August 2007 Archives
The decline section. That's where radio traffic reporters pinpoint rush-hour tieups on the eastbound Bay Bridge. They accent the first syllable in "decline." It's not just that pavement and cars are declining in the angular sense. They are there, in the actual place, the Dee-klein. The part that slants downhill toward Oakland. The Dee-klein.
Which brings us in the monomania of blogland, to my own decline. I don't like it, declining. When it comes to orthopedic and neuromuscular collapse, I gave at the office. My contribution has been sufficient, and that will do. I don't want to feel woozy when I sit up in the morning. I wish the black dots floating around my eyeball from a retinal tear at age 57, three years ago, would go away. Leaning against the bathroom sink in the a.m., is my balance really wavering that much? It's not possible that I am forgetting familiar words. Certain spellings even feel uncertain. Who's that movie star we saw in, you know, the movie we saw, you know, the one that was named something? We saw it yesterday, didn't we? That was you sitting next to me, wasn't it?
The decline section can't be avoided, of course. It goes down, getting closer and closer to the water, until there's nothing but Oakland. Fighting it is madness. Besides, there is some good news. You only pay the toll driving westbound on the bridge of life. Eastbound, it's free. Also, in giving up, you open up, to possibilities.
I made a basic agricultural policy decision in early June regarding Portulaca. I was going to plant these hardy little flowers in the sandy edges below my raised vegetable beds. Portulaca is, after all, a succulent, closer to cactus than to Marigold, say. Indestructible, thriving on drought, geared to adversity. Not unlike me.
Problem is, it's hard to grow Portulaca without sowing seeds or planting plants. And it's hard to get seeds/planta without driving to a place where either, or both, are for sale. So why not just cruise past the hardware store in downtown Menlo Park and thumb through the seed display in front? So much easier.
Especially when it's June and the summer is opening like a good novel. In July, the seeds in the display at the hardware store have changed, but not enough to include Portulaca. Which doesn't matter, because it's still summer, the days are hot, and there's plenty of time for planting and growing. This is less true of August, when the Romanians running Menlo Park Hardware are probably thinking of the little dasha they used on that lake near Bucharest. Before they had kids, and the back-to-school alarms didn't sound quite so loud in the minds of buyer and seller. The same alarms are sounding for the suburban agriculturalist. Maybe it's time to forget about the Portulaca. After all, I've pretty much forgotten about the rest of the garden, haven't I?
I do have some seeds. They're not at the hardware store. They are in the closet. Fortunately, after forgetting for several days, maybe even several weeks, I do ask Marlou to take them out. Seeds tend to be in cardboard envelopes, and I also ask her to open one. Even shake the seeds for me. At least I have not had to drive anywhere.
The problem with the seeds is that they produce lettuce. And lettuce is a fine thing. But the average human being cannot consume an entire head per day. At the current rate of garden production, two per day wouldn't be a bad clip. Marlou and I have been foisting lettuce on passersby. Some of it is bolting and destined for compost. Still, lettuce seeds are lettuce seeds. There's a huge swath of salad poised to reach maturity in early September.
As for variety, well, leave this to time and chance. First, there are last year's volunteer potatoes. I really did my best to eradicate them, yanking and pulling and discarding even russets the size of peas. Nevermind. They are back, and now that the philodendron-sized leaves of the broccoli plants are gone, the potato greenery has spread like a jungle. I have placed a bet with Avery, my four-year-old assistant, regarding the number of potatoes to be harvested. He's betting on the high side, and he's going to win. Then, there are the indeterminate green sprouts, the ones that don't look like weeds. One is taking shape as a zucchini. The others? Given time, some may prove to be weeds. Or they may prove to be anything else previously grown in the bed. Bell peppers, for example. Do I want zucchini or bell peppers? No, not terribly. I just don't want to drive to the garden shop.
So, that's what you do in the decline section. You keep weeding, but stop planning. Things drift. Things grow. You don't worry about what and why. The garden will fill up with something, and someone will probably eat it. And that's enough. At least, that's enough for the decline section. You give up, you open up, and damned if there aren't surprises.
Like this afternoon's phone call. Someone wants a copywriter. Am I a copywriter? Does the hardware store sell seeds? Sure. I'm on display, and if someone wants an end-of-season packet, they can buy me. Listening to the friend who phoned this afternoon, I adopted a certain stance. I'm not dying to do any more copywriting. But I'm also not dying period. So why not be open? Open to what could be zucchini or bell peppers or brussels sprouts or asparagus.
This writing job was what could be described as unchallenging, noncreative, just a straightforward task of clarifying various communiques to employees at a local company. But it didn't feel that way. It felt good. I like clarifying things. I spend my days mentally rewriting and simplifying much of the prose I encounter. So why not? It might make a pleasant contrast to book writing.
That's the other part of the decline. Sure, you wind up in Oakland. But what's in Oakland? As long as you're there, might as well find out.
There's a difference between freeway demolition and dental work, but it's subtle and elusive. I realized this near the end of a recent procedure. Seated, no reclining, in a dental chair, I was experiencing the grinding and reducing of an afflicted tooth. This was the last stage before receiving a crown. No, not by way of coronation. But ending my long period of dental virginity. I have not had a cavity in 35 years. The only dental event of significance involved the loss of my wisdom teeth, more than 20 years ago. It's all been smooth sailing, teethwise. A cleaning here, an x-ray there, another cleaning. Another year. Another decade.
In fact, my dental seas have been as calm as the mariners' fabled doldrums. Nothing happening and nothing expected to happen.
"How did this happen?" I asked Dr. Savio. She has been my dentist from graduate school through my first marriage and into my second marriage. Our relationship, Dr. Savio's and mine, has been among the most stable in my life.
"Anything you do," Dr. Savio said, "can break a tooth. Take your pick."
I can't recall how I took my pick, 35 years ago. I had moved into the Noe Valley section of San Francisco because I was wanted. Wanted by a landlord who was willing to rent his studio apartment for a couple of hundred dollars a month, wanted by San Francisco State University, and maybe even wanted by the blond and amusing law student next door. She turned out to be my friend. Noe Valley turned out to be my neighborhood. And Dr. Savio, four blocks up the main street, turned out to be my dentist.
In those days, I made my way many places via crutch. It took less than 15 minutes to hobble the few blocks to Dr. Savio's office, and what the hell, my physical therapist would have said that I needed the exercise. Besides, driving would have meant losing my parking space, the one occupied by my 1968 Plymouth Valiant. As I told my fellow English grad students, mangling Shakespeare, the valiant never taste of death but once. Nor the Dart, made by Dodge. Gas was cheap in those days. Engine viability was everything.
Dental viability wasn't a bad thing either. Visiting my father in Southern California in 1973, I'd seen a local dentist. He'd advised me that I had numerous cavities and set about filling them, which required a series of appointments. Grad school interrupted the process, and with my mouth half done I promised that dentist to finish the job up north. He seemed uneasy. No wonder. Dr. Savio poked around my mouth and said, with the lightest of airs, you don't have any cavities. I told her about the other dentist. She smiled and blinked.
Thus, 35 years of pain-free dentistry, and, in fact, dentistry-free dentistry. What happens in 35 years? Well, it can be summed up in the last appointment, the one that prepared me for the crown. First, my dental anxiety level has remained remarkably unchanged. Second, we have gotten to know which other, Dr. Savio and I, at least beyond the superficial level of pleasantries. From the 1990s, we discussed politics, speculating on why Newt Gingrich might be named after an amphibian. We talked travel. I got to know the rest of the team. The departing dental hygienist told me to be sure to visit him in retirement. Linda, who works in the front office, talked about her growing boy. On my last visit I thought of asking Linda about him. But I thought better of this, having lost track of time, and fearing that by now the son might be a law partner somewhere. On the way out, Linda asked why it was taking me so long to get from the treatment room to the front desk. She laughed, I laughed. Everyone is past treating my disability with kid gloves. The whole thing feels like family.
Of course, at the heart of it all are my teeth. My fears of dentistry have not abated. "Marathon Man," the 1970s thriller about the evil Nazi dentist, probably has much to do with this. On the other hand, I've displayed a certain dental indomitability. Even when things neuromuscular were heading downhill, there were always my teeth. Uneventful, due for a cleaning, cavity free year after year. I can't help thinking of Walli Bendix. My grandmother, born in the 1880s, was Germany's first woman dentist. Being the first woman anything wasn't particularly cool in those days, and being the first woman Jewish anything must have made matters worse. She couldn't practice, she told me. Or did she tell Uncle Bob, her dentist son-in-law in upstate New York? It doesn't matter. Walli became a children's dentist, no adult patients allowed. She outlived my father, dying in her early 90s. I am sure she had all, or most, of her own teeth. I'm not sure how or why, but Dr. Savio would understand.
