hassle city

been one of those days-and-a-half

missed freeway turns
rude traffic and loud planes
missed meet-up
unfriendly doorman
stove burner hardly works
power strip broken
$300 first estimate on a needed tune up
money's flying out of the wallet
and no work until next week

chair-bound grandma pissed off the nurse and had no one else to turn to in NY
so flew out here and moved in with the kids so now everyone's overcrowded and miserable
consoling themselves on personal laptops and by being away from the house
where her yap dog chihuahua barks ceaselessly at me when I try to visit

and if one doesn't shower after swimming in the ocean
things get itchy very fast

_____

furthermore

I continue to encounter the great divide in OB
for I apparently stand upon it:
too straight for the raggedy hippies
too weird for the uppity straights

don't know what happened to all those smiling friendly females I imagined I saw
or my own resourcefulness for that matter

but amidst all this richness
lemon trees and feral parrots

I've become aware of a certain attitude
a privileged whiteness I had forgotten about
dominant and willful and separating

and this who I am not
is ironically helping me orient again

to who I am