JOURNAL / ESSAYS / NEW STORIES – No. 2036
Queen Anne Hill - Seattle, Washington
The last Sunday in August 2010

END OF SUMMER NOATS . . .

Even though it’s still August, when friends open casual conversation with, “Feels like fall . . .” summer is over. Word is out. That’s it. Done. Crossing the border into autumn is not a calendar event. It’s a state of being, a night on a slow moving train. You go to sleep in Spain and wake up in Scotland.
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Last Saturday’s edition of The Seattle Times featured a photograph of a European Cross spider on its front page. Orange and tan and black, with white spots on its back in the shape of a cross. Huge. I could barely cover the image with my hand. (I wonder if this affected newspaper sales.)

“Oh, No, not spiders again.” Yes. But I’ll get this over with quickly.
It’s a matter of being faithful to facts and truth. There’s important news. Get this: “Almost everything you know and think about spiders is false.” That’s the message from Rod Crawford, curator of arachnids at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington in Seattle.

The article in the Times referred the reader to Crawford’s web site: http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/spidermyth
I looked it up. Read it. I thought I knew a lot, but I was dumb-founded about how wrong or at least misinformed I’ve been about spiders.

I’ll stop there. But will add that when you read the site and report an amazing fact to a member of your family they will say they don’t believe you and you can insist they can go read the website themselves. Don’t be surprised if they still don’t believe it. Myths are still stronger than facts.
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Interim report: The Marathon is underway - so far I’ve run the length of one city block - 110 yards - five days in a row. 550 yards - more than a quarter of a mile. So what? Well, it’s a beginning. I’m running in circles in my own neighborhood - like starting at the center of a labyrinth and moving in an ever-widening path. I have the course marked out on a Google Map. Wearing the rabbit suit while running proved to be a hassle, so I’ll save it for crossing the finish line. How’s my time? Slow. But I have a year and a day to go - or actually 360 days . . .
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My search for Players is ongoing.
Definition of a Player, as it appeared in my last book of essays: Persons with enough nimbleness of mind to accept a surprise invitation to jump into a quick game of imagination. People with a loosey-goosey sense of mischief. Players are also Laughers. You can’t tell the Players by the way they appear on the outside.

Example: A construction crew is working their way through my neighborhood remodeling street corners to accommodate the disabled or aged or lazy. The crew demolishes the existing high curb and replaces it with a sloping ramp. The work involves nine men, three trucks, and a large back hoe equipped as a jackhammer. It also involves two shovels manned by two Hispanics who do the more delicate digging.

While out on my marathon quest I have crossed their worksites several times and got a friendly response to my passing “Good morning.” Two days ago I stopped and asked the shovelers if the rumor was true - that they were really digging for gold?

Big smile. “Yes, it is true,” one replied. He laughed. A Player.
“Have you found any?”
“Yes, but I can’t talk about it.”
He gestured with his eyes toward the nearby supervisor.

Yesterday I saw shovelers again - just the two of them at work a block away from the main big action, where the backhoe was tearing up concrete and the peaceful silence of a Saturday morning at the same time.

“Still digging for gold?”
“Yes, a lot. But we don’t want them to know.” He laughed. Still a Player.
He gestured with his head at the seven men working down the street.
“We are going to keep it all ourselves,” said his companion. Another Player.
“What are you going to do with it,” I asked.

(Pause a moment - what did they answer? You’ll never guess. I didn’t.)
“We’ve been talking about it.”
“We want to buy an elephant.”
“What? An elephant?”
“Just for fun - to take to parties and give rides to our friends.”
“If you’ve got as much gold as we have you can do anything.”
“And we thought it would be great when our friends asked where the hell did you get an elephant and we told them we had found gold digging around street corners . . . it’s America!”
They laughed and laughed.

Well, why not?
I told them I lived just down the street and when they got the elephant to come by and give me a ride and they said they would and that, I believe.
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Walking down Queen Anne Avenue this morning, I passed two women sitting on a bench waiting for a bus. This bit of conversation floated up as I walked by: “I wonder if Jesus ever had dreams and what they were.”
Players? Maybe, maybe not. By the time I decided to go back and invite myself into their conversation there bus had come.
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I’ll leave you with that. It’s time for me to get dressed and go to La Garua, the weekly tango milonga at the Polish Hall on Capitol Hill.
It’s cloudy and cool - a suit and tie evening.
It feels like fall . . .

Next week I will get back to serious writing.
Promise.