Three more weeks with the face—I was going to say, that I was born with, but I wasn’t at all, that’s the whole thing. J. encouraged me to get away for some thinking on my own, so I took my pretty new blue e-bike over to the city and met a dark riddle in the BART elevator at Powell Street. Every time the doors slid open there was someone new sitting inside on a folding chair, as if in Kafka, bellowing for us to come in, there was no point in waiting around. But the bike and I were a tight fit so I waited until the doors slid open on the same man twice in succession and he apologized for having yelled earlier, it was just the day he was having. He had a clipboard: did he work here? He was talking about overtime pay with another man standing next to him, a new resident in the elevator, punctuated with sorry ma’am, sorry ma’am, to me. At the end of the ride I wheeled my bike out and the seated man said, look at me, I didn’t even say goodbye, you have a good day, and mimed kissing his own hand. I do get the ma’am treatment with the mask on. It will be something if this surgery causes it to happen with the mask off.
Riding the bike down Market felt delicious, like something that shouldn’t be allowed even with the lane marked green underneath me. Due west on Golden Gate, the power assist vanished the hills like a dream, and as J. always says the Outer Sunset and Richmond are like a dream anyway, weird sun and fog and the quiet blocks that go on repeating longer than seems possible.
Couple of dharma talks online. Impermanence, aging, apt stuff. I think Dogen’s concept of time would help if I understood that concept better. Coyotebush in full plume at Land’s End, shedding afternoon gold everywhere. “We are enlightened in the midst of birth and death.” A hawk poised still in the wind.
