Shuffle

The hazy days of Summer have begun to foreshadow the turning of leaves and crisp Autumn mornings, and I’m wondering where I can go to get my money back on the Summer that pretty much wasn’t. Across the country we had wildfires and record-breaking heat. But in Oregon the sky was filled with barges of black-bellied thunderheads scudding across jigsaw patches of cerulean brilliance. All throughout July it was as likely as not to rain, as the temperature swung in huge arcs from the fifties to the eighties on any given day. Today the humidity feels like a threat as my decade old Doc Martins carry me once more through the hard-scrabble neighborhood I call home. Broken macadam and cracked pavement meet the occasional gravel side road, and we’re hemmed in by a patchwork of bars and factories. But along the miles of cyclone fencing grow dense thickets of wild Oregon roses, whose lush, downy petals are the finest velvet known and whose scent mixes with all the overgrown honeysuckle on the foreclosed crackerboxes to perfume the air with surprising opulence. A maze of contradictions         

I’ve logged hundreds of miles now along the train tracks and through the neighborhoods, having acquired a fondness for these outings during the interminable days of layoffs and underemployment during this Great Recession. Empty businesses, boarded up homes and everything for lease on the one hand, and barbecues and block parties on the other, as I pass through it all like a tourist on the way to nowhere in particular. My iPod is the only company I keep as it serenades and screams in equal measure. From Sinatra to Metallica, The Beatles to Berlioz, Groove Armada, Pink Floyd, The Stone Roses, Gov’t Mule, Zeppelin, Social D, Gaslight Anthem, Joss Stone and on and on it revolves endlessly, as varied a soundtrack as the pastiche of lives all around me that I will never know anything about.

It’s a meditation of sorts, as my feet carry me forward, my eyes roaming over everything. The music and the constant metronome of my footfalls contrive to empty out my mind, until my autopilot body begins to feel like a vehicle that my soul has hitched a ride in for a while. This emptying is about the only thing that keeps me sane from all the stress and demands of running my business. This summer was the busiest and most stressful season of my entire career, but also the most successful. By a damn sight. I guess that’s the trade-off. I prefer these problems to the serene boredom of sitting home waiting for the phone to ring while I wonder what miracle will see me through another month.

Rolling along the tracks like some hobo chasing trains, I’ve found the evidence of unlikely lives going on all around me. Discarded food containers, used condoms, and random skeletal remains of what I hope are small animals. A haze of sweet smelling carcinogens wafts off of a dozen grills; brauts, burgers and dogs heralding the tail end of another fleeting summer slipped through our fingers. Some days I’m out for a half hour, sometimes it’s two hours, depending on where my feet and the casual serendipity of the shuffle function of my iPod take me.

The random cast of characters that cross my path is a diverse collage. I share knowing nods of acknowledgement with the regulars: smokers on their porches and old men resting their bones; roving phalanxes of teenagers looking for mischief. I don’t envy them the confusing tension between trying desperately to fit in and stand out at the same time. I’m both delighted and concerned by how many little kids I come across who are so friendly and outgoing. It brightens my day, to be sure, but I wonder why more parents haven’t taught their kids to be wary of strangers. Since I almost always head out straight after work, I’m usually looking more than a little outré; sweaty and covered in sawdust, caulk, paint or drywall mud. Not someone you’d want your kids to cozy up to necessarily. Still, maybe it’s better for the world if less of us learn to fear at so young an age. 

By far my favorite new friend is Charlie, the Pit-Boxer mix who chases me along the length of the chain link fence that marks the Southern edge of his Empire. He galumphs along like the biggest goombah, until I stop to pet him. He bounds up and down like Tigger, with the most exuberance I’ve ever seen. If we could bottle that energy all our problems would be over. No matter how many different paths I trace through this blue-collar burg, I make sure that I begin and end my loops past his house, because days that include a visit with Charlie are better than the ones that don’t.

Most cycles through the area are fairly uneventful, but others are filled with the sublime subtleties that almost make life seem worth living. A couple of days ago a little blonde girl with her “Hello Kitty” bike helmet on came charging down the driveway on her training wheels to show off the new head-gear, complete with little pointy cat ears on top. An hour later, a gaggle of teenage girls gave me a handful of freshly picked lawn daisies, and scurried away giggling like I’d been the butt of some kind of joke. It’s alright with me if I was.

On another occasion, a couple of toothless meth-heads stopped me for few minutes of conversation along the tracks. Always willing to roll with whatever life presents me, I engaged them affably enough. After a minute or two of perfunctory observations on the weird weather, apropos of nothing Nicole and Chris began to extoll the virtues of White Supremacy. Turns out I have my Docs laced in a pattern favored by the Skinheads that lead them to believe I shared their views on the dangers of racial impurity. After a minute or two of sharing instead the gospel of “the content of our character”, I bid them adieu and headed up the tracks marveling at the idea that the way I had laced my shoes was yet another layer of meaning and complexity grafted onto a world that needs no more of that nonsense. I suppose that if the idea had occurred to them that their homeless drug addiction was evidence of anything but their supremacy, they wouldn’t be homeless drug addicts to begin with.

There must be someone else in this anonymous mass huddled along the tracks who hears that keening whistle as the late train pull through town, the asshole engineer laying on the horn for the entire ten block length of my neighborhood. Rumor has it his ex-wife lives in this area. Probably bullshit, but I like to believe it all the same. The wail of that engine has never woken me once. I snore like a tasered bear, and sleep the untroubled sleep of the righteous, which is a laugh, but there it is. But when I’m awake to hear it, as I so often am, it sounds like a mournful song to me. The solitary lullaby of a midnight train to anywhere.

Once or twice I’ve even gotten up to shuffle through a short loop around the neighborhood, following that siren song. But only along the well-lit paths, feeling less bold at the witching hour than in the daylight. After all, I’m only mostly sure those bones weren’t human.

My trusty iPod shuffles on:

Bring me an angel

Bring me the ghost that I was,

That I was, that I am

And I will wash it away.