Matcha
It’s basically green tea (Camellia sinensis) that’s been shaded for 3 or 4 weeks before being harvested. That pumps up the theanine, an amino acid with health benefits and the caffeine, well we all know what that is.
Matcha latte is my drink of choice at the cafe these days. It’s made by whisking the bright green powder made from the leaves (with the stems and veins removed) into hot water and then injecting the steaming milk from the cappuccino maker to create a frothy beverage.
It’s considered a high tea ceremony in Japan where its consumed ritually.
The other day I was at Philo Coffee sipping my matcha latte. Philo Coffee has been my favorite spot lately because of the huge oak tree in the patio with overhanging branches and because the baristas look at me and listen as I tell my joke of the day.
It’s $5.45 she said after I placed my order. I said I have something better than money and pulled out a stick that I had picked up on the way in. A magic stick! I told her and held it in front of her eyes. It will dissipate any negative energy that’s around you. Watch this. I twirled it in front of her face.
It’s not working she informed me. Ok, look I shouldn’t do this but I have a special rock too and pulled a small chunk of flint out of my pocket which I had stashed there knowing that I might run into headwinds. I’m sorry we don’t take rocks either she responded. What? I can’t believe it! With this special rock you can make 3 arrowheads and a knife. She just looked at me.
I knew better than to pull out my invisible frog, that the game was up, so I paid with a stupid piece of plastic and waited for my matcha latte, took it outside under the massive oak tree and sat down.
After having fortified myself and perused my phone for news and inspiration, I got on my bike and proceeded down hill and down river to visit the San Pedro Park and the creek that flows out of it, the caffeine buzzing serenely through my system.
Roadrunner and the puppy
It’s actually a beautiful section of river when it finally emerges from below the Five Points intersection lined with cypress trees and landscaped with large slabs of limestone. Roadrunner (that’s how he introduced himself when I first met him) and his puppy live along the creek. He sleeps under a manhole cover and stuffs old sleeping bags into the storm drain on the street to keep it dry.
Roadrunner tells me that the puppy was run over by a car and came tumbling out the other side unhurt or atleast uninjured. It’s a miracle dog he says. Ever since she saw me emerging from the subterranean tunnels a couple of weeks ago when I was doing research for the San Pedro Creek post we have been friends. I apparantly had passed the test for admittance into her tribe.
Roadrunner lives in filth. His sleeping chamber is gross. I looked in there once. He wasn’t home. Trash surrounds the creek bed where he lives. He is an able bodied middle aged man but he can’t seem to gain any traction in getting his life together.
I can’t criticize him or judge him, living a relatively privileged lifestyle sitting here in the cafe writing about it. I’ve got a bike and a house and a few bucks in the bank. Roadrunner is broke.
He is enterprising though. Bicycle parts: frames, a couple of chains, forks, wheels, tires lie in a pile around the entrance to his hole. He is attempting to assemble them into a functioning bicycle. Without any tools.
If water coming out of a wall qualifies as a miracle, as it does in San Pedro Park, a bicycle rising out of these junked parts would qualify as another.
The other day he asked me if I wanted a heater. No, not really I replied. It was in the high eighties that day. He had somehow come into possession of an old console heater with a ceramic element that looked like a TV and glowed like a fire when it was turned on. Atleast that’s how it appeared to work. He’s homeless and jobless but he accumulates odd pieces of junk hoping to find some value in them. Several boxes of Covid test kits, a one dollar memorial coin with a profile of Benjamin Harrison on it and dated 1889 but worth exactly one dollar, a collection of sunglasses, a strange wooden X thing that turned out to be the legs of coffee table are among the items.
There are various and assorted street people along this stretch of the creek on most days when I pass by, some asleep in their blankets.
It’s actually a pleasant path to ride along, a few trees, the limestone rocks placed along the banks. There is only 2 or 3 inches of water flowing in the creek bed due to the fact that the spring is dry and where that water comes from is a mystery. Maybe street runoff. Maybe it’s a miracle.
Me and Roadrunner cleaned up part of the bank one day, filled up a trash bag each and set it aside hoping the sanitation workers would pick them up before they got torn up by the street people. That’s what happens. The area where the creek emerges from under the Five Points intersection was once cleaned up by the street people but no one hauled it away and the bags broke and all the trash spilled out. The puppy finds good hunting there.
SARA (San Antonio River Authority) won’t clean it up, they only work downstream in the culture park. KSAB (Keep San Antonio Beautiful) wouldn’t help although I talked to them several times. I thought of organizing a cleanup myself, soliciting a pickup and some compassionate volunteers but besides all the trash and garbage I discovered there are also heroin needles and human excreta lying around and I realized it wasn’t appropriate or even safe to ask people to go down there.
Apparantly part of the process of becoming a street person is losing respect for yourself and for the environment around you. Wherever they are they generate trash. It’s amazing to me, with all the efforts made to house the homeless their numbers have doubled over the last few years, atleast according to my unofficial census. And so has the trash.
They have their own little world there. The police don’t bother them and they sort of self-govern themselves and form their own societies. One day I was visiting Roadrunner and on the other side of the creek a couple was walking quickly and seemingly agitated. Roadrunner called out to them and the woman responded that someone had stolen their bag during the night and if they find them they’re going to stick a knife in their ribs. Lovely.
There are multiple agencies dedicated to helping the homeless: the Catholic Worker House, SAMMinistries, Christian Assistance Ministries, Center for Health Care Services, the city’s Department of Human Services, Corazón San Antonio and Haven for Hope but the number of homeless people just seems to increase. They’re building a permanent supportive housing project that will help some of the most vulnerable and it’s a great project but it’s just a drop in the proverbial bucket.
It really portrays a sickness in our society that so many people are exiled and disenfranchised. Nobody would choose a life like that. Here in the midst of the richest country the world has ever known people are living in dire poverty. Poverty of the spirit and the mind, not just of the body.
At the cafe
And so here I sit at Philo Coffee writing this saga. It occurs to me how fortunate I am, sipping a matcha latte under the oak tree while others have fallen and find themselves in the pits. Roadrunner hasn’t washed his clothes in months. He wants to get a room for a week so he can get out of the sewer, dry out and clean up. I live in a house with running water and electricity and all kinds of conveniences. Who knows what his story is. Who knows what demons he has in his mind and how they got there. It’s a story I don’t need to know.
I’m sitting under the arms of the great oak tree with the wind whispering through the leaves. I feel the spirit of the old ones who lived here long ago and for a long long time. For them the creek was alive and above ground. It flowed continuously from the spring that came from deep underground. It was the abode of Mother Nature herself. What a privilege to know Mother Nature personally, not just in a story or as an allusion.
The street people remind me of how simply we can live, day by day, as the old ones did. We have forgotten both that simplicity and the kindness of Mother Nature who supports all creatures here below: plant, animal and human. Perhaps if we could feel it again we might cure the dysfunction that casts so many into dangerous and deviant lifestyles, deprived of healthy food, health care and a safe place to sleep. The consumer society only cares about how much you have and the means to get it. We’re willing to waste the whole world to create wealth that we don’t even need. Money is our god. An unholy and arbitrary deity but we worship it anyway.
The oak tree was sacred to the druids of ancient Britain, probably to the ancient people of San Antonio too but their story has been lost. It stands, arms outstretched to the sky as if in praise, as if in prayer, as if connecting sky and earth which in fact it is, and providing a space in between for the people to live.
Tree of life, tree of hope sprouted long ago from a small acorn - bless me. Bless us all. Bless the subterranean street people and the above ground street people. Bless the rich folk with some wisdom. Bless the poor folk with good health. Bless the liars and the truth-tellers with the gift of silence. Bless the air breathers with oxygen, bless the high flyers with a place to nest. Bless the bugs with a a place to crawl. Bless the squirrels with acorns. Bless the ground dwellers with shade. Bless the kids with a place to climb. Bless us all just by being here, large and full.
I dunno but I kinda think that’s probly what the ancient people felt too.
music :: ‘Oblivion’ by Climatic and ‘Sweetness’ by Suduaya & Irina Mikhailova
thank you
a matcha latte and the subterranean street people