The Night Before the Change

I got to the gym late this evening, 5:30 or so. On Saturdays the gym closes at seven, but I'd promised myself I'd get there today after a couple of weeks of not making it for one reason or another. Rhumba and I had had a room painted this week, our office, and we'd spent all day moving things back into the room and rearranging them.

And it would have been easy to keep going, but I had made the commitment. I do like going to the gym; there are just so many other things to do that seem more important at the time. But lifting has been part of me for 25 years, and I'm not going to let it fall away.

I left the gym just before seven, feeling all pumped up. It had been good to lift; usually the endorphin rush hits me after the workout is over. But I felt oddly uplifted, mentally and physically, right after the first couple of sets.

I stood outside the gym for a minute and enjoyed the evening.The air was mild for early March; we'd had good sun today after a week of rain and clouds. Still, the air was cold enough to warrant a jacket; but I had still had the blood pumping under my skin, and I didn't feel a thing. I got in the car and drove back downtown. A taqueria beckoned; I pulled over for a snack.

The place was jumping. People crowded around most of the tables: young people, mostly college kids; a couple of parties of Hispanics, middle-aged couples. A good taqueria is Your Best Value for Dining Out, no question, and the boys behind the counter were literally running to keep up.

I joined the line behind four smooth-skinned college kids. The first one paid for his burrito with a credit card. The second one used a credit card. So did the third and fourth. All for purchases of five or six dollars. I ordered a chicken taco and laid down a couple of bucks, then sat at a table to wait for my food. I kept an eye on the counter to see how many people paid with cards.

The next young person in line, a little older than the rest, did pay cash. He didn't look like the other young Anglos in the place; his clothes weren't as good, his hair was long and wild, and he had acne like a relief map of the Sierras. But the next two people after him were again young and fashionably dressed. And they both paid with plastic.

"Mind if I sit down?" The young man with acne stood over my table, holding a Good Times.

"Why not?" He laid down the paper and began to read. But I had to remark: "You know, you and I were the only ones in that line who didn't pay with plastic."

He smiled. "Credit cards are a big problem."

"They're going to be," I said.

"They are now," he answered. Then the counter guy called him, and he walked off with three bean burritos to go.

You may have heard that there's a credit crisis. Basically, the major banks are broke; their "assets" are worthless securities based on irresponsible or fraudulent home loans or shakey credit card debt.

The feds, and governments abroad, are keeping the banks propped up with loans and partial buy-outs. But the banks are still loathe to lend very much, because they need all the cash they can get to beef up their own balance sheets.

The thing is, everybody depends on credit these days. A lot of big businesses that used to keep cash reserves to operate stopped doing that, because it was so easy to borrow at low, low rates. Everybody needs credit. Businesses borrow short-term to make payroll and buy raw material until they get paid. Banks even need short-term credit (yes) to obtain the cash that goes into ATMs.

And the assets held by the banks keep degrading. More and more securities based on mortgages and consumer loans keep going bad. One of these days the banks may just stop lending, because no one will lend to them. Money will be unavailable. You will try to use your credit card for even the smallest purchase, and be denied. You will put your card into the ATM and nothing will come out. Businesses will shut down because they cannot make payroll. This could happen.

I finished my chicken taco and drove further downtown to a video store. Rhumba had tasked me to rent a couple of DVDs on the way home. It was the last night before daylight saving time; night had fallen, but people were already behaving as if the sun were still out.

People were everywhere. Clustering on the sidewalks. Walking in the streets. Stepping off curbs without warning. Dark, shadowy crowds of them, all moving on unexpected vectors.

At night, the streets of Santa Cruz are dim at best; our street lighting is pathetic aside from the very largest boulevards. Not for the first time I felt like I was in some vast live-action video game in which the goal was _not_ to run down someone while driving through downtown Santa Cruz. "I will not hurt anyone, I will not hurt anyone," I chanted to myself. "Even though they're wearing dark clothes and aren't watching where they're going. I will do no harm."

I threaded the car carefully through random swarms of pedestrians and parked near the video store.

I got out and walked. Something floated in the air -- an electricity, an awareness of change. Well, tomorrow the sun would set an hour later, the day would be lived differently, a new season would dawn -- not of the calendar, but of human behavior.

As always, I felt separate. All the other pedestrians had bundled up against cool night air, but I soldiered through in a t-shirt. The workout still kept the blood up against my skin. Everyone else looked happy and excited. I felt how I usually feel these days: cynical, watchful. Not pessimistic, but... ready to jump if the earth's crust opens up beneath me.

And the scary knowledge is, it might. It might not, but the possibility is there.

A couple of tips for the very few of you who read this blog: keep some cash money around, in case cash and credit are suddenly hard to put your hands on. A month's expenses should do it.

Also, keep a month or two of staples around the house; pasta, canned food, rice, and so on. You should do that anyway, in case of earthquake or the other natural disasters we're prone to around here.

But if commercial credit dries up, then the whole supply chain from field to processor to distributor to grocery shelf will shut down. And that's why the Feds keep throwing money at bankers and financiers who, in a just world, should be wearing orange coveralls and picking up garbage along public highways.

I got to the video store and found a couple of decent disks: "Spaced," with Simon Pegg, and a Coen brothers film. At the counter, a woman paid for "A Chihuahua in Hollywood" with crumpled dollar bills. She wore thick-framed sunglasses (it was dark outside), and clothing in several different violent colors and patterns. Her hair booofed out in all directions; an actual chihuahua rode nervously in a sling around her neck. As the finishing touch to her outfit, she wore mismatched Croc plastic sandals: one red, one pink.

An eccentric? Maybe. But she paid cash, didn't she? Down the line, she might be judged saner than -- most of us.