A One-mile Walk
A drizzle fell as I took my usual morning walk through the neighborhood. It was a week day in September.
I crossed the park and admired the geese. I said hello to ducks.
The homeless encampment across the street from the park came into view. I counted two new dilapidated RVs, two more cars with duct-taped windows, another van that looked as though it had survived Stalingrad.
Three park employees dragged and limed a nearby softball field. I'll never get over that: overwhelming American misery piled on the street and 50 yards away public employees were prepping for a softball game under the lights to entertain adults after they worked at something all day. It all feels so absurd and frivolous but perhaps I'm missing the point. Or maybe the City of Portland is.
My walk continued. A few blocks away, I encountered a young man and woman idling in a fatigued sedan stuffed to the gills with possessions. Clearly, they were living out of it. He checked his phone. She slumped in the passenger seat.
I kept moving. A pop-up tent camper on a side street abutting a warehouse caught my eye. It was a new shipwrecked addition to the neighborhood menagerie of beat-up rigs that serve as housing.
It was surrounded by junk, cars and some inexplicable items. Other items were explicable: four or five pots with blooming purple flowers decorated the front of the camper.
I heard voices from inside the camper. It sounded like an argument between two young people, a man and woman. I listened. Why not?
She was complaining about his inadequacy of satisfying her sexual needs, while she, on the other hand, was always satisfying his.
They must have heard me walking by because he said “Shhhhhhhh...”
Too bad. I definitely wanted to hear more.
I made my way toward a tiny and obscure forested park where a spring converges with a creek and where I often go for relief from the commotion of the city. It's not the ocean, but it's all I have right now.
A new battered RV was parked there on the street. A man in pajamas was walking his dog outside the rig. I emerged from the park and beheld the green SUV that houses a man and his dog. He hadn't yet left for work or whatever he did all day. He always leaves in the morning and then returns in the afternoon.
I walked toward home and passed a a black Camaro parked on a street that ran parallel to the creek. I saw a hole hacked through the willows down to the bank of the springs. I saw a camp and a man sleeping there.