Hats

At times it feels like a lump, at others like a clenching.  A knot.  A giant walnut or a small cantaloupe.  Whatever the words, it's a physical presence, the emotional mass I carry around inside these days.  Grief?  Oh, I suppose.  Although the word is rapidly draining itself of meaning.  Whatever resides in my chest, okay, lower chest/upper belly, feels like a permanent resident in my body.  Alien.  No visa, no work permit, and as foreign and entrenched as mistletoe or truffles.  Definitely parasitic.  The alien mass is draining me.  This morning, my friend Laurel and I set out for coffee at Peet's and three blocks later my wheelchair sat parked in front of a streetlight, my foot braced against the pole.  Needed a rest.  Too much strain.  This is how it's been.

The mass of sadness/pain occasionally punctures like a balloon to drain a couple of drops...my teary moments...but mostly it stays inflated, full as my quadriplegic bladder.  Except for interludes.  One came this afternoon, just after a one-hour dose of exercycle endorphins, followed by a spell of meditation in my front room, after which I came to and found myself in a much improved state.  Downright euphoric, albeit short-lived.

I want people to leave me alone.  I want people to be with me.  I want them to talk, but I don't want them to say anything.  Get out of my face.  And run your hand along the side of my face, soothingly.  You have no idea what I'm going through, and why don't you give me some ideas?  The balance these days, the best achievable, comes with my leg off the lamp pole and back on the wheelchair footrest, the two of us rolling toward coffee, me present and absent, craving human contact and irritated by human company.  Laurel has been talking about dog breeders and the oddity of their relationships with animals.  The prevalence of chain-link fencing strikes her as harsh.  At this moment, it strikes me as nothing.  I cannot register the emotional tone in anything.  I have become emotionally tone deaf.  Caffeine may help.

It does, slightly.  Laurel and I have been arguing about clothes.  I tell her that I cannot buy them on my own, lacking taste, oblivious to style, rather dim when it comes to color, and so on.  Though there is one exception, Marks & Spencer.  I can wander into their premises, fumble about and come away with something acceptable.  Laurel tells me this is pretentious.  No, I say, this is me and Marks & Spencer is JCPenney in Britain and...what do I mean?  I am working my way down a Peet's mocha and somewhere near the bottom, where the chocolate settles and things get granular, it dawns on me.  That at age 22 I was buying my own clothes for the first time, M. & S. was what there was, and fortunately the stores are still around and so am I.  Beyond that, I am making no sense.  Nordstrom, Laurel reminds me, is a good place for California guys to shop.  I nod.

My straw hat is worn out.  Laurel lets me know this as she nears the end of her latte.  I once had an in-house consultant who advised me of the wearing out of garments, their disposition and replacement.  Now it's Laurel.  This is the woman who introduced Marlou and me, and although I am inclined to argue about the hat on grounds of pure feistiness, I drop it.  The hat can be re-woven, Laurel points out.  As the possessor of a portable loom, her credibility in this area is high.  'Hawaiian Prince,' reads the blue band about the hat.  A vestige of an early visit in Waikiki while visiting the in-laws who live over the mountain in Kaneohe.  Even at its best, the hat reeked of touristic irony.  I decide to renounce my Hawaiian Princedom.  I will throw in the hat.

Post-coffee, Laurel wants to walk through the center of town.  We may find a new hat along the way, she says.  I roll my eyes.  Menlo Park is what Marlou called Tiny Town, a suburban main street that runs to Afghan carpets and walnut furnishings, and is rather short on mundanities such as straw hats.  Never mind, I will let Laurel have her illusions.  I notice that the African carvings boutique is going out of business.  The whole street will be out of business soon, I fear.  Oh look, says Laurel as we approach the hardware store, hats.  I glance across the street.  Women's, I assure her.  Straw boaters and garden gear.  Laurel wants to take a look.

Romania produced Eugene Ionesco, an old physicist friend Irvin Friedlander and Menlo Hardware.  The Bucharest proprietors have stocked the small shop like Noah's ark.  There is one of every kind.  And in the preposterous way of things, there is a hat, a hat that is better than my current one and, if Laurel is to be relied upon...one that suits me better than its Hawaiian Prince predecessor.  I glimpse at my reflection in the store's plate glass.  It will do.  The hat is more expensive than my current one, also more tightly woven, more permanent.  It represents a step forward.  A releasing of something that was never meant to last.  It has to be done, and now crossing Santa Cruz Ave., I have two hats, but not for long.  There is a rubbish bin at the corner.  I attempt to stuff the old straw hat inside, but a street musician intervenes.  He wants it, I want him to have it, and now I want to tackle the next barely surmountable summit of the day.  Laurel and I are striking out for Safeway.  And I can see it, the next objective, no less exhausting than any other, but limited in scope, achievable, and some might even argue, necessary.  I am going to buy some soup.