Falafel 5K

I volunteered the other day for the JCC’s “Falafel 5K” as a course marshal. They gave me a corner to monitor and this strange little red vest. The signs were clear, with arrows leading the runners down hill and through the dogleg onto the home stretch. It was shady, my spot in the middle of a quaint neighborhood. Before the racers arrived, I chatted with two couples, introduced myself to an elderly lady and her elderly dog. About fifteen minutes after the start time, a cop car with flashing lights came around the corner followed by the lead runner, who spit and grunted as he loped past. The next two runners, close behind, were equally preoccupied (what was I expecting, pleasant hellos?). The fourth runner, the race’s lead woman, yelled out to her son who was apparently waiting for her on the porch. He yelled “Go, Mom!” “Love you!” she called as she huffed down the hill. Runner number twelve, also a woman, was running barefoot. The boy had come out from behind the fence and joined me on the stone wall. “What’s she protesting, anyway?” Then a thick clot of tired-looking 5Kers wheeled into view. “How much longer?” one weary man asked, his gait stiff and awkward. Claps from the couples on their porches. After about five minutes the slow runners and the ones who had started walking were all that was left of the race. One old man asked me how far he had to go. “You’re close,” I told him cheerfully. “You lie,” he hissed. Then the last walkers and one mom pushing a newborn in a stroller. Finally, my son Avery and his three friends strolled into view, chatting and laughing. The trailing cop car inched behind alongside an 80 year old man willing himself forward. When this strange little parade floated by (high-fives from the boys!), I gathered up my things, took off the annoying vest, and sauntered all the way to the finish line.

Marginalia

At the back of a paperback pulled off the shelf, I find a few fragments of marginalia jotted years before. I have no recollection of writing these lines. Notes toward a short story? He asked her to meet him in a strange city, at such and such a hotel, on the last Saturday of August. She hadn’t promised she’d come. But, if she did, he was sure it meant that everything they’d shared-—all the unspoken glances and sparks between them—- would bloom at the designated moment she walked into the hotel lobby. Is this an attempt at fiction or simply wish fulfillment? Have I been leading a double life? Either way: how strange to find this shadow version of myself, no longer alive, sloughed off like a coat of snow. And then, on the back page: They’d done all they could to salvage it; there was nothing left but to untangle their libraries.

Jewish

The day after the Orlando shooting—my son's Bar Mitzvah only hours complete—our families are over at the house celebrating. On the lookout for AA batteries, I stop by Lin and Linda’s place. They are sitting in their living room dejectedly, watching television, close to tears. I sit down with them and try to take in the reports. It’s just so unbelievable, so hard to fathom. The woman down the street hates Lin and Linda for being gay, and suspects other neighbors (solely, it seems) for being Latino and Arabic. She holes up with German Shepherds and guns. I walk back to the party, not afraid but deeply worried. My boy is jumping on the trampoline with his two cousins; I have to restrain myself from calling them inside.

Zines

I went to Zine Fest the other day. It was held here in Asheville at the Grey Eagle. A little dark but what a fantastic collection of funky, independent presses, hobbyists and anarchists! About 25 tables. Everything from arts collectives to handmade alt. comic books to punk pamphlets. There was this tragically hip young dude, handsomely tatttoed and pierced; he had a stunning array of mimeographed, folded broadsheets, lots of angry little drawings. I said: “These remind me of early 80s L.A. punk.” His eyes lit up & his chest puffed out. “That’s what I was going for. But, to be exact, it’s more like late ‘70s.”

The whole thing felt so very Detroit. Tough and cool but also open and fluid. So much pride in small pieces made well. There was even a small reading out in the courtyard, some pretty horrible poetry, but one guy stood up on a milk crate and read out his verse with panache.  Had to raise my glass to that. I spent $20 on little chapbooks and silly bumper stickers (“If I had a dollar for every stupid bumper sticker idea...) and handmade art books. Most items between $2 and $5, everyone open to trade. The technology was happily mixed—high tech and low, retro to laser printer, hand lettered to cartoon bubble.

As I was leaving, the older couple in front of me saw that it was raining—a light splatter of thick drops—and cursed their luck. “I don’t have my umbrella,” the woman lamented. I thought, O, how nice. And strolled to my car.