down a few years ago. They had a local woodworker fashion the wood into a bench, which sat out for the public for a little while before being hidden away in a mechanical room. A woman walking past tells me she hopes my foot gets better. Another woman, seeing my staff badge, grills me about ticketing. Her questions are reasonable but she sounds angry and defensive, and unfortnately I don't have the answers she's looing for.

I notice the museum's pest control guy skulking about, taking photos of the base of one of the blocks. He resembles Bruce Dern in one of his more grizzled roles. His company is a family business; for years his daughter used to come by once a week to check the traps and spray for bugs. I saw her on one of the dating sites once. Her profile mentioned that she had a teenage kid but not that she was the heiress to a pest control dynasty. She finally quit to pursue a career in environmental science. These days, her parents alternate weeks. They're pretty friendly folks, considering the brutality of their chosen profession. I say hi to the patriarch and ask what he's up to. "If they haven't already, the rats'll make a nest there," he says, pointing at a recession in the dirt which, now that he mentions it, does look like it would make a nice entrance to a cozy burrow. "I would have never have even noticed that," I say. "Well, that's because you don't think like a rat," he says, and scuttles off to inspect his traps.

That night, as she's crossing the park after work, one of my co-workers gets accosted by a man who chases after her. She runs back to the museum and waits inside until the man departs. She's unhurt but understandably shaken. Someone waits with her until her ride shows up. I've complained before about how much I hate when people gripe about how dangerous things have gotten downtown, that it's a stinking cesspool of crime and garbage, etc. But I can't deny that things are getting pretty weird out there. 

In any case, the next morning the rain starts up again as I stagger off to work. I take my time, enjoying the reflections, the shimmer. Downtown is quiet, traffic is light. Six floors up in one of the apartment buildings, a reindeer made of Christmas lights still twinkles. Every twenty seconds or so it slowly fades out, only to reappear again like a specter glowing in the early morning darkness.

Rat

 I walk to work for the first time. It's slow going. My foot feels okay, but I still have to wear the huge plastic and foam cast. It looks like a robot's foot, and has a compression pump inside which stopped working almost immediately. God knows what it cost me; I don't have the courage to look at my medical bills yet, but I know I'll have to soon. I have a week off from the doctor, which is nice, though I'm terrified that when I do see him he'll tell me I'm not actually better, that I need to get back off my foot. Until I get a clean bill of health from him, I'm not willing to allow myself to start feeling things. My shell is still up, though I've been feel it starting to crack, allowing emotions to sneak through. I get choked up watching Antiques Roadshow, and actually burst into tears struggling to tear the wrapping from a frozen burrito. I come close to screaming at a co-worker who I find not wearing a mask while they clean the microwave, screaming into their phone the entire time. People ask me how I'm doing and I say, you know. And they nod. Like everyone, I am trying so hard to be patient, and the effort is exhausting. There's very little energy left for niceties.

But for now, I'm walking, or rather, shambling, to work. My unnatural gait makes my back and legs ache, but it's worth it to be off the scooter. I clomp across all the bumps and cracks which just yesterday would have caused me trouble. I can step right off the edge of the curb, though stepping up onto it still requires some effort. Not having to watch where I'm going as closely, I start to be able to notice the world again. I see the city lights, looking especially bright and colorful against the black sky. I see a row of peanuts which look like they have been placed on the ground to lure some animal. I see a man with glowing nipples -some sort of harness of LED lights strapped to his chest. Right in front of the museum I see a huge dead rat. As I get closer, I see that it's only a discarded mask. I step right over it.