Envy of the Nation

Moved to the ghetto that is West Oakland last week.
Walking the neighborhood, getting its bearing, see prostitutes on a whole other level enter the street ready to work, displaying a genuine excitement about it even. Friday night, walking by one of the many tenement-apartment buildings hear the guttural howl of a woman/child/animal over and over, deep, torturous. And walk on by. Three raccoons crawl out of a gutter and amble single-file diagonally across the street, regard my corner-self briefly, change direction slightly, and climb one by one the fence I'm leaning against, pulling their hulking bodies arm over arm up and over, lumbering, waddling to a tree nearby where they commence their characteristic, inexplicable raccoon tree-fighting, howling.

Bright sunny, glorious Sunday morning ... a guy with long dreadlocks, sweeping a wasteland of a courtyard says hi as I walk down the middle of the street. As I'm just passed him, he says, "We're the envy of the nation." And I turn, ask, confused, "What do you mean?" He smiles and points to the sky, the sun gloriously, coolly shining. "We so are. It's glorious."

Walking down the middle of the street a day earlier, one of the many worn-out shopping-cart-pushing ghosts creaking down the sidewalk toward me. I usually avoid eye contact, but looked at him a second. And he hollered out, good-humoredly, "Looks like you got a good bench," as he benched pressed his arms in front of him. He repeated it, "Looks like you got a good bench," as he saw my incomprehending, disbelieving expression. I immediately smiled (at the humor of him overwhelmed enough by my image to say it, not by it itself); draped across my chest, over a fitting v-neck t-shirt was the broad leather band of a satchel. I'm still in shape from years as a work-outer and must have looked ripped. No doubt!