Shock

I got a shock plugging the hair dryer in this afternoon. It’s such an odd feeling, that sudden weird oscillation of current in my fingers, charged particles mistaking me for a utility. I’d just showered and wanted to dry my hair before putting on my hat and filling a bag with peanuts and walking up the street to feed Louise, the crippled crow I’ve been feeding on and off for nearly three years. She knows both me and R but never comes too close. Things would work out much better if she came close, as she has a tough time competing with all the other crows. She would learn that if she got a peanut or two by coming close when the others were still wary she wouldn’t have to compete. She could grab the peanuts and fly off to enjoy them in peace. When she’s on the ground she has to hop around on one good leg while the other dangles uselessly. Crows get very aggressive and nasty around a handful of tossed peanuts. They have bad tempers. A big crow once lost his temper right in front of us, wings outstretched, beak wide open, giving us a staccato stream of coarse well understood caws. I suspect animals have languages far richer than imagined. Whales and dolphins absolutely, but I’d like to hear what a cat is thinking, their behavior being far more complex and irrational than dogs. I’d be happy to know what our cat is thinking when she begs for food already in her dish. I remember getting shocked once before, when I was perched high on a stepladder in a building in downtown San José, California. I was installing office lights for a company that bought aged property, fixed it up, and opened its doors for commerce. It was August, 1972. And since it was summer I was on break from classes at San José State where I was enrolled as an English major. I was taking the opportunity to make some much needed money. My first ex-wife and I had recently returned from traveling in Europe, chiefly France. I was surrounded by a lot of workmen, electricians, carpenters, plumbers, painters, carpet layers and welders all busily employed at one of the many offices undergoing an intensive remodel. It was common to hear them joking about what a loser George McGovern was. They hated him. I tried to keep as invisible as I could and felt – as I have my entire life – completely alien. The number one song was “Alone Again, Naturally,” by Gilbert O’Sullivan. The Beatles had broken up and already felt long gone and a part of history. I’d seen the Beatles dressed up as mannikins in a London department store window display dressed in their early slim fit suits and Chelsea boots. It gave me a feeling of nostalgia. How funny it is to think of feeling nostalgic in 1972. Now I get nostalgic over the year 1992. Seattle still had most of its movie theatres, bookstores still sold books, there were numerous small restaurants to choose from, and nowhere did you have to wear a mask or show documented proof that you’ve been vaccinated. Most of the homeless were located in a small park downtown. The destitute wandering the streets had grown dramatically since about 1980, but it would’ve been unusual to see a tent set up indefinitely in a city park or city sidewalk. Now the encampments are everywhere, and huge, bearing a scary resemblance to the encampment in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 911. One of the larger encampments, near Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, has taken over the area where we used to enjoy Wooden O’s Shakespeare in the Park series. I wonder if they’re still performing there. It would be interesting, indeed, to watch As You Like It among a bedraggled group of economic exiles.