Open House

There’s a hot sultry feeling today of summertime. You can smell it in the lemon flowers and jasmine sweetening the breeze. I feel well today finally after four days of suffering full-on flu symptoms. Relaxing on my front porch, I can breathe more evenly. There’s nothing in particular that I need to attend to. I can just take it all in.

“You always do that,”  my neighbor friend informs me. Her bright blue house faces ours. She is way too observant at times. She often conjectures about our comings and goings, as we do about hers. I love so much though. She gives me plants all the time – seedlings of lettuce, cucumber, tomato and various medicinal flowers and herbs. And sometimes I kill them so I don’t feel like I deserve them. But she keeps giving me them. She also tells me about various political protests and campaigns that she knows that I want to support.  But like I said, she is way too observant that it stings sometimes. But this observation is accurate. “You always do that,” she says. “You go really hard and then you burn out.”

“I’m getting better at bouncing back though,” I say.  And it’s true. I don’t share this out loud, but I suspect that since I’m now what we call middle age,  I’m starting to settle into a larger purpose or vision. And as a result, I feel calmer and more focused in my life pursuits than ever before.

Next door to my neighbor friend’s place, Pacific Union is holding an open house. The homes in our neighborhood were built a hundred years ago and the neighbor friend tells us that they weren’t allowed to build them exactly the same. The one next door to her, the one that is for sale, is identical except that it has a differently shaped facade, ceramic shingles over the garage and has not been painted cobalt blue.

A skinny man in an A’s cap and a shih tzu on his shoulder rolls through the stop sign in a Honda. The neighbor girls skip around the corner. The regulars come by with their dogs big and small.

Later in the afternoon, I will visit my friend’s open studio art show at her place around the corner. She paints whimsical, imaginative, haunting, multi-layered canvases of colors, shapes, words, birds, hearts, and articles of articles of clothing, including a lot of dresses. I’m in awe of her painting and her dedication. Because of these particular neighbors and the neighbors, I’m bound to meet, I love living where we live.

Cars are starting to float through. They are all shiny and newish cars since those are the people who can afford to buy houses in Oakland. I can see a woman getting out of her car with a black t-shirt with the words “Pilates” and “Peace” on the front. A couple exit a white suburban and amble up the steps and look around before they enter, taking a read of the neighborhood by the vibe right outside the front door.

My neighbor across the street greets me again to share a proud moment. When they staged the house next door to her, she tells me, they put some patio and chairs out in the back that faced straight towards her kitchen window. This resulted in an internal “Ah Hell No!” in her and she got to work. She built a decorative barrier with old wood and ceramics and sculpture to provide shelter and sanctuary from her future new neighbor’s life.  She invites me to come over later to peek.

My partner comes out and announces that he will be doing some sweeping because our front yard looks like shit and then comes out to sweep the dead leaves from the sidewalk.

And our house, compared to the others, kind of does look like shit.  I would like to say that we’ve spent more time on the backyard, but so far we’ve been fighting weeds for six years and growing a couple of vegetables given to us by the neighbor friend.

I look up the listing for the house across the street. It’s described as a gardener’s delight and a Spanish style home perched on a gentle upslope with pleasant treetop views. It says something about Bus 47, that rarely used commuter line to Fruitvale BART and a few more sentences about the potential for gardening.

More cars float in and dock and people hop out. A young family with two little kids, several more couples, some same-sex, some interracial.

What a paradox that people have to compete for a place to lay their head on this forsaken Earth. In such an abundant world, why shouldn’t people should have the right to a peaceful home? Why do thousands suffer in a state of homelessness in the midst of unfathomable wealth? In Oakland, entire neighborhoods have been rendered unrecognizable by micro craft breweries and fancy lunch shops. Black working class people, in particular, have been forced out of town by outrageous prices and the need to sell the family home to provide for the family. People don’t remember what was even there before since there a few around now who were there before.

Pretty soon there is a full-on parade of people walking up the steps. Women with infants strapped to them, little kids following behind. People observing, vibing, sniffing, smelling these new surroundings.

I’m sweating on the porch. I need to go back in the house to shower and get ready to go see the paintings, but I’m transfixed by this scene.

I dream about the new neighbors. Will they be cool? Will they become our friends? Will they share plants and stories and protest actions like my neighbor and I do? Will they bring art and creativity to the world like my friend around the corner or my other neighbor on the corner who organizes the Halloween festival every year? Will they hate this system enough to want to help change it?

I don’t know. But I will enjoy this open house from my porch today and dream.