My friend came to visit me and we went for a bike ride. Since we are not on an ocean or anywhere near an ocean we had to ride on dry land.
We went to the sacred oak tree cafe and looked out upon the city. The top of the hill is right next to San Pedro Springs and the San Pedro creek which emanates from it, except both are dry. They used to emanate.
I showed her the strange incarnations of the creek - where it goes underground, where it comes back up, where the dark tunnels run underneath the expressway, where the grafitti galleries are with their strange inscriptions, where it turns into the San Pedro Creek Culture Park and becomes civilized.
And the waterwall. One side is a large metal wall, with water streaming down its face.
On the other side are the conveyer belts connected to a chain which pulls them up out of the water and a grate that filters out the trash.
One side is the culture park, the other side is street people territory with trash lining the banks. They’re pretty much camped out everywhere all along there, wherever there’s a good place.
I hadn’t seen my friend for a year and a half. We used to be good buddies and go on awesome bike rides every week and have adventures but then she moved away and started traveling around. Well there’s more to the story than that but that’s enough for now. We’re headed downtown to look around.
We ran into Melvin working the Centro cart, handing out water to people, watching out for the street people so they don’t sit on the curb, drunk and rough looking, scaring off the tourists. It’s a good job for Melvin having spent some time on the streets himself, he seems to know everybody, even the bike cops.
I feel like half a street person half the time myself, only loosely connected to any officially sanctioned society of any sort. It’s not a bad life.
So anyways that’s where I got the title from, ‘copy and paste / enter new title’. That’s pretty much what I did during our whole relationship, copy and pasted my own expectations onto her clipboard. ‘Enter new title’ means start over, let go, rebirth.
We went to the cafe, Local at the Pearl, and sat around the courtyard. I shared my hippie bar with her and she was about to take a bite when a sparrow swooped in and tried to grab it right out of her mouth. While she was still holding it. We both laughed at that and she said, ‘Ok if you want it that bad.’ and tossed it over to where the sparrows where at. I said, ‘Do you remember at the Cove when the bird was throwing sticks at you from up in the tree? That was hilarious.’ She’s not laughing at this but I am. Something magical would always happen on our bike rides.
We rode down to Confluence Park and watched the shadows and light play against the concrete. We did our yoga on the stone benches under the arches. We rode along the river, not hard but smooth, back into town and she turned off for her hotel and I kept on going straight.
music for this podcast :: Naturritu - ‘Andantino’ 27:14
copy and paste / enter new title