The Meatball

 

A record

I did an overnight in Santa Cruz this weekend. Took not one picture, wrote not a single Facebook post. This wasn't about reportage. It was about sanity. It was Adam's idea. "Why don't you do an overnight?" he said. "Before the lockdown comes down."

I didn't do a whole hell of a lot. Hung out on Pacific Avenue. Froze my way through a delicious dinner where Adam and I once sat and watched waitstaff dance. Listened to the most ridiculous public-broadcasting show ever. ("Can we talk about the patriarchy in Santa Cruz? Can we?") 

Less than 24 hours. Necessary.

Beginning of a new essay

Your father doesn’t do anything halfway. That includes getting a Radio Flyer for your son. He comes up with the idea while visiting during a September weekend. Baz has just turned four. His hair extends down beyond his shoulders. You have yet to learn he may be autistic. You have so much to learn.

 

“He needs a wagon,” your dad says. By now he’s almost entirely bald. He looks nothing like the man who raised you. He looks – if you are to be honest – like a latter-day Chevy Chase: round of cheek, gray of face. And Chevy Chase was always known to be a son of a bitch.

 

“He doesn’t need anything other than what he has,” your husband says. You stuff another pickle in your mouth because you’re at Saul’s and they’re free and it keeps you from freaking out over the fact that they always, always fight. Saul’s is what Moses would look like if he lived in Berkeley for a while: Judaism, hippified. They do a hell of a Reuben, though.

 

“Let me amend that,” your father says, leaving out the operative word: asshole. “I’m going to buy him a wagon. And I’m going to pull him around in it until I drop dead of a heart attack.”

 

The framed photos quiver on the wall. An earthquake, hyper-localized.

 

Your father and husband can barely stand each other. Never much could. Being around them is like being in a gas chamber filled with fruit flies. Not only do you die a horrible death, but you do it with them. Your husband tries to tell him something in his halting way and your father barely restrains his impatience. Your father talks about his points and miles and your husband only partly bites back his laughter. Derision, frustration; this lends to the type of environment that has you eating extra pickles because otherwise you’d have to address it. None of you really wants that.

 

2015

 

Andrea Fella on truth

Let's look at what's true in terms of what's true in the moment. What's the truth of this experience right now? The truth is that the mind is spinning, trying to figure something out. That's the truth of the moment ... What's arising? What is this experience that's arising?

2009

Love this creepy picture by our wedding photographer, Luke Snyder. 

Recent writing

This is what happens to you since you move here: you grow hard. Your soul, sharpened on the treeless sidewalks, the glaring lights, the thumping music that takes you from day into night and back again. Your eyes, narrowed against the abandoned cars, stolen and crashed and stowed here on the Berkeley-Oakland border, hoods stripped to reveal the guts inside, seats pushed forward so thieves can take what they can grab.