. . . when my protagonist steals stuff from my own life. Fucking bitch:
In the 1980s Douglas Park had been a simple place with a playground
and a large pond containing an island in the middle--a tiny thing,
about six by nine feet, landscaped with trees and bushes. Once when I
was in high school a bunch of us had brought an inflatable raft to the
park to try to reach that little island once and for all. The raft had
a leak in it, however, and we never made it to the island. I'm sure
that made the little piece of land much, much better: I never got to
it. But it was there for me. I knew someone was getting there; after
all, who watered the plants?
In the early 90s the landscaped portion of the park had been
re-engineered, including the pond, so that instead of an island in the
middle there were bridges over various portions of it, and children
could look down into the water to study the flora and fauna. Very
educational. Very practical. But I missed the island.
A red 1970 VW bug drove by as I parked at the street on the edge.
That's phat, I thought to myself, lazily, getting out of the car, and
thought about all the student films we'd made in high school and
college that used Douglas Park as a setting. We had staged a
carjacking in almost exactly that spot: I was the innocent bystander
whose red Super Beetle was commandeered by the bad guy.
I walked to my favorite spot on the grassy slope below the pond. "If
your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away." When
I was a teenager, I'd read that about how body parts might cause one
to stumble; it had sounded like an argument for female genital
mutilation back then, and I wasn't so sure it wasn't one now.
I spread my windbreaker out on the grass and sat down on it. It wasn't
just my eye that offended me, or my hand. My entire existence offended
me. My life caused me to stumble. "So, God, exactly what do you mean?"
I muttered. "You want me to give it up, but I can't figure out what
the heck it might be. Why is justice so elusive? Why do the innocent
die?"
I watched the lawn bowlers at the bottom of the slope; they had been
there for decades. I'd never understood lawn bowling--how do they keep
the grass from dying?--but they were reassuring, too. Without the
island in the pond, they anchored me in Santa Monica's past.
Eventually, I started to feel sleepy. "Aw, nuts," I told myself
drowsily, "try not to get arrested for vagrancy if you can help it." I
slumped down on the grass, sleepy in the sun, hoping SMPD wasn't
patrolling the park too often. Because I was on my way out of
consciousness, and I knew it. Sleep wouldn't be denied this time.
* * *
Where, they will ask, did she come up with this shit? Where indeed.
Received on 2006-10-26 11:20:59
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