Picture Trash

Where did this picture trash come from? Who are these smiling people, artfully captured on high contrast black-and-white polaroids, and how did they end up in a crumpled stash in my pockets? No one gave them to me; I pulled them out while reaching for my keys in the morning.

There was a fire dancer at someone’s house in Oakland. In between rounds of playing cornhole, she lit two blocks on fire, suspended them on ropes, and started swinging them around above her head. Everyone cheered. Upstairs, a drum circle formed spontaneously, and juicy slabs of fresh watermelon and homemade brownies were handed out. Em and Lish found a bobby helmet and crown, and took turns wearing each, while Hawi started banging on a large djembe with feverish intensity. A large Moroccan guy, built like a bear, joined in and they played intently off each other’s rhythms and body language, not exchanging a spoken word. Tap-tap-tap from Hawi, and then the bearlike Moroccan would respond with three beefy pounds on the drumhead of a comically small hand drum. Music by strangers, and strange percussive rhythms that start off dissonant and childlike, but eventually melt seamlessly into a lilting beat. Unbroken eye contact. And Em and Lish with the watermelon slices and bobby hat and crown, in somebody’s living room (who?) in Oakland, California, with the cornhole setup in the lawn and the fire dancer in the yard. And all the smiling people with interesting stories from places oh-not-so-far-from-here or little towns across the country, or like Em, a South Dakota country girl willfully transplanted into this bewildering suburban stew of happy, beautiful, open people.

And then we’re trudging through the nicest parts of Oakland, over manicured lawns and past white mailboxes with little red flags, to Erica’s house. Who is Erica? Nobody seems to know, but I think she’s Em’s friend, part of the group at least, definitely on the bus. We will be tasting Brazilian liquers, at 2 a.m., which seems entirely like the correct thing to do given the circumstances. Erica’s studio is mystifying and beautiful, with ceilings a tad higher than six feet, a handful of cubic feet worth of floor space crammed full of signs of life, colorful books with jackets in primary colors on hand-painted shelves, and exotic maps, a piano somehow, and a dog, and—us. Fascinating stories by Erica, about living in Brazil in her 20s as an American immigrant, indignant at the occasional racism an American must face in southern Brazil, stories punctuated by crisp ice-knuckled shooters of thick, syrupy liquer that slither across the palate like a corn snake. I play frisbee with the dog inside her studio, which seems to please the dog immensely. And we’re off again, this time to Em and Lish’s place, where their three other roommates gather in the yard around a fire, and Em plays guitar and sings raspy Janis Joplin songs out loud at four in the morning.

Snippets of random conversations, from many nights, and the mystifying picture trash in my pocket. So many new connections grow in this abundant social fabric: tenuous, serendipitous, totally random, carefully orchestrated, eagerly awaited, the congruence of chance and a general disposition towards smiling faces. Alejandra is my friend’s new girlfriend, and I meet her for the first time at Blackbird on Market. She’s going to Jose’s house party, and we’re welcome to come along, Jose would be happy to have us. Who is Jose? It seems irrelevant. But we’ll take the ingredients for our signature cocktail anyway: the good tequila, Grand Marnier, and grapefruit juice, because it’s his birthday. There are perhaps two dozen people spread out across two yards and a kitchen. Later, I find a bottle of absinthe and make drinks for everyone, sugar on absinthe spoon, trickling water, the louche, passing on the lore I learned ten years ago from a professor of writing. Someone has heard I work with zebras. Why, yessir, they most certainly do live in harems. There is polite drunken conversation about nihilism. An attractive blonde in her mid 30s, with long curly hair and a vaguely southern accent, tells me about her job as a project manager for web designers. Well, shee-ut, I gotta protect my team like a mama bear, y’know?, when people come yell at ‘em. I gotta tell ‘em, well honey, don’t you worry, you just come tell me what they said.

And it seems just as quickly, we’re waving goodbye to a girl with an extremely sunburned face (does she live here?), and Jose’s birthday has been a resounding success. And I still have the picture trash in my pocket, the smiling faces of strangers in flashes of memories and anonymous recollections of absurdities.