A World Apart

We had a Memorial Day party. Lots of different people came which makes for a great party. There was a fat guy with dreadlocks who worked only on occasion. But when he did, he made lots of money taking truckloads of illegals across the border. Another guy loaned money to illegals at very high interest rates. The loans were rarely paid back before he tripled or quadrupled his money. Beautiful women and men, housewives and drunks, dipping into the pasta salad and pizza from the barbie. The tiramisu, homemade by Umberto, was the best I've ever had and a big hit. The food and drinks softened the crowd so they could mingle, laugh and tell stories, some stories were quite interesting.

And everyone loved the garden. They liked the mystical state the vegetable garden gives at night with all the solar lights spilling radiance here and there along pathways and outcroppings. They liked the grapes that hung from the rafters of the arbor filling their sacs with juice for the summer harvest. The peppers fattening and the tomatoes plump and near ripe for the first BLT sandwiches of the year. The evening was warm and pleasant with a fire in our pit to keep the hint of an evening chill at bay. Its flames called for people to gather and talk with drink in hand to loosen their tongues. They spoke of hopes and their fears, for many, fear is an issue, fear fuels anxiety and gives it strength. It reminds me of the Catholic prayer at the time of the Eucharist, 'save us from needless anxiety.' Apparently, people have worried needlessly for a very long time.

John's worried about a proposed bike path planned across the street from him. He's afraid it will bring people on bikes and they'll be in danger because the path will bring people with dogs, kids will get hurt because the bikes will crash into dogs and the kids who come to look at a cemented-in river. The city will use ugly asphalt instead of the crushed granite he prefers. Even though ugly asphalt is cheaper and much easier to maintain, if you're a homeowner in a upper-end section of town, you want the best.

Some came to see Wally while he is still able to sit with them wearing a smile and a laugh playing on his lips before the inevitable happens. The doctors give us a year, maybe two at the most, before that happens. But we're not giving up hope until then. Our magic garden, friends, and life will not pass us by yet. And maybe, just maybe, if we keep the magic going will pass by that inevitable moment and keep going on forever with our garden parties and friends.

Our Organic Garden In The MIddle Of The City

 We had a hell of a heatwave in May. It felt like the middle of August and everyday required diligent care to keep Spring in the garden. Global warming has taken hold here in Southern California, we had no winter and no rain. Our usual May grey, brought on by early morning fog to cool and dampen the valley, never happened until just today, nineteen days into May.

Of course grapes love heat. In fact if anything is going to survive global warming it will be the grapes. But they also need water, especially table grapes, and that could pose a problem, but for now we are enjoying watching the grapes get bigger by the day. Another benefit of grapes is to sit under the arbor and feel a light rain falling from the grape leaves. You can actually see the small little drops desend when the sun catches them just so.

It's a lovely shade sitting here beneath the grapes and by the fountain, listening to the water gurgle up and spill over. Watching our vegetable garden grow, the tomatoes, garlic, peppers and cucumbers, to name a few. It's one of the few pleasures Wally and I have left. I need a caretaker to help me with Wally and to share your privacy with a complete stranger, day after day, is one of the most stressful things I have to endure. This is our third caretaker. He is much better than the other two,  but like all people, has flaws. One of the flaws is a girlfriend that comes for the weekend. He smokes marijuana like a California brush fire and so does she. From morning to night it is puff-puff on one gadget or another. He does care for Wally, but I have to make sure he does things right since he is stoned ALL the time. And the girlfriend? Lazy would be the best description. She sleeps in his room for most of the day and comes out to eat on occasion. She gave me a list of food she can tolerate. I took the list, walked to the trash can and put it in, saying, "If there is something served you can't eat, don't eat it." She needs to be reminded to pick up her plate after a meal. Her boyfriend, the caretaker, will pick up after her but I won't.
When you consider what we have had in the past as caretakers, a dope smoking heterosexual and his girlfriend are small potatoes. I never have to wake him from a drunk to help me with Wally in the morning. He is very tender with Wally and caring, and for that, I am grateful. It's just someone else here when it use to be me and Wally in our little world. Our little world to sit through the storms of life that swirled outside our home. But now it's us and people I would never associate with if it wasn't for Wally's dementia. It's hard to endure at times.

In the mornings, as early as I can rise, I have the garden to myself, without the reek of marijuana or tobacco. I have that sweet smell that comes from air filtered through a lush garden. The birds bathing, singing and foraging. Millie, our cat, to sit on my lap while I have a cup of coffee or tea and the morning paper. Without this little pleasure, I would go stark raving mad.

Our Oganic Garden In The Middle Of The City

Weeding the garden brings more satisfaction than a tidy look. It has a mystical quality, an introspection of your mind that's transcendental. You think, one more bucket of weeds and I'll quit, drink a beer and come back later to finish. But you don't. You go on, filling the bucket with errant foliage and fishing your head for answers to questions other than, how in hell did these weeds get here in the first place.

Before weeding, I fixed a pot of tea and read the paper while sitting in the patio. Ask Amy is read before the comics on the following page. It's like dessert, the advice column and the comics bring a sweet to the sour news of a world gone berserk. 

A concerned church-going sister wrote of her deliberate exclusion from a girls getaway that her, another sister and some cousins do every year. They go on a shopping spree, dinners and luncheons for the weekend. The younger sister, who is a single mom and not well off is not invited, but its for her own good that she doesn't invite her. She is not a regular church going woman and has no husband to support her in the fashion that she and the others have. She asked for advice on how to tell the younger sister that she should develop relationships more suited for her state in life. They're doing her a favor by not including her because it is so obvious that the wretch couldn't get away for a weekend much less afford the spree.

The younger sister confronted her at her home in tears. Feeling left out, she called her older sister a horrible person and the churchgoing husband threatened to call the police if she didn't leave. It scared the children to see all the distress and it upset the older sister enough to write, inquiring for an answer to the dysfunctional family.

Amy answered writing that she agreed with the younger sister, she is a horrible person and for all her church going, it didn't seem she learned much from it. 

Inclusion is the answer. When we shut people out, things go sour and as I dug and pulled weeds around the apple tree, and crook-neck squash, I remembered what exclusion feels like. A family who once accepted me but when they found I was queer, well, there's nothing left to do but exclude. Religion gave them the reason to exclude, not only a reason but a satisfaction they did the right thing. I would change that way, being excluded from the family would make me see my error and I would give up my deviant way and join them as a heterosexual Christian.

It's like asking someone to change the color of their skin if they wanted to be accepted. If you can't, well, exclusion is the only answer. You don't fit in and need to find others of your own kind.

I remembered the signs on front lawns of neighbors to vote yes for Prop 8. The Catholic/Mormon backed initiative to bar gays from equality of marriage in California. Wally and I would be excluded from all the laws that protect people who love each other until death parts them. We would be excluded from rights that other people take for granted.

It's hard to say hello to horrible people in your neighborhood that want to exclude you, even when you don't know them that well. I never did anything to them. Never allowed our dog to poop on their lawn, never woke them with loud music or trashed their yard or park in front of their house, but yet they want to treat me as a second class citizen and why? Religion.

Religion allows people to think that somehow a god wants them to exclude others for their own good. It's not you that's horrible, you don't hate the sinner, just the sin. You're doing them a favor by excluding them. It's divine justice of a god that they must follow, nothing personal in it.

It's why, as I pulled and tugged another bucket of weeds, that the belief in  gods make no sense at all. For all the gods that suppose to be governing earth, they're not doing much of a job. Confusion on which god is the right god. Ridiculous laws for people to follow, don't turn on the light switch, cut your hair, let a woman have an education, wear a veil, grow a beard, exclude others, even from your own family. How fucked up is that?  How could there be a god that gives disastrous, dysfunctional reasons to coexist with others?

WildFlowers, Beer, Margaritas And The Criminally Insane

First thing I had to do was lose some weight, about fifty pounds of it to even think of doing the Wildflower. Did that and a little bit more to boot. With some miles under me and my ass toughened for hours in the saddle, I felt ready for the seventy-five mile bicycle ride we signed up for. Still not sure though if I could do the ride due to Wally's condition, I opted for the insurance to get some money back in case I couldn't go.

All the time leading up to the ride we had an unusual mild winter and wouldn't you know the day of the ride the predictions were for cold, wind and rain. Still I went.

The weather predictions were spot on. A cold, thick clouded sky greeted us with rain on the morning of the ride. It wasn't much rain but enough to make the cold--colder. And it never warmed up. Once the clouds dissipated, the wind came, getting stronger throughout the day. Through all of this was the pastoral view of horse and wine country. Mixed in, here and there, the wildflowers bloomed as best they could. Hard to see though with your head tucked in fighting unrelenting gusts of chilled air.

But the hardest of all forces to deal with came not from the elements but the roads. Once out of the hills we came to a long valley with rutted roads hardly left with pavement of any kind. Deteriorated to the point that avoiding a pot hole only meant hitting another. It was last second decisions to decide which pothole, tortoise-back section, to ride over would be the best. It wore on you, made every joint in your body ache with pain from the constant jolts sent up the seat of your bike.  By the time I hit the lunch stop there wasn't a bone in my body that didn't hurt. Then the roads got worse if you can imagine that. After a long grueling hill climb with a fast descent that herald the  the end of the ride came potholes that could throw a bike rider over the handlebars. You had to be very careful and some of the worse lay hidden in the shade of the occasional tree.

So when we came to the end, to our car parked by the side of the road in line with all the other cars for the event, I grabbed my cane and walked to the cowboy bar in Creston. It is a real cowboy bar where patrons ride up on a horse and hitch to a post outside for a cold one inside. And the beer is cold but on that day the draft beer didn't flow, only bottle beer was being served. And served they did, I had the first two without tasting or swallowing, it sort of flowed from the bottle right to my gut in about three seconds. My bones said, "Thank you Jesus." My brain said the same and as fast as the barkeep could open the bottles, I drank them down. The Juanster sat amazed how fast the medicine worked. Soon I had a smile and as bad jokes poured from my mouth, I put the beer back in with more sordid jokes to follow.

The first customers to leave where the ones immediately around us. But the beer caused my voice to carry to the far reaches of the room and soon others joined those outside until the last paying customer left. I love pain killers, like beer and margaritas, trouble is they cause a side effect like the medicines advertized on TV. No anal leakage, at least so far, no nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, fainting spells or sudden death. The only side effect noticed is bad jokes. I'll take bad jokes over anal leakage any day.

We left a good size tip, not to insure prompt service but to keep the barkeep from throwing glass on the road for driving all her customers out. We found the car and went to back to our motel. Motel 6 is the American equivalent of Russian design. Just the bare necessities.  WiFi is extra, charged by the day, depressing to stay for very long in especially after spending the night before the ride watching a TV channel dedicated to prisons and their occupants. Our luck was to have on the channel that night, Atascadero State Mental Hospital which means, no way out, hopelessly trapped, to watch. The prison is a stone throw away from where we slept. I'm not sure if the town was named because of the State's mental institution for the criminally insane, most of which are made up of violent sexual predators, or the area but either everybody you meet works at the prison(the inmates are referred to as patients, yet all of them got there from going through the justice system) or they know of someone that does. The institution houses and employs a lot of people. Most of the patients are there for the rest of their lives. And after viewing the television program I can see why.

We made friends at another bar close to the motel, of course buying a few rounds of drinks helps and they told us of a great little place to eat. We had ate there before when it was a run-of-the-mill Mexican restaurant but now had live entertainment and good food. After a night of drinking, (I'm surprised that in the morning I had no hangover) the pain of the day dissipated along with my fear of violent sexual rape being so close at hand, and in the morning we were well on our way back home. I think I can only deal with a Motel 6 once a year or off to the looney bin I would go.