The alarm doesn't wake me. Or it doesn't go off. Or I've learned selective dreaming--sort of like selective hearing, only, when one is in REM sleep...Just as I shake myself onto the floor from the futon, realizing I have the choice of pulling on jeans, and Uggs and making it out to my truck to move it before Ticket Time, or instead, rolling over, sucking up the possibility of the wrath of the City of L.A., and trying to find another dream... guess which motivation wins? Of course, the fact that I've barely fallen asleep (because of back-to-back HELL-RAISER films) contributes to the choice, but, I'm not thinking of that as I sink into a coma.
No sooner do I realize it is now past the safety zone,when it is like Leatherface, from all the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRES, has suddenly camped outside my second story window. This is not the gentle buzzing of lawn liners. O no. This is full on chainsaw turbo power, not only screaming in decibels clearly illegal, but also tossing branches, twigs, possibly dead birds, up, into the air two flights, and hitting the windows with thuds! It is barely nine a.m. and this guy is in the small path between my building and the the house,next door. Working between the trash cans and too- small- wooden fence that separates us. Arrgh!
Of course, the neighbor's bushes are on the opposite side of his house from HIS bedroom. And while he and his roomies are at home at least as much as me (this is L.A.), they could be snoozing soundly, on the other side, not giving a rat's ass about all of us, being terrorized by his gardener.
I pull the covers over my face but am soon strangling from heat and lack of O2. I try the ergonomic pillow over my head. Likewise: sauna-effect. I turn on the t.v. remote--something with a soothing sound track or background music. It's TELE-TUBBIES or TERMINATOR--nothing in between. I try focusing on my breathing: one breath in, I take in the cacophony of the Universe; one breath out, I release peace, harmony, tranquility around me. Doesn't Buddha say that all sounds are the same Sound? What would Jesus do? (I am increasingly sure He would go out and scream at the gardener with the illegal motor, so early in the morning, so close to neighborhood bedrooms...) I fall off the futon, face planted on the bamboo rug. (It's nine-o-five a.m.)
I stagger to the bathroom, turn on the water, take a short, hot,shower, still able to hear the sound of the buzz saw through the stream. In clouds of misty peppermint, I shake my hair out, brush my teeth, finish the daily ablutions and get dressed. Cars are exploding and motorcycles are chasing each other through L.A.'s drainage system, on my t.v. I pull on my gray hi-top sneakers and my black hoody. I grab my keys. (I've just read, on the Net, that one cannot succumb to depression and isolation during long terms of unemployment. One must get out into the world and renew even casual contacts.) One must re-inforce one's sense of worth in the world. One must remember that one does count! Maybe the gardener was an angel sent to rouse me from my depressed slumber? (An angel armed with a chainsaw, but, an angel,nonetheless.)
Outside, the morning fog has burned off. The sky is that particularly intense blue that some L.A. mornings show off. Birds are singing again. The wind is fragrant with orange blossom and bougainvillea. Foot-traffic is light; just a few early walkers and their little dogs, bouncing down the street to their own beats. And the frigging buzz-saw is finally silent!
I smile. There are other gardeners, trying to do their jobs. Feed their families. Planting marigolds or trimming rose bushes. Their parked trucks are older than mine. I shouldn't be angry with them. God only knows what their back stories are...how their nights were and if they held any sleep. I think, suddenly, of border crossings, of desert walks with unreliable coyotes and forged papers; what would it be like trying to survive with a dozen people crammed into an apartment my size or not being able to speak the language to even begin to hunt for work... Suddenly, I'm ashamed I was upset with the loud gardening practices below me. I don't have to work in the sun for fourteen hours, straight, or come home smelling like sweat and fertilizer...As I walk to my truck, shaking my head at my own insensitivity, a free woman at nine fifteen on a lovely Monday in L.A., I see it waving back: a crisp new sixty dollar parking ticket.
(What, indeed, would Buddha say?)
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