Buddha Sale

If you meet the Buddha on the road -- buy him. Only $99.50 on sale, at Pottery Planet! (Dinosaur not included.)

I love this town.

I Should Not Visit Los Angeles

This guy was the Hollywood stereotype of a Frenchman. Lush French accent, black clothing, an expressive voice and burning dark eyes, a philosophy of life that could be described only as humorous fatalism: he cut a dramatic and energetic figure.

Unfortunately, he was there to teach us to configure database software.

All that Gallic energy and spirit could only do so much to hold our attention through a long afternoon of parameter passing, data taxonomy and portlet configuration. I spent a lot of time looking out the window.

We were 23 floors above Sepulveda Boulevard in El Segundo, just south of the LA Airport and not far from the coast. Streamers of fog crossed the muddy brown sky over a boulevard of boxy high-rise office buildings, dilapidated or drab retail buildings, and the occasional cheap-built new strip mall.

To the west, hidden from the boulevard by the line of retail, and then a wall, lay the pipes and tanks and towers of a vast and grimy oil refinery. A concrete-lined settling pond of contaminated water sat not a hundred yards from where office workers sat outside chomping burritos assembled by a frantic assembly line of young Latinos in smart uniforms, gang tattoos on the bare arms of many. Billboards for movies and television shows hung above the street at intervals above check cashing centers and auto dealerships full of slightly used German cars.

Just to the south lay a Boeing Corp. highrise where government contractors build intelligence satellites for a better-surveilled tomorrow. Out of sight of the window but immediately east lay Mattel corporate headquarters -- the toymakers -- where a store on the premises sells NASCAR Barbie, Pirate Barbie, Hello Kitty Barbie, and the curiously disturbing Cabaret Barbie.

I don't hate LA. But it makes me nervous. LA is an cliff-top mansion with a buckling foundation, a Porsche with bad brakes, a hospital on a flood plain downstream from an earth-fill dam, a toy store crammed with flammable Chinese kiddie clothing. It's an accident waiting to happen.

The kind of inequities and problems you see in LA are found in San Francisco, or Santa Cruz, too. But in LA they're so stark! Extreme privilege lives side by side with squalor. Bland clusters of high-rises loom over a shabby and neglected urban landscape. And everybody accepts this. Everybody ignores it.

The air is bad, the traffic is terrible, and everything needed for life is imported from a very long way away, including the water. Half the water for the city comes up a single canal from the Colorado and over a range of mountains by means of a series of mighty pumps. If there were no power, there would be no water. LA is on life support every day.

They built a city of eight million people on a desert. Because they could. Because there was money to be made, and politicians could be bought to provide cheap water and the cheap land and the freeways. But it wasn't built to last -- just to make a profit.

And if the money stops, or the water stops, or the gasoline stops, or any of them, LA as we know it will crumble. It has no resources to fall back on. The wealthy hustlers and fixers who dominate the city will pull up stakes and move elsewhere, leaving LA to flounder among insurmountable problems; and, eventually, shrink up and empty out. Or, quickly, explode and collapse.

Yeah, yeah, another rant. If you've read this blog for long, you must be used to it by now. But I rant because I believe that if something can't go on forever, it won't; and that wasteful systems that need a lot of money to run, don't run when there's no money; and that a society built on excess can't survive in times of shortage. And how about them earthquakes? The federal government couldn't even save New Orleans; if LA takes the big hit, what are the odds anybody will pay to save it?

That's why LA makes me nervous. I see a whizzing, whirling, flashing machine of eight million people and ten million cars that just barely holds together -- one good hit could bring it down. It's not sound. It'll end badly. It's no more than an plastic 20-ounce bottle of Diet Coke, to be crushed and thrown away when the last of the sythetic elyxir within is slurped away.

Disposable metropoli. How -- twentieth century.

Spare Change?

Election Day. Morning. Early. Once again Rhumba and I are sitting at the counter at Zachary's because, once again, we got up too late to make breakfast. The oily-haired guy on the next stool smells like restroom hand soap; he has that rumpled look of someone who slept in a car. It's 7:30 a.m., and the only thing in front of him is a bottle of Bud and a glass. Breakfast of Champions, they used to call it.

The waitress takes our order and Tom the Co-Owner breezes by; he's uncharacteristically cheery.

"Well, are you feeling gro-oo-ovy this morning?" he asked me.

"Tom," I said, "nothing's been groooovy since 1969." That gets a snort from Oily Guy. He's drinking his beer straight from the bottle.

"Then it's the Age of Aquarius again, the Age of Obama," Tom says, obviously stoked.

"Yeah, right," I answered.

"Don't be so cynical." He grinned at me. This was so weird. Tom doesn't usually use his facial muscles before 9 in the morning.

"You have no idea how cynical I can be," I said, "so I'm not going to say anything."

Because if you're going to talk about reliving the 60s and righteous change and rallying behind transformative leaders, you've got to remember the dark side of the 60s, too: John F. Kennedy shot through the head in Dallas; or Bobby Kennedy gunned down in the Ambassador Hotel on the night of the California primary; or Martin Luther King murdered at a motel in Memphis.

Back in the 60s there always seemed to be a "lone gunman" around to take care of leaders who became too troublesome. In many important ways, the 60s failed. So let's not push that Age of Aquarius metaphor too far, shall we?

Maybe Obama is the real deal, maybe not. But he obviously gave Tom something to hope for, and it's hope that keeps us going. So, good-oh.

Aside from Tom's gaunt and grinning visage, other things were different than usual that morning. On Election Day people get up and out earlier, go places they don't usually go and do things they don't usually do. It feels like Something is Happening.

The stools at Zach's counter were already full; at that hour of the morning, it's usually just Rhumba, me, and the Old Hustler. He was there, of course, but so were five or six other people who were eating fast and checking the clock.

Out at the intersection of Mission Street and Highway 1, college-age Obama supporters waved "Obama!" and "We Want Change" signs at passing cars. I was sorely tempted to toss quarters at them as we drove by, but did not. I honked instead, and they all cried "WOOOOO!"

We stopped off to vote on our way to work. The poll workers offered us our choice of a paper ballot or the touch-screen voting machine. We took the paper ballot. So did everybody else there.

"I'll give two "I voted" stickers to anybody who uses the touch screen," a grizzled poll worker announced to the room at large. But nobody took him up on it. Nobody trusted the thing. So why do the politicians?

I gave my ballot to a wide young man wearing a "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" t-shirt; he dutifully handed me a single "I voted" sticker which I affixed to my shirt more out of habit than pride. Not sure what Rhumba did with hers. Something inventive, if I know her. She knows origami. At her job they're a little tight with the desk accessories -- "in" boxes and paper-clip receptacles and all that -- so she made her own out of folded paper and K'nex.

We passed more squads of young Obama supporters on our way to work, all waving "We Want Change" signs. I dutifully honked each time just to see if they'd scream "WOOOOO." And they always did. Gotta face it, I'm easily amused.

A great many people say they want change these days, but I think "We Want Change" is the wrong message. Come on, things change all the time. Things are a lot different now than they were ten years ago -- mostly for the worse. But I think I know what people really want when they say they want change. Even if they don't:

Couple of weeks ago in a Doonesbury comic strip: an Iraqi war veteran, a woman who'd been feeling isolated and hurt for a number of good reasons, told her therapist that she now felt better. She explained that another vet had come up to her and handed her a purple candy heart -- a purple heart -- with "Born 2 Roll" printed on it. And walked away without a word.

"I don't understand," the therapist said.

"Someone's got my back again," the vet answered.

That's what we want. Not someone to make it all better for us. We want someone who's got our back. Who'll make sure we can get medical help that won't bankrupt us us, jobs that can support us, an economy that can sustain us, education to guide us, and a path to the future that works for all of us. And we can do the rest.

Just someone who's got our back. It's been a long time since we've had that.

I dropped off Rhumba at work and drove on to my own job, where I make half the money I did five or six years ago. Before I got there I passed one more group of sign-waving Obama kids. I honked, of course: "WOOOOOO," they answered.

Kids, Obama may make you WOOOO with excitement. He may speak of change in ringing, blblical terms. But the big question is this: when the chips are down and the bad guys are screaming and waving their clubs at anybody who'd challenge them (metaphor here) -- will Obama have your back? Will Clinton? Will any of them? Or will they back off to protect their own power or position or alliances? Will they back off in fear of the Lone Gunman?

That's the question. One not asked, or answered, in any debate or news conference to date.

Locker

It was raining. A steady, cold rain that drummed on the roof of the storage locker and hissed on the pavement outside the roll-up door.

On an early Sunday morning, in the rain, there's really very little reason to visit a storage locker. Much better to snuggle deeper under the covers, or brew a cup of coffee and watch the pre-game shows on Fox or ESPN in your PJs. Which was why the storage complex in Scotts Valley was as quiet and shut up as a city of the dead. Except for Rhumba and me, and the guy who'd met us at the locker.

"This all belonged to a woman who died over in San Jose," he said. He gestured back into the locker, which was the size of a one-car garage. There was considerable 70s-era furniture, all white-washed wood and smooth curves and drop-in glass tabletops. A file cabinet. Some brass-and-plastic lamps. It was the kind of furniture you hang onto not because you like it, but because you're used to it. And you're not interested in change anymore.

"I go in and clear out houses after people die," he explained. His name was Bob. "I work for attorneys, the public guardian, real estate agents. I find all sorts of things."

And sell them; if there was a need for Bob's services, that meant there were no survivors nearby, or at least none that wanted to clear out the dead man's stuff themselves. So Bob got most of it.

But he didn't always understand everything that the dead left behind. Which is why we were there. The dead woman in San Jose had been a fiend for knitting machines. Most of you don't know what a knitting machine is. Neither did Bob. Decades in the business and he'd never seen one before. Furniture and antiques he knew the value of, but not weird Japanese and Swiss knitting devices bristling with masts and needles and shuttles. He put an ad on Craigslist, named a price, and hoped for the best.

Rhumba knows knitting machines; they are the intersection of her love of knitting and her basic engineer-nerd nature. She simultaneously loves them and hates them with a passion -- they're cranky beasts -- and one of Bob's creatures was the Stradivarius of knitting machines. A difficult and aged beast, without all the modern gizmos; but one that can sing like an angel in the right hands. The kind that They Don't Make 'Em Like Anymore. The dead woman in San Jose had been a serious knitter.

Bob's price was good; better than good. He understood that after talking to us, but he didn't care. Knitting machines weren't his field of expertise; he had no market for them. Better to take the money and run.

So we came to terms and loaded the dead woman's machines into his van to truck to our place. Or rather, he loaded them. Knitting machines are big, heavy awkward creatures that usually take two to lift when mounted on their stands; but Bob slung them around like they were made of tissue.

"Do you want any help with those?" I asked. Though strong-built, he was past 50.

"I'm used to working alone," he answered.

He finished loading and drove like a demon to our place in Santa Cruz. He actually beat us there. This time he let me help unload, from his van into our garage. Macho only lasts so long when heavy objects are involved.

It was still raining as we clapped the dust off our hands and stood in the open garage door. Rhumba passed him the cash and the deal was done. But we talked a bit about his work, clearing out the homes of the dead and disabled.

He loved it.

"Every day is like a treasure hunt," he said. "You never know what you're going to find." Even money, which he assiduously turned over to the trustees. "I don't want the money," he explained. "I want the business." And that attitude earned him a good reputation with the lawyers and others who wanted his services.

He talked about going clearing out a home that the relatives "had gone through nine times," and finding a chest of silver dollars hidden behind a refrigerator. "The guy had worked in a restaurant, and whenever somebody had tipped him a silver dollar, he'd just kept it," Bob explained.

And he talked about assignments that made him shake his head. "This woman died, and I went through her place. She lived in public housing, and every room was crammed with shopping bags wall to wall, and I had to go through every one of them. There was bag after bag of shoes and clothes and things.

"I was about about halfway done, and I looked into another shopping bag, and it had $50,000 dollars in it." He shook his head. "You'd never know it by the way she lived. And I look in the mailbox, and there's a bank statement for like $250,000!"

He had other stories like that, too. I've heard of such things. In the paper, in blogs, and from friends talking about their own relatives or neighbors.

Sure, everybody worries about piling up the money for their old age, but what you really need is somebody by your side to keep your aging head straight when you can't do it yourself anymore. Otherwise you end up with an apartment three feet deep in garbage, eating cold Dinty Moore from the can and forgetting to shower for weeks at a time while the money just keeps piling up in your investment accounts.

And then you die, and total strangers and maybe a distant relative or two try to make enough sense of your life to get all the money where it's supposed to be and stamp it CASE CLOSED. And you know, it's not supposed to be that way. Ever.

Bob dropped us a business card, bade us farewell, and drove off into the rain. We moved junk around until we found places to stow the new knitting machines in our garage -- a long, narrow space with a roll--up door, not unlike Bob's storage locker. It's crammed with yet more knitting machines, my stained glass workbench and tools, video tripods and sound equipment, boxes of yarn, an electric bike, all sorts of things that we bought and accumulated and hold on because we needed them or wanted them, and think we'll want them again someday.

Rhumba and I don't have kids. Rhumba doesn't even have relatives, at least none she's seen in 20 years. Someday we'll both be dead; and, if we weren't in good enough shape to handle our affairs well, some lawyer will call a guy like Bob to sort through our stuff and cart it all away and wonder why the hell we lived our lives the way we did.

And how can it be any different? Stuff doesn't have any loyalty. It belongs to whoever can carry it off.

That's why stuff doesn't matter, or nowhere near as much as people tell you it does. No, what really matters is who you have, not what you have. The only way most of us are going to make it through life on our own two feet is with our hand in the hand of another.

The rain kept coming. Outside the open door it gurgled in the downspouts and drummed on the roof of our car . And I closed the garage door on the machines that were ours, and had been somebody else's, and someday would belong to yet someone else. And we drove off and got some breakfast at a cafe full of light and coffee and cinnamon rolls and eggs and cheerful people young and old. And had a hell of a breakfast.

Live 'till you die, and well, with someone you love well. It's not just the right way; for most of us, it's the only way that works.