Thus, newly, though ghastly attired, with my eye makeup smearing by virtue of sweat, off I went to get quarters for the washing machine I use in my building. (Yes, I do disinfect it before I drop in the clothes.) In ordinary times to which we may never return, change appears as I go about purchasing lunch or sundries in restaurants or retail stores, but in the last two months I haven't used any cash, or rarely used it, and so no quarters have accumulated. The last time I had to go to the bank, there was no wait, but this time, there was a line as is customary for the grocery store, though there were maybe a total of less than 10 people inside the bank.
It was the kind of day that has kept me in California despite its near destruction by our one party system, blue skied sunny with just the right level of wafting breeze. I noticed a pet store across the street, pretty new, it seemed to me, though how long it will last during this economic downturn I couldn't say. But its signage was certainly of the kind that one has come to expect from our society unencumbered by basic beauty and civility. Billboards and store fronts are now the sites of ugly announcements of the entertainment or accessories enticing the 21st Century generation.
Technically, indeed, a female dog is properly categorized as on the window here. But for me, raised in unenlightened times when propriety ruled, the no doubt intended to be cute advertisement, was just another example of an oppressive period in human history. There was another humane pet store down on Fairfax for a while. I only went into it once or twice, it's signage, "Barks n 'B--ches" having always put me off. And humane as it was, it smelled like a zoo. But they went out of business before the current crisis. Lucky for this new place that the word was available for creative use.
Waiting my turn to go into the bank I considered how my father had often predicted apocalyptic events that would occur in my lifetime, after his passing. Somehow, it is still a surprise that I am among a masked population standing on blue or green tape to assure that I my fellow citizens and I are safely separated from each other. At some points, walking on the street, or looking out my bedroom window, the streets eerily empty and some leaflet attached to a pole flapping the only sound, I have thought I was in the opening of an episode of one of those prophetic, black and white television science fiction shows. People have mentioned the "Twilight Zone" as one. And that surely is regrettably applicable. I try not to think that our permanent future will feature variations of this current crisis. A man in a mask comes by to ask a question of the guard. I can't understand what he is saying because his mask muffles the sound.
I receive my dispensation to enter the bank, and the teller is wonderfully accommodating. Then off to Bristol Farms to see what I can buy. Here there is no line and I get right in with my newly sanitized shopping cart. I buy stuff I probably would not ordinarily, just in case. This is a very small grocery store and for all the "wait here" signs on the floor, you pass well less than within six feet of the person in the same aisle as you.
Fortified by my purchases, I begin my walk back to my apartment. I noted that the Griddle Cafe, a usually highly frequented and celebrated spot for young people, weekends with long lines of waiting customers, hasn't been open even for take out for over a couple of weeks. Then on the corner, the Indian Restaurant that also had been open for take-out is closed. They had been starting to pick up before the shutdown. I wish them well, but my sense is that time has run out for them. Does a livelihood have anything to do with life? Facebook discussions would indicate that the answers are very different and highly charged.
As I hit my block, I walked past a building--the place where Sheila Graham used to live in Old Hollywood Days, and where her boyfriend, who actually lived on Laurel Avenue, the world renowned writer F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a heart attack in 1940, eighty years ago. There was a mother on the grounds, her Gerber like baby crawling excitedly on a patch of grass. She didn't have a mask on. In that small picture, life looked entirely normal. I stopped to watch the baby. For a moment, all the stresses of the last two plus months dissipated for a moment. I tried to say something to the mother in praise of her beautiful child. She didn't hear me. She pulled out her ear buds. She picked the child up until I passed on. The child shrieked with the plea to be put back onto the grass.
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