I haven’t had a book to read for several weeks now. My BART train rides are empty. I stare out the window and ponder the multitude of micro-aggravations that exist in my life like the human feces in the bike area at my local Safeway that someone at the store covered with cat litter two months ago and still hasn’t cleaned up.
It’s dangerous to go without a book.
The train ride itself reveals some of the aggravations. It passes through the land owned by the former Naval Weapons Station which has somehow made its way into the hands of private developers who will be building 12,000 houses on the rolling landscape that otherwise could be the inspiration for leprechauns or any number of fairy tales.
The leprechaun reference is, of course, misplaced here in California, but so is the stucco relief that is in progress on the wall of a warehouse-sized building that’s gone up facing the highway and BART tracks. The new building is part of the Willow Pass Business Park. It’s a private plaza that’s been there for about two years now and is the staging grounds for the massive housing development’s contractors and future sales force.
I assume the plaza of contractors, custom kitchen manufacturers, landscapers, real-estate agents, etcetera, will be turned into a shopping mall when all is done. People need a place to shop. The big new warehouse will probably serve as a lumberyard or something and then become a Whole Foods or some other high-end grocery to cater to the people that will be able to afford buying a house in this new conglomerate of neighborhoods.
Right now the plaza represents the pot of gold that is at the end of the leprechaun rainbow. By my less-than-expert approximation the pot contains $15,600,000,000—that’s fifteen billion, six hundred million dollars. I’m conservatively guesstimating a sales price of $1.3 million for each of the 12,000 homes. I haven’t heard much in the way of low cost housing planned for the development.
As for the stucco relief on the wall, at first I believed I was witnessing the progression of a mural that would mirror the fine landscape across the highway that would soon be lost by the development. A rolling horizon appeared on the wall with five live oak trees in the foreground. The shape of the live oaks seemed slightly off but I took this to be artistic license. How tasteful, I thought. At least they are honoring the California landscape that they will be subsuming—the muscular California hills as my deceased poet friend, Janice King, called them in her poem, Looking for Father.
Perhaps a Miwok village would appear beneath the trees honoring the original people of the area along with tule elk and red-tailed hawks circling above. Maybe the now extinct California grizzly would walk into the scene as he does on the state flag.
Each morning, seeing the progression of the mural is something I look forward to–or did. Nothing blocks my view as the train speeds by for five hundred yards of open air and blue sky before passing over the saddle of Willow Pass. A few motorized scaffolding platforms usually have a few workers in blue hardhats. I think of a few artist friends who do this type of work and I wonder at the process of bringing these three-dimensional sculptures out from the wall.
Then one day last week I saw the outline of giraffes and elephants appear beneath the trees and I realized these trees were not meant to be live oaks, but umbrella thorn acacias, the iconic tree of the African savanna.
Just like that, the mural became, for me, a source of further disappointment rather than a bit of salve for the impending injury of taking over the natural landscape. It just made me think how much these developments (or maybe I) don’t belong here. It’s a gorgeous mural but it bothers me in the same way that coming across a Sea World in Omaha, Nebraska might or a McDonald’s in Outer Mongolia or a cheery Applebees commercial following television coverage of the dire Ukrainian/Russian conflict. (That last one apparently happened.)
Disappointments seem to be ruling my life these days. It’s not a good state of mind to be in. I don’t think it has to be the natural arc of aging although those who are older might be more prone to it. I probably inherited this tendency to see the irony in things from my father who was inclined to see what was wrong with the world rather than finding ways to appreciate it for what it was. I say was because both my parents are dead and because the world is always changing and the only honest way to evaluate it is to factor in as much as possible.
At least once a month I go to myCALSTRS website and put in some numbers using their retirement calculator. I put in my teacher salary for the last three years, enter my accumulated sick days, and then play with what it would look like if I retired now, next year, three years from now, etc.
I feel like I would be a happier person if I retired this year, but there is an enormous jump in my monthly benefits—almost 25%—if I wait one more year. Then I think about what I could do if I waited five years. I could be one of those retired people that hops on a plane every four or five months and goes to some place exotic.
Then I think, yeah, well I could do that now. I could retire from teaching and work some little part time job and save up enough for a trip when I wanted or I could hitchhike, do a drive-away (if those still exist), bike cross-country, walk. I could be a cabin boy on a sailboat. I could join a biological collection team in the Swiss alps, become a mercenary in Ukraine. Who’s going to stop me except another person with a gun and isn’t that what war is all about?
I guess I’m just not feeling great these days and it’s not all Will Smith’s fault. I don’t like knowing he is heartbroken, but it’s hopeful that he feels that way. I guess I’ll blame my overall gloom on living four years under a would-be dictator and that half the people thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Maybe I’m gloomy because Covid killed one of my favorite cousins. Maybe it has something to do with Governor Newsom wanting to give car drivers tax breaks because of the gas prices. Or Biden opening up the spigot on oil reserves and sounding amenable to more drilling. How about passing out some public transit vouchers instead? Remember Mr. President those two big words—Climate Change.
Sometimes this life feels like An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and we are all just dreaming, waiting for the gangplank on the hanging platform to drop.
When I started this blog this morning I soon realized I didn’t have any pictures of the land where the neighborhood subdivisions are planned. The few good pictures I found on the internet wanted me to ask permission to use them, so I went out this afternoon and took some pictures of my own. In the course of doing that I also found the only bicycle through-route from my school worksite to home. Someone on the Bike Concord Facebook group told me that bicycles are allowed on state highways in California for spaces where there otherwise is no way to get through. They even posted this sign showing me that it is allowed on a small section of busy highway 4 where I would need to go:
So today, after picture taking, I drove the route. There is a wide margin and sure enough there was a sign at the on ramp, another sign showing bikes are allowed on the highway and a third sign about a half mile later saying all bikes must exit (at Port Chicago). I’ll probably try it once, but likely won’t make it a habit. Cars typically do about 80 mph through there. In fact, someone horn blasted me and shot me the bird as they sped around, just for not getting up to speed fast enough on the entrance ramp. I don’t relish being an easy target for vitriol on my bike.
In the meantime, I’m going to work on my attitude. I didn’t mention it, but being without a book feels good sometimes. It’s sort of like walking instead of riding my bike or taking the truck. Don’t need those extra keys. Can do without a windbreaker. Can just walk out the door and there are no more doors to deal with. No getting in or getting on. No strapping helmets or seatbelts. Just a closer sense of freedom.
Being without a book is like that sometimes too. It’s valuable to have time to ponder the world and pay attention to it. Waiting for a late train sometimes bothers me, but I bet I wouldn’t have seen that mural for a long time had my nose been stuck in a book. I’m thinking I might even find a way to enjoy the new mural. There are far worse things. I’d be willing to bet there were elephant-like creatures here many thousands of years ago—giant mastodons or woolly mammoths and perhaps some long-necked creature like the giraffe too. Maybe we aren’t so out of place after all.
———————————————
*Janice’s book, Burdens of Bliss, published by Freedom Voices, is out of print. It’s on my to-do list to reset the manuscript for reprinting.
Spotty West Goes East 