


GRIZZLY PEAR
My sister and I toyed with this PortaSound PSS-460 as kids.
The kids now dance to the drum kit (max volume!)
In between, it sat in our empty house;
While we stayed with parents when he was born.
A squatter took over one Thanksgiving —
A young blond woman with a ponytail.
She quietly left with her black backpack.
I found the keyboard on a dresser, plugged in.
I occasionally wonder about her,
Plinking tunes on this toy Yamaha over a cold, dark holiday.
~
This memory of everyday magic was sparked by a beautiful poem and rendition by Nadia Gerassimenko.
The kids were intrigued by the lychee shells that mama peeled for an after dinner snack. We filled up a bowl to float little pink boats. A miniature ocean for little folks.
Bear-Bear took a nap in a cozy bed of stuffed slippers with arctic seals and bears in overalls. They novelties came from our cousin in China when they were roped into an ill-fated retail venture. It’s not great to find shoes on your bed (I suspect the boy), but it’s impossible to get peeved over this!
As she was heading to bedtime, the girl handed me Daddy Bear.
In the morning I found him on the floor next to my bed.
I tucked him back in bed for extra rest before starting my morning.
A desert tigress crouching for prey in the overgrown lawn.
“They created a wasteland and called it peace” – Calgacus
The kids caped up and whirled to programmed songs on the keyboard. After she was dragged off to study Chinese, he ran around the house as a ghost. The beanie-veil combo is a fresh innovation in our house.
After college, I moved into a small garage apartment. At $450 per month, it was a steal to have my own place, a 168 square foot studio with a free parking spot in the driveway.
I tried to start a container garden in that driveway. It faced north so nothing survived except onions, but it changed my life one morning by attracting a feral bunny (as I headed out to inquire about an internship at Dwell Magazine). I never saw that little guy again (and Dwell never called back), but the moment of staring deep into the eyes of another creature led to adopting two rabbits and a season of volunteering at the House Rabbit Society.
The interior of this converted single car garage was painted light yellow to maximize the natural light. Even though the window orientations were not ideal, it still had glass in two directions with a window over the kitchenette and a big glass patio door looking into the back yard.
I built custom bookshelves, borrowing a table saw from the Berkeley tool library to with split 2×2’s clamped around PVC pipes. I maximized every cubic inch for my books and my rabbits. It was tight, but there was just enough space to clank out fifty thousand words for a NaNoWriMo T-shirt, clean up on Monday Nights for Irish dancing at the Starry Plough, and assemble portfolios for graduate schools.
Twenty years ago, I drew this top down, single-point perspective as one of the projects in those portfolios.
When I left, I swore I’d return to this city that I loved so dearly.
I’ve visited twice.
My parents dropped by our place in the morning to give the kids polished stones from a roadside stand on the way to the Grand Canyon. After they left, the girl sorted the collection before coming inside for breakfast.
Last week, our daughter designed and built a roller coaster from materials at home. Watching the girl press against her 3rd grade deadline surfaced messy memories of late night college studios.