You can tell it’s a chilly morning in Santa Monica. Pedestrians with hooded sweatshirts are
actually wearing their hoods up.
How chilly was it? See: Previous paragraph. I fear I may have entered an inescapable
loop.
Nope. I’m out.
I do not carry a thermometer with me. But my guesstimation from forty years of West
Coast habitation is that it was in the mid-fifties.
But with a breeze.
I know I can’t possibly persuade residents East and North of
here that that’s cold. But it felt cold
to me. Possibly the consequence of forty years of
West Coast habitation. Relocated to the
“Temperate Zone”, your body no longer tolerates frigid temperatures.
Or even the mid-fifties with a breeze.
Experiencing close-to-winter weather conditions, it is
necessary to make a crucial determination before leaving the house:
Which jacket should I put on?
I have three jackets, available for varying degrees of
coldification. I decide, as my middle-of-the-road
temperament decrees – on a fully lined cotton windbreaker. I believe that will be sufficient. I step outside, discovering almost
immediately..
That I am wrong.
It is frickin’ freezing!
And, as is also my
temperament, being now fifty feet away from my house, I am too stubborn to
return home and switch to the black leather “Bomber Jacket” more appropriate
for the blustery conditions I am required to endure.
I scrunch my body together “tortoise-like” – shoulders
hunched, head retracted and pointed downward – to preserve “body heat”, contravening
my “Horse Doctor’s” * directions – * a bodywork specialist who works three days
a week on people and three days a week on horses – to lift up my ribcage. I proceed to my destination, the Groundwork Coffee Emporium, contorted
like like a pretzel.
There is one advantage to walking scrunched up with your
head pointed down. You see stuff you
would never see with your head up. (Including inadvertently dropped coinage.)
Here’s what I saw on the sidewalk during my Thursday morning
walk.
A green-printed announcement proclaiming,
“I sold hemp.”
Which I did not understand.
I get “I sell hemp.” with accompanying “Contact Information.” If you wanted to, you could contact those
people and procure hemp. But…
“I sold hemp”?
Why would they write that? And by the way, when did they do it? I walk around that area all the time; I have never
seen anyone writing anything! Do they do it l at night? How do they see anything? Do they have
to sit on the sidewalk? Or is it
“Stencil-On-A-Stick?”
Are some of the questions that cross my mind, the most important one being, “Why did they do
it?”
Perhaps they’re in some kind of bizarre “Twelve-Step”
program requiring “addicts” to make confessions on sidewalks. Which is possible, although strange.
“Couldn’t I just tell
people?”
“People forget. You
stencil ‘I sold hemp’ on a sidewalk and it stays
there till they resurface.”
I continue to turn this curious mystery over in my mind, till
I discover the next sidewalk
decoration.
I am confronted by a two-foot image of a longhaired man, a
bandanna over his face, his eyes masked by impenetrable sunglasses and a
slung-low black fedora, under which are the words,
“You Love The Man.”
This message, I believe, would be more meaningful had I had any
idea who “The Man” was.
The third announcement was considerably angrier. With apologies for the language – I did not
make it up, I just read it off the sidewalk – the neatly printed instruction
said,
“Fuck the phone. Look up!”
Two questions come to mind here.
If you see a person walking towards you paying no attention
to where they are going, do you really need them to “Look up”? Or do you simply step out of their way?
Question Two:
If you write this on the sidewalk, are you not defeating the
purpose of your message by, in order to read it, requiring people to look down?
Three interesting messages.
And I’d have missed all of them, had I lifted my ribcage and looked
straight ahead.
Having appreciated my surprising “Walk-and-Read”, I finally
reached Groundwork, procured my
traditional “Venice Blend” coffee, and I headed back home.
On my return sojourn, re-visiting the three announcements –
now upside-down on the sidewalk – a blond “Surfer Dude” loped by headed for the
beach, wearing a half pulled-on “wet suit”, a t-shirt, and he was barefoot.
I unzipped my windbreaker.
It was apparently warming up.
2 comments:
Woody no doubt, sold hemp. Give him a call!
wow niceeeee artikel...
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