Shiny Bits

Today on my walk I listened to the writer David Gilbert talk to Terri Gross of Fresh Air, and at some point he answered a question about writing and creativity, explained that his best are the shiny bits. The Dog and I walked through the fancy neighborhood adjacent to ours, past mansions and bougainvillea, film production trucks and nannies pushing baby carriages. It's sunny here, as usual, and not too hot. The sky is blue, as usual, birds sing and crows caw. I could hear it all through the voices in my ears, even the chink of a hammer on metal, the rev up of a motorcycle behind a hedge. The Dog looked for other creatures, sniffing along familiar paths, but we were both spooked when a beast hurtled itself against a wooden door to our right, the thud so loud the wood seemed to buckle. Jesus Christ! I said and yanked The Dog away, picked up my pace, my ears turned away from the rough barking and back to Terri and David. A block later, The Dog lunged again, I looked up and into the incline of a driveway where, at the top, stood a dog muzzled in black leather, his body wrapped in leather and chains, a ripped-up frisbee hanging from his mouth, the canine equivalent of a bouncer at an S&M bar in Hollywood. I thought about yesterday, the shiny bits. I took Sophie for a brief visit with the gynecologist that prescribes progesterone for her. I left the wheelchair in the car and walked Sophie in. I was optimistic. We waited for nearly an hour before we saw the doctor in her tiny examining room. I held Sophie awkwardly in my lap, her legs whipped up into a cross-legged position. The Gynecologist and I talked about hormones and bloodwork. We talked about medical marijuana. Sophie had a seizure, a huge seizure, and I contained it and her, still on my lap, the jerking, the drooling, the banging. The Gynecologist had tears in her eyes. She waited and offered to help. She said I don't know how you do it. I laughed with rue, squared my shoulders, relied on my physical strength. When Sophie recovered, we left the office and walked back out into the Santa Monica afternoon, the air shiny bitten by sun. I cried all the way home.

On a morning walk, without a camera

Picture what looks to be an enormous honeysuckle plant, the bloom as big as the palm of your hand, the pistil as long as your middle finger. Imagine the fragrance as you walk past it and look up to see what that smell is, look up and see it hanging over a wall. You pull one off the vine, apologetically looking up toward the window of the house behind the wall, in case someone is watching, but no one is, so you pull out the pistil (or is it the stamen?), slowly, anticipating the tiny drop of nectar that will appear at the end of the tube. It's dry. Hear, too, the sound of too many crows squawking as they dart and fly and hop over green lawns, the hiss of sprinklers on and off. Picture their black disfavored bodies, wings outspread, the one loud one just overhead. Jump at the crack beside you in the middle of the street, bits of a nut shell, scattered, the sound a tinny gun shot and the crow swoops down to peck at what is freed. Imagine your own head exploding like that, bits of bone, whatever is extraneous, littering the street and only the good stuff left to pick over.

While on my walk today,

I saw banks of clivia, and I thought about Sophie's sixteenth birthday tomorrow and whether I would make or bake cupcakes for her party at school. I noticed spit on the sidewalk shaped like a pocketbook and ran my fingers through a bank of lavender, then sniffed them. I heard birds singing and crows squawking, the double toot of the roach coach and a small child shouting I love you. The clouds to the north were puffy and rolled in banks over the hills while in the west they darkened. The shadows of the endless palms were long, dwarfed by my own. I passed a man with a dog that didn't look like his and a woman whose dog looked like her. I waited for cars at intersections and felt the dull ache of my heels and when I lifted my face to the sun it was warm and I didn't need to blink.