March 9, 2025
Waking from a dream about racoons in a desert, I was a dizzy from the time change and the red wine from the Persian dinner. Sunlight in slants from the kitchen window. I stirred oatmeal and boiled coffee for myself, toast for the wee son. Made a kettle of hot water for the wife as she woke up. After showering, I drove us all to the farmers market under blue skies, chilly wind, and fast-moving clouds. A Chinese grandpa sat with his back against the parking lot wall talking to me in Mandarin, which I don’t understand. He pointed at the purple cauliflower on crumpled newspapers over the sidewalk. “No thank you” my son said to him in Chinese. “Ok ok ok,” laughed the old man, nodding, nodding. The mountains of oranges, rows of radishes, layers of lettuce, the smell of kettle corn. We bought sourdough bread a few bags of vegetables and fruit. I don’t remember what we had for lunch but I spent the rest of morning recording lap steel guitar on my new computer, studying Korean and Japanese, doing laundry, listening to African, Japanese enka, and reggae records I bought the weekend before at the Pasadena City College flea market, planting lettuce seeds in the backyard garden box, reading the last chapter of the Odyssey. Later in the afternoon, I took a long walk around the hills of my neighborhood and heard crows and wild green parrots in the large live oak trees. In the distance, a wobbly speaker from the ice truck sent tremulous waves of distorted tape loops over the rooftops. I took my six year old son for a swimming lesson. He’s almost swimming but needs a few more lessons. In the hot and humid indoor pool, he was laughing and yelling while floating on his back “I feel like a sea otter! Ah ha ha ha ha!” Splashes of water from arms and legs kicking in the pool. After we showered him, we met my parents, my sister, her husband, and one of her daughters at Bistro Na in Temple City for a pre-birthday meal for my wee son. The fancy interior of Bistro Na with dark wood beams, Chinese instruments on the high ceilings, elegant tables, chairs, and wood lattice framing – a gourmet restaurant in the location of a former large movie complex where I spent my youth watching countless movies. Funny how there is a now Michelin rated restaurant in the compact suburb of Los that I grew up, riding my bike through the streets of sorrow and joy. My wife brought a small cake and we lit a candle for the son. After dinner, we parted with the larger family and then us three headed back home, but with the sunset later because the time change. After I put the wee son to bed, my wife left to drive her parents to the airport. I stretched on the couch and put on an Italian crime drama on the telly but wasn’t really watching. I just listened and closed my eyes. I started to feel drowsy and took a pre-sleep nap. An hour later, the wife arrived home and I washed up, changed my clothes, and got into bed. As sleep started to pull me into the undertow, I tried to make notes about the day but the waves of sleep were strong. In the distance a train horn blaring from miles away and the rush hush of a few cars down the street. I heard somebody rummaging in my neighbor’s trash cans, maybe a can collector or a racoon. A few thoughts of a tropical island, images of a campfire, a new harmonica…. then sleep.
Alhambra, Califas