If Caesar Hath Lived?

Hello Everybody…

I spent most of last week brushing up my Shakespeare. My friend, Tiffany, teaches highschool in Pasadena and hired me and another actor to perform two scenes from Julius Caesar, then discuss with the students the process of rehearsal, etc.

The two scenes we are to perform are between Brutus and Cassius, two senators deeply concerned over the prospect of Caesar becoming the sole ruler of Rome. One of the scenes we are performing (Act 1 Scene 2) is where Cassius – who clearly is against Caesar ruling Rome – appeals to Brutus to search within himself so that he may come to the same view…

Cassius

Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?

Brutus

No, Cassius, for the eye sees not itself,

But by reflection, by some other means.

Cassius

‘Tis just:

And it is very much lamented, Brutus,

That you have no such mirrors as will turn

Your hidden worthiness into your eye,

That you might see your shadow.

Cassius’ curious talk both irritates and intrigues Brutus, and such inner turmoil lay at the heart of Brutus’ character. He is a man torn between love and loyalty toward friends (Caesar and Cassius) and for the good of Rome. He is a smart man, and senses a decision is coming, which pains him even more, because he also is a man who, upon making a decision, will see that decision to its end…

Brutus

For let the gods so speed me as I love

The name of honour more than I fear death.

Cassius

I know that virtue to be in you, Brutus,

As well as I do know your outward favor.

Indeed, Cassius knows Brutus inside and out, and subtly steers his appeal away from the good of Rome and toward men the likes of Brutus and himself, i.e. nobles who have a lot to lose should an Emperor arise to take hold of the nation…

Cassius

Men at times are masters of their fates:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that ‘Caesar’?

Why should that name be sounded more than yours?

Write them together, yours is as fair a name;

Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;

Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with ’em,

Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.

Now, in the namess of all the gods at once,

Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,

That he is grown so great?

Whether it was magical beef, magical pork or some kind of magical fowl, Shakespeare does not say. Beside’s it’s a moot point. Caesar was human, not divine, and no man should rule over all men. Brutus makes his decision, he will take part and execute Caesar for the good of Rome.

Brutus and Cassius and the other senators murder Caesar. Marc Antony whips the masses in a frenzy and soon the senators are fleeing, conniving and assembling whatever armies they can to battle Antony and young Octavius Caesar. In the end, Cassius and Brutus split, kill themselves, and Octavius becomes Emperor. After all that all that trouble, exactly what they didn’t want to happened, happened. And thus began about 500 years of Empire, from the seeds of deception, manipulation, murder.

“But come on,” said my roommate, the Great Warrior, “Rome didn’t fall, it just became the Holy Roman Empire. Empire has never ended, it’s just changes shape. Then it was the Spanish, then the French, the Brits and now us. But The Empire is still alive and well.”

During breaks from Shakespeare, I worked on my taxes, gathering receipts and check stubs, tallying up earnings and expenses, then entering them into computerland, eagerly awaiting for final number as if I were pumping a slot machine. Shit. I owed $257. I only made $10,000 last year, I thought, why the hell I gotta pay up?Even with the ‘poor man’s credit’? Oh, hell, render unto Caesar…

I e-filed and walked away. Whatever, I’m not ruled by money, so what… But seeing all my wages added up into such a small number played little tricks on my mind. Seems like I worked a lot harder to be categorized as poor. Am doing Life wrong, or something…

Thursday night I rehearsed a dance piece with my friend Rebeca. I don’t call myself a dancer, but I like to think I’m a good mover who can take direction. However, at the end of the evening, as we watched footage of our rehearsal – Rebeca records her rehearsals – instead of seeing the fluid, athletic and handsome adapter I thought I was, I saw a gangly fellow unsure of his movements – an alien from outer space, standing still as this graceful species of human who calls herself Re-be-ca performed some kind of ritual of communication around him. So.you.are.human, Re-be-ca? Take.me.to.your.ruler. My hair was long, I thought it gave me a wild, careless, rather dashing appeal. But it appeared just looked like messy hair, stringy. Re-be-ca…take.me.to.your.rul-

We don’t have rulers anymore, the graceful Rebeca replied, via telepathy, we have leaders that we vote for. We get a choice between two leaders. They say we can have more than two to choose from, but every election it’s two…

The first thing I did on Friday was get a haircut.

“How much you want cut off?” asked the haircut lady.

“A lot of it.”

She briskly ran the shears over my head. Hair fell onto the smock before me. There was more gray hair than the last time, just like the last time. Only $10,000 and all this gray hair…

“Thank you,” said the haircut lady, “come again.”

“I don’t know,” I says, “every time I come back there’s more gray hair on the floor.”

“Haha. Come again.”

I worked on the scenes from Julius Caesar until the late afternoon. Then I opened up Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. If you haven’t read the book, or seen the movie, it’s about John Grady Cole and Rawlins, two teenage cowboys who cross the Rio Grande to find work in Mexico, in 1949. They hire on at a horse ranch where John Grady Cole falls in love with the rancher’s daughter, Alejandra. But soon after love blossoms, John Grady Cole and Rawlins are thrown in prison for stealing horses. That’s where I was in the story – around page 195 – where John Grady Cole pays a visit to Perez, the prisoner who is the unofficial ruler of prisoners, he who decides who lives or dies within the prison walls. Rawlins had just been stabbed and John Grady Cole wanted to know if he was alive, and if anything the same was going to happen to himself. But Perez just smiles, leans back in his chair, says…

You do me too much credit. There are three hundred men in this institution. No one can know what is possible.

To which John Grady Cole replies…

Somebody runs the show.

Perez shruggs…

Perhaps. But this type of world, you see, this confinement. It gives a false impression. As if things are in control. If these men could be controlled they would not be here. You see the problem.

From outside my window came the voices of one of my neighbors and a man who I’d never heard before. They spoke in hushed tones, as if they were hiding. The man was speaking about work. He never said what kind of work, but from what I gathered, I’m guessing he worked in computer maintenance or distributed water-cooler bottles to offices about town.

“Do you like it?” whispered my neighbor.

“I like it,” the man answered, “I mean I like dealing with the customers. But my bosses? Shit no. And, you know, I don’t wanna know what the lives of the other employees, or about their families. And the bosses can’t make me do none of that. I just wanna work and my bosses can leave me alone.”

“That’s cool I guess,” said my neighbor.

Another neighbor turned on his stereo, turned it up loud, and set a Tejano song on repeat, like he usually does. Then he started shouting in a high-pitched tone, like he usually does.

“For f#$k sake,” said the IT or water-cooler man. “Calm down over there.”

But the neighbor kept whooping to the song. After the day had faded into evening, the song was still playing, the man still whooping, like he usually does.

By then I was on page 230, after John Grady Cole and Rawlins had been bribed out of jail by the Grand Aunt of Alejandra. John Grady Cole sends Rawlins to Texas on a bus, but he heads back to the ranch. When he gets there, he confronts the Grand Aunt, who stayed behind as if expecting him to return. She told him that Alejandra was in Mexico City and that he could never be with her, and goes on to say…

When I look at my grandniece I see a child. And yet I know very well who and what I was at her age. In a different life I could have been a soldadera. Perhaps she too. And I will never know what her life is. If there is a pattern there it will not shape itself to anything these eyes can recognize. Because the question for me was always whether that shape we see in our lives was there from the beginning or whether these random events are only called a pattern after the fact. Because otherwise we are nothing. Do you believe in fate?

The neighbor finally turned the off the stereo and quit whooping around 7pm, like he usually does. John Grady Cole took a moment to answer, finally saying that he does believe in fate. Over the next several pages, the Grand Aunt tells her personal story while intertwining it with Mexico’s. It’s a story of revolution in a time of high intellectualism and a determination to change the path of a people. But death, greed and deception flow throughs the story, crushing any idealism. She suffers much pain and sorrow in the story but the Grand Aunt speaks without sympathy for her or anybody, because…

There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don’t believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God – who knows all that can be known – seems powerless to change.

I put the book down and went out to get some groceries. As I walked up Western Boulevard, I saw vague movements ahead of me on the dark sidewalk. I walked closer and noticed it was a skinny old black lady sitting on the sidewalk, legs stretched out before her like a child sitting in the middle of the flow at a daycare center. Several take-out boxes of food were spread out before her, along with her few belongings. She reached out at the air as if she was trying to pull the oncoming night toward her so she could wear it. Spit flew from her mouth as she vehemently hissed and babbled. Everyone on the sidewalk gave her plenty of room as they passed.

After I passed her, I realized it was March 15th. The Ides of March, 2070 years ago to the day that Caesar was stabbed to death by his senators. A sooth sayer on the street told Caesar to “beware the Ides of March” but Caesar wasn’t superstitious…

The last firery glow of the newly set sun was transponding some kind of  desparate warning. I looked back at the skinny old black lady, but once again she was only silent, vague movements in the dark as Angelinos kept passing by her and forgetting her.I turned east and found the full moon hanging just above Hollywood Boulevard. It was staring straight at the dying light of the sun, grinning and shaking its head, almost laughing.

Be well…

Storm Worlds

Hello Everybody,

A while back, I was walking up to Food-4-Less at Sunset and Western Boulevards where a bum was being ushered out of the underground parking lot by an employee. The old black, gray-haired bum didn’t give the employee any flack, and the employee appeared sorry to have to oust the old man into biting elements Wild Hollywood.

“Don’t you have anybody,” the young clerk asked, “a family member who’ll put you up?”

The old bum walked ahead of the clerk, slow, hunched shoulders, his jaundiced eyes wide and blank. “Naw’all families what’s left i’back in Texas.”

“Sorry, man, but-”

“Izz alright…I’ll be gon’ now.”

The old bum lifted on foot in front of the other slowly like he was a character in a butoh or kabuki play. The employee followed just long enough to be certain the bum wouldn’t sneak back into the parking garage. But the old bum looked to have already forgotten he’d been in the garage, already forgotten Food-4-Less on Sunset and Western, already forgotten Hollywood. One foot…then another foot…eyes forward…

Friday morning, I awoke to the steady fall of rain. The blinds on my window were shaded in a green-gray hue, much different from the usual orange-yellow that was most mornings. There was usually a soundtrack of chirping birds, too. Of course, no birds came with the sound of rain, but at about 7am, the siren’s began. For the next hour or so, one siren after another screamed down the boulevards, sounds of cars skidding and symphony of horns produced a cadence underneath the emergency vehicles. I could see the skidding cars on the wet streets in my mind. For two days, LA had been in the grips of STORMWATCH ’14 – a collective warning by the local weatherpersons about the oncoming rains which were sure to severely compromise driving conditions. It’s beyond cliche that LA motorists can’t handle driving in rain…

“Yeah, it’s ridiculous,” said my friend John, as he pulled a sharp U-turn on Hollywood Boulevard, later that day, as we sped through Hollywood. “But you gotta keep in mind, when it rains out here…mountains crumble. The world falls apart, bro. Like reality dissolves.”

After hanging out with John, I went to a cafe where I ran into “M”. M had been in and out of homelessness most of last year, but seemed to be getting back in the groove this year. He’d gotten his old job back as a scenic carpenter, got a phone, new clothes, etc. But every now and then I go several weeks without seeing him and I’d begin to worry. Friday marked the end of one of those “several of week’s.”

“I’m alright,” M told me, then she shook his head, “well, no, I’m not alright. My demons came back to me a few weeks ago. They wouldn’t leave so two nights ago I broke into a construction site, tide a rope to a scaffolding and to my neck and jumped. But the rope broke and I fell…only hung for about 3 seconds then I hit the ground. I just laid there on the ground, saying, “why am I still alive, God? Why?”

“How are you doing right now?” I asked.

“Better than I was two days ago. But I still don’t know why I’m still alive.” He was leaning on a parking meter, looking out across Vine St. It wasn’t raining, but the air was wet, cool. “Maybe there’s a reason, you know…”

The rain picked up in the evening and fell through Saturday morning. By the light of the green-blue window, I worked on my friend, Luis’ book that I’m editing…

***ELECTRIC RATS IN A NEON GUTTER: POEMS, SONGS and STORIES by Luis Galindo goes on sale MARCH 10th!!!! Support independent publishing and order a copy! (Psst…if you want, you can already purchase the ebook on AMAZON HERE or on Barnes and Noble NOOK HERE!!!***

***And…keep your eyes peeled for a compilation of El Jamberoo posts in book form! Details forthcoming so stay tuned!***

On sale March 10th! (Or get an ecopy now on amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com…

I thought about that old Texas bum that I saw at Food-4-Less Saturday morning. I thought of M, too, who was out there somewhere – under an awning of a coffee shop or liquor store, but maybe not. Maybe he’s just out in the rain along that long winding, painful road from Texas to Hollywood…that long winding, painful road from anywhere, where there’s no signposts of what’s ahead, where there’s drugs and alcohol and crime or nothing really too terrible at all but for some reason there’s still divorces or estrangement from family, firings from jobs, car wrecks and sickness and money never seems to comes in steadily, where the things you wanted and may have even needed are skylighted upon the horizons to the North or South as you continue to head West. You swore when you set out that you’d head in the direction of those things…swore aloud…but for some reason they’re off to the side…or worse…directly behind you, and you can’t recall for the life of you that you passed them by.

I finished work on the book and ok’d it for printing and online sales. By then the rain had stopped. The orange-yellow hue and bird chirps were back, so I put on my boots and headed to the Home Depot down the street to price materials for an estimate on a rabbit cage I was to build next week.

As I was approaching the hardware store, I saw a man standing out front of the Hollywood Star Inn. As I got closer, the man looked familiar, like…

“Bob Hawk?”

The man had been squinting at me, as if trying to figure out if he knew me, too.

“Oh my God, Todd Pate!”

“Jesus…Bob!”

I knew Bob back in New York. For years, I worked at a box office in the Theatre District in Midtown Manhattan. Bob came to all the shows there. We struck up a relationship and when I started getting my own plays produced…

“You know I saw everything you ever wrote.” He said, always said, every time he saw me. “You know, Todd, some of your plays were really out there…but I always sensed you were approaching some kind of edge with them, purposely, like you were seeking something on the edge. They were very exciting , even if some were…” He made a waving sign with his hand. “…really out there. But you were always looking for something…”

Once upon a time…

I was waiting for him to tell me more about this Edge, because it sounded like only a brilliant, dynamic, powerful…etc…kind of writer could reach that kind of Edge. I’d been working on Luis’ writing all morning, I wanted…no, needed to hear about how my writing goes to this Edge, that takes people to this Edge that, and how I may be the only writer in the history of Man who can take you to this Edge…

…but one sprinkle led to another and then the rain came and Bob Hawk and I ran under the awning of the Hollywood Star Inn. By the time he shook off the drops, Bob had changed subjects.

“So I’m out here for some work,” he said, ‘but I thought, if I need to be out here in LA, I’m staying a week. And I don’t care about the rain! It’s better than the cold in New York.!” A car pulled up, Bob’s ride. “Well, I gotta go.” He walked to the car, then turned around suddenly. “Oh, I’m not sure if you know, but that old building were all the bums hung out on 42nd and 9th, next to where you used to work. It’s gone. The whole corner’s completely torn down. It’s surrounded by the wooden fence but you can peek through the holes and see that they are building something new…probably a…” He held a hand high in the air. “…one of those big steel and glass things. But you can see the theatre clearly, and I think of you every time I go down there.”

Bob got in the car, they drove off. I headed toward the Home Depot. The rain was falling hard. The hardware store blurry as I approached it, as if I was crossing through a waterfall separating two worlds…into a world where I was a builder of rabbit cages. coming from a world where I was a writer approaching that Edge, the Edge. No…Bob Hawk and New York seemed more than one world ago. Way back behind me, several storms ago.

On my way back, I had to go to the bank and get rent money. Halfway there, as I walked down Hollywood Blvd, the rain fell the hardest it had yet. The roar of water falling and flowing drowned out all other sounds. Cars silently skidded at red lights, plowed through the huge stream of water that overtook the street – flowing down, to the west, taking the city to the ocean. Bums huddled under awnings, people ran down side streets with inverted umbrellas. I walked, soaking wet, too wet to run anywhere. The damage had been done. I strolled to the bank, pulled out the money, cursing my roommate for having the gall to charge me rent every month. The heavy rain continued on my way home. Thunder echoed every now and then. Well whaddya know,” I thought, “this really is a storm.”

By Sunday afternoon, the rains were gone. The sun made more than one appearance during the day. By evening, the city was clean and pleasant, like it just stepped out of a bath tub. The view of Mount Hollywood and the Observatory was unimpeded by smog or haze. The air was cool. I walked over to my friend’s house to get the keys to his car, so I could pick up his car in the morning, and get materials for the rabbit hutch on Monday morning. It was nighttime when I began my walk back home, I came upon a bum sitting at a bus bench on Hollywood Blvd. I smelled the alcohol from several yards out, before I could see him well. Over and over he’d let out something like a sneeze that he finished with a, “f#$k you…ah, ah, ah choo f#$K you! Ah, ah, ah choo f#$k you!…”

When he got all those out of his system, he resorted to traditional drunken babble. A car passed by and it’s headlights gave me a clear view of the bum. His clothes were damp and soiled. He was about fifty, bearded and nearly toothless. He also had two pair of handcuffs around his neck, worn like necklaces. I walked passed him, and moment later he came down with another case of the “ah choo f#$k you’s.” I turned around and watched him, just thinking that he’s not waiting for a bus. He’s just sitting there, sneezing and cursing. How did fifty or so years get him there? I walked on and he faded from my ears. The city was quiet, except for the coming and going of cars. They’d rush up, I feel their lights on my face, and they’d rush off. Then the dark and quiet again.

I’m ending this blog with that. Maybe there’s a little more to write, maybe not. But I have to get out the door and start building this rabbit cage. The window is yellow-orange and there are birds, even a lawn mower. It’s not a bad world out there today. One that’s pretty to look at, maybe. Pretty enough to keep from looking at the worlds ahead or behind, anyway…maybe.

Be well…

So Close, We’re Already There

Hello Everybody,

The other day, I ran into the Vine St. Girl at a cafe in Hollywood. She looked the same as always: dirty clothes, dirty face housing fire-green eyes, hair styled like a cavewoman’s in a 1960s television skit.

It’d been over a week since I’d seen last seen her: in the middle of a sunny afternoon, she was being carried across Vine St. by a man, screaming and flailing both arms. Foam spewed from the 24oz beer can that she was holding. Cars whizzed by the pair in both directions. Her struggling caused the man to veer in front of an oncoming car. The car swerved, then stopped. The woman driving the car rolled down her window, shouted something at her, at the man, then reached back and opened the car’s back door. The Vine St. Girl shook free of the man, threw the beer at him then jumped in and the two woman zoomed away. The man crossed the street in a manner like that of a child lost in a mall. When he reached the sidewalk, he ran hard to a corner then disappeared. So I was relieved to see The Vine St. Girl was OK, after that incident. And though it’s clear to see she’s fallen on hard times, she always seems to have a smile on her face, when not being kidnapped.

We waited in line next to each other at the cafe. After she asked the man behind the counter at the cafe to sell her two cigarettes, she turned her green eyes to mine, then began speaking through me to something far behind me in some language spoken by a higher species from a Cosmos a few Big Bangs back. I noticed similarities in the language, to ours, but the tongue was ultimately, absolutely undecipherable. So I just smiled back at her. She grabbed the two cigarettes and walked by me, out the door, and continued to babble as she stepped out into the Hollywood of the current Cosmos.

Later that night, I needed some beef jerky so I walked over to the all-night Walgreen’s on the corner of Sunset and Western Boulevards. In front of me at the checkout counter were two woman with a grocery cart full of panty-liners. They lifted armfuls of them out out of the cart and onto the counter.

“Can I interest you ladies in any a our specials on da countah?” Asked the old woman working the register, as she waved her hand across a display of assorted chocolates in the manner of a showgirl working a 1960s automobile convention. She wore deep red rouge and lipstick, and a fake mole. The deep creases on her otherwise pale face were as black as dark matter. The wrinkles broke her face up into fragments like shards of glass on a fun house floor. “Come aahn, dudn’t some chocolates sound good tonight? Special two-for-one.” The two women said nothing. The old clerk took a deep breath. “Alright, den. Well, buenos noches to da two a ladies.” The women smiled, shook their heads, walked out the store with the panty-liners.

Down one of the aisles, a vampyrical bone-thin transvestite deadlifted a case of Coca-Cola from a display and waddled up behind me. She twitched as she held the leadened case of sodas, her eyes darting around fast, like a bird’s. I moved up the counter so she could set down the case.

“Excuse me,” said the old woman, “can I interest either of you two fellas in our special two-for-one chocolates?”

“No, that’s ok,” I said.

“No, thank you,” said the transvestite.

“Come aaahn! Dey taste real good.” She leaned in closer to us, spoke lower. “You see, da clerk dat sells de most candies gets a gift cad at de end of da month.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m broke, so I want da cad. So therefore,” she continued, in showroom pose and with a sexy, wispy voice, “can I interest you two gents in some sweet candy?” Then she burst out laughing. “Oh, I tell ya, you gotta keep it fun, you gotta keep it fun, guys. Or else…” she mimics a pointing a gun to her head, shooting herself. “Right? You can’t get too serious…” she points out the doors into the East Hollywood darkness, “…one day you might get eaten up out dere by a cockroach. Or, by some giant baby on a big-wheel who forgotta who ring her bell as she’s coming at ya!”

“I’ll come in tomorrow and get some candy,” I said.

“Awright, you know I’ll be here. I’m always here…” she widened her eyes and continued in a Transylvanian accent, “…on the grrrrraaaaaveyaaaarrrd sheeeefft, mwah, ha, ha, ha…” Then she handed me the jerky, reached over, grabbed the transvestite’s coke. I left.

The night was thick. Dew had brought the streets to a shine. All was quiet except for the distant howls and screams of The Unfortunate. These voices always seem to be coming from another dimension, for every time I’ve looked in the direction of these howls and screams I find nothing. If I see anyone, it’s usually some solitary figure wandering about the boulevards like a monk who’d been silent for centuries or a zombie practicing abstinence. When focusing on such a figure, the howls and screams disappear, completely. Only when I look away and break my connection to those around me do the howls and screams resume. That is, at night. People are shouting all over the place during the Hollywood Day.

The next morning I took a hike up the big hill behind the Griffith Park Observatory. After I reached the apex of the hill, sweaty and breathing hard, I rested for a moment on a little bench on the trail. Then set my clock for twenty minutes, crossed my legs, rested my left hand on my right hand, focused on a cone hanging on the branch of a pine tree, then began to meditate. Breathe in, breath out, breathe in…Soon, the roar of the endless line of school buses on the road below me began to fade, the giggling junior-high students already on the trail dissolved, and even the bright chirps of birds soon disappeared. After a while, everything was gone. Only the pine cone remained, dangling in Nothingness.

But everything was also still there, and I came to the realization that I was not separate from anything. I’ve felt this kind of thing before -written about it – but every time I sense it, it’s as if I’m coming to the realization for the first time that I am merely part of a giant event. Not even a part, I’m thoroughly stirred into the Big Soup, as are you and everybody and everything in Existence. But it’s not something I can hold onto and use for another day, it’s something I have to come to realize everyday. REALIZATION – Finding The Real. When I fail to Realize The Big Event, I slip into the Artificial Self. By identifying as a seperate being, I attempt seperate from the Big Event. But separation of the Self from The Big Event is impossible. It is delusional to think one can, and when delusional thinking comes in contact with Reality, suffering ensues. Therefore, letting go of the Self leads to, ah this is so simple…Life’s a piece of cake…at that moment, I became aware that people were staring at me when they walked by. Through their eyes, I saw my Self: jogging pants, sweater, hiking boots, sunglasses, sitting cross-legged with my hands together, staring at a pine cone. I quietly laughed out loud. The old clerk was right. My alarm rang. I hiked down the hill back to Hollywood.

When I got back, I saw my neighbor, Edith, outside her bungalow, on the phone. She’d just finished washing her family’s clothes in the driveway, hung them all up to dry on the barbed wire strands that run atop the wall separating our bungalows from the neighboring apartment complex. The smell of detergent lingered. Times were hard for Edith & family and apparently getting harder, because I used to see her at the laundromat. By the doorway to her bungalow was the chair on which she gives her husband, Miguel, a bath. Miguel was paralyzed from the waist down, from falling off a ladder on a job site (see the Jamberoo: Oh The Ramparts We Are). Aside from family bread winner, she’s his caretaker, 24/7. Edith sat on the step, leaning back against the wall, speaking tired Spanish into the phone. When she saw me she leaned forward and waved.

“Ola, Todd…hello.”

“Hello, Edith…ola”

“God bless you.”

“God bless you, too.”

I’m not sure which God she meant, because – though she wears a Christian Cross, I sometimes I see her in the driveway, huddled in the corner, burning sage, or something like sage.

“Yeah, she practices that…what is it…” The Great Warrior told me one time, “…oh, Santeria. She’s really been into it since Miguel got hurt.”

I went inside, cleaned up. When I came back out Edith was gone. The clothes fluttered on the barbed wire in the wind like ghosts killing time in ghost prison.

Down the street, I ran into the old lady that usually offers me a can of corn every time I see her. But this time she stood in front of me on the sidewalk, holding a broom, though she still stared into me like she always does, as if she knew me but didn’t know me. The neighborhood leaf-blowers had finished for the day. One fellow was loading the leaf blowers onto the truck, and another was sweeping up the leaves on the curb along with the empty prescription bottles that find their way on Serrano Ave. He looked up at me, then to the old lady, rolled his eyes, shook his head and continued sweeping. When I turned back to the lady, she’d moved on, sweeping the driveway as she walked, her gaze up and far away.

A little later I saw the Vine St. Girl, crossing the street with an older man. She didn’t move in her usual manic rhythm. More so, she looked very lucid and walked with intent, like someone walking to their car after work, or to a cafe to meet someone. She still wore the ragged clothes, but her hair was a bit more tame than usual. Just like that, she seemed so unknown to me…as if I’d gotten her wrong. And I did. That’s what I get for trying to get her in the first place.

So close, we are already there…

That evening, on my way back to the bungalow, the sun hung just above the palm trees, glazing East Hollywood with tear inducing pinks, blues and yellows. The obese homeless lady that’d recently taken up residence at the corner of Sunset and Western sat Indian-style, smiling at something in the sky. I looked up to see hundreds of seagulls flying above us, squeaking and squawking across the pink-blue-yellow sky. Ah, we are near the Ocean, I thought. It’s so easy to forget the Ocean is so close. I looked back down on East Hollywood and it was beautiful – the suffering and our subconscious aching to let go of it and come together. All of it. And we are so, so close to The Ocean.

RIP Phil

Be well…