Spectating
A man emerged from a 30-year-old SUV that was dented and primered as if purposed for an art installation.
His domicile was parked next to a 40-year-old white-washed Dolphin RV. This Dolphin definitely wasn't swimming anywhere anymore.
The man walked to a park across the street. He smoked a cigarette. He wore a ball cap.
He stood at the edge of the park but wouldn't enter. He began an animated and angry conversation with an oak tree or invisible demon.
Not far away, baseball players warmed up for a game. Middle aged-men stretched out for a soccer match.
I watched this scene sitting in the bleachers of a softball field.
Is it wrong for me to sit regularly in these bleachers, in quasi stealth, and observe this encampment, document and synthesize my observations? That I am sitting on bleachers constructed for the purpose of seating spectators to watch a game feels somewhat ironical, But then again, maybe the bleachers have discovered new purpose by seating spectators for the ongoing unraveling of American life.
It dawns on me this morning that if I want a better view, I should get off my ass and move the bleachers to face the encampment and thus dispense with the sly peeks and glimpses, the actions of a journalistic coward, I think, but perhaps not a novelist. I consider doing that, but look down and see the bleachers are bolted to a concrete slab.
Snippets of the man's conversation drifted my way. Something about a “bitch” and “he was a good man” and “I've been doing this for three years now.”
Doing what? This?
The man walked away from the park and stood near large mounds of steaming, processed, woody debris.
I look at the large mounds of bark dust and chips, recycled from fallen and pruned trees and branches, buzzed through grinding metal of a chipper for order, discipline and utility. Is that a metaphor for what's happening to the residents of the encampment? They've fallen or been pruned and need to get chopped and chipped up for mulch? Recycled for what?
The wooden mulch will enrich the park's ecology, and definitely decorate it. The potential for human mulch? Not so much. I suspect this mulch, a unique home-grown American mulch, may better serve as a warning for the sluggards, the non conformists, the apostates, the idlers. Work! The chipper is coming for you. Shit, it's already spit most of you clean through! Doesn't it feel good being a warning? How do you dig being the tawdry decoration for the debasing party that is degrading capitalism? That wooden and cloth Santa Claus standing on the roof of an RV called The Midas is a nice touch. How do you like being the subject of a writer sitting on a bleacher taking all your degradation in like he's watching a softball game?
The man started the conversation again. He ramped up his gesticulating.
A woman jogged by. A woman walked through listening to a podcast about true crime. Men walked their dogs past and chatted. A dad pushed a baby stroller through. The mulch kept steaming. Forces were breaking things down within it. Unseen forces of heat and pressure and moisture.