On weekdays I like to rise at around 5:30 to feed the cats, meditate, and get the day going. I need no alarm clock; we live near the highway, and in the dawn my sleeping brain monitors the growing roar of the morning traffic until it hears the habitual noise level for 5:30 am. Then it wakes me.

There are more precise clocks, but this one works well enough. It fails me on weekends and holidays, when traffic is light and there is no commute, or a later one. But those are not days when I care to rise early. So I count this as no flaw.

And I have slept late for the past two weeks. Rhumba and I took the time off, and much of Santa Cruz took it with us; the university closed, the schools closed, and many businesses closed. Construction projects shut down or slowed.

This is not a place that people come to on the holidays. It’s a place that they leave. The roar of the morning commute at 5:30 softens to a purr, and my brain does not recognize the time. It lets me sleep.

Time is funny. It is something that we all agree to measure in certain ways. But unless we measure it constantly, it gets away from us. I wonder if subjective time is the only time that’s actually natural, and if the precision of hours, minutes and seconds is actually unnatural, just a construct of accountants and scientists. Get us off the treadmill of our daily schedule, and the hours, seconds, and even days fall away.

Last Friday afternoon I dropped Rhumba at a coffee house to sketch and drink Assam tea while I went to the gym to stagger through a few exercises. It’s a coffee house that we visit often; Rhumba even belongs to a knitting group that meets there Saturdays.

When I returned to the coffee house I found Rhumba sitting at the big common table with Gwynn, a friend of hers and a fellow knitter. Gwynn was, in fact, knitting as I came in.

“So far we’re the only two who’ve show up for knitting,” Gwynn told me. She’d bought cookies for the crowd. That gave me pause; the knitting group meets on Saturday, but…

“Isn’t it Friday?” I asked the two of them. They assured me it was not; even Rhumba, who had not expected to find the knitters there, but naturally assumed that Gwynn knew what she was talking about.

“No, it’s Saturday,” Gwynn said. “I know because I have some place I have to be tomorrow.” It was a long trip, 100 miles or more to get to a gig. Gwynn’s a pianist and music teacher.

Did I really, I thought, lose a day of blessed vacation in some mental haze? I was willing to accept the idea, if a bit sadly. No use getting worked up; I did have the day, even if I didn’t remember it. “Mental haze” is a fairly common state for me.

But shouldn’t all days be at least slightly memorable? I felt cheated; I needed proof.

The middle of the table held the usual drift of used newspapers that one finds in coffee houses. I picked one up. Its date was Friday.

Old newspapers can hang around for days, though; no proof there. So I accosted a young man at the milk-and-sugar station. “Do you know what day it is?” I asked him. “Is it Friday, or Saturday?”

His eyes crossed slightly, and I could hear the wheels go ’round in his head. “Friday,” he said finally. “I think. January 1 was on a Wednesday, and i calculated forward from that. So it’s Friday. I think.”

“Is today Friday, or Saturday?” I asked the two baristas behind the counter. They looked at each other and thought. Neither had the answer off the top of their heads.

“Friday, maybe?” the woman offered hesitantly.

“Probably Friday,” the man said after a second.

“Yes, Friday,” they finally said, more or less in unison. With some difficulty, a space/time consensus had been achieved.

I returned to the common table. “It’s Friday,” I told Rhumba and Gwynn. “They all say so. I got my Friday back.”

“I don’t know how I got to think it was Saturday,” Gwynn said. I’d saved her an hundred-mile trip to Vallejo on the wrong day.

But I know what happened. Gwynn teaches music; but she’d cancelled all her lessons for the past two weeks because so many of her students would be out of town. The young man at the coffee station was likely a student, off his normal schedule because the schools were closed. Even the baristas may have been working different schedules to fill in for workers who’d left town.

We’d all cut loose from our routines. And thus from time itself: at least the time-card and class-schedule version of time.

I have no doubt that civilization, or most of it, could run well enough with a loose sense of time. But then it would be harder to know who should be paid how much for a precisely-measured period of service. Or how to pack the maximum number of patients into a precisely scheduled orthodontist’s day. I’m seeing one tomorrow; he wants me there at 10 am sharp with paperwork in hand. Hup hip hup. Time’s a wasting. Time is money.

Actually, time is life, and our means of measuring it is an artifact of civilization. A hundred and fifty years ago, few people knew precisely what time it was, or always even what day it was. Or needed to. The fact that we need to know now: that’s not progress. The knowing is not for our benefit. It is a means of control by which our services can be bought, sold, and measured in a standardized way. Our services: and the moments of our all-too-finite lives.

I could spend more time on these thoughts, but it’s late, and Rhumba wants to get to bed on time, so that we can get up in the morning at a reasonable hour and make a good breakfast. Before we get to work precisely at 8 o’clock.

I’m giving in. No rebellion from me tonight. And in the morning the sound of traffic at 5:30 will wake me, if the hungry cats do not get to me first. They are faithful timekeepers, if not very precise; they run on the stomach clock. And it is almost always fast.

When American settlers got to Northern California 160 years ago or so, they reported that the skies were full of birds. You couldn’t look up, anywhere or anytime, and not see wings in the skies, especially in the wetlands along the coasts and bays.

A hundred and fifty years of guns, pesticides, and urbanization took care of the birds and most of the wetlands. The birds are still there, but you will not look up at any time or place and see, always, wings in the sky.

Until this year in Santa Cruz, along the coast. The birds were back — in force. Vast formations of pelicans moved across the sky like bomber wings from some grainy wartime film of airstrikes on Occupied Europe.

Imagine if you will a thousand flying Thanksgiving turkeys with eight-foot wingspans moving through the air toward you in lop-sided “v” formations. From as far away as the eye can see. I say “a thousand,” only because a thousand passed my seat on the beach. In ten minutes. And though I stopped counting, they kept coming.

And not just pelicans: clouds of snake-necked cormorants, flights of exotic gulls from far away lands. And, in the water, several hundred humpback whales churning the sea as they breached and dove in unprecedented number. Attending them were hundreds of sea lions – essentially, 600-pound sea-going bears that hunt in packs.

They look sort of cuddly. From a distance. With the long lens, you see the fangs.

On the harbor, pelicans, gulls, cormorants, and even egrets mingled and screamed together in one gigantic avian block party. They filled the rocks. They filled the harbor. They filled the skies. I’ve never seen anything like it. Nobody had.

And finally, after all the rest, came the Germans.

I can’t know precisely how many Germans visited Santa Cruz in October. But for a few weeks you couldn’t walk down Pacific Avenue or enter any restaurant or business of note without the sound of Deutsch drifting into your ears.

Strange circumstances brought the Deutsche to Santa Cruz. Yosemite National Monument, one of the scenic wonders of the western world, closed its gates in early October thanks to the temporary shutdown of our federal government by a dysfunctional political class. Thousands of overseas visitors were left forlornly waving their tickets at the locked gates – metaphorically, at least. A great many of them were Deutsche, or Deutsch-speakers.

The Deutsche spread out over Central California looking for sights or activities that might salvage their carefully-planned vacations. Not a few of them were drawn to the Santa Cruz area by promises of spectacular whale-watching. They crowded the tourist boats that regularly plowed through pods of 30, 40, or 50 giant humpback hanging close offshore. When Yosemite’s been wrenched from your grasp, a slow cruise through a flock of prehistoric sea monsters is no mean consolation prize.

And what did all this? Why did all this happen? What brought ten times the normal number of pelicans, the sea lion invasion, the foreign gulls, the pods of forty-ton whales? And the dolphins and killer whales that I didn’t even get around to mentioning?

An anchovy. A small silver fish did all this: him and a billion of his close, personal friends.

This year the Monterey Bay experienced anchovy runs of unprecedented size. Nobody knows why. Just that, as far as the marine mammals and sea birds and predator fish were concerned, the bay was filled from end to end with small, silvery cocktail meatballs. And they just kept coming.

Some of the schools stretched for a mile or more. You could spot them by the massive, writhing cloud of birds that formed above them. At rapid intervals pelicans would drop from the sky like bombs on the fish below.

They’re shock-fishers, pelicans are, who stun their prey by the force of their bodies hitting the water from 50 feet up. And with the pelicans came the gulls, who fish from the water’s surface, but also specialize in stealing fish from pelicans. The fishing would be so good that some pelicans didn’t even bother to dive; they just fished from the surface.

Dive-fishing is a learned skill for pelicans, and many young ones starve before they get the hang of it. But none starved this year. Even the slowest had time to learn the ropes. With so many fish, they could not fail.

Anchovy tend to get stuck in the our harbor; they find their way in, and then don’t know how to leave. Thus you would see skirmish lines of sea lions running up and down the harbor to harvest the fish. I watched them do it for half an hour.

Out to sea, where you saw a herd of sea lions feeding you might see whales, also. When they’d had enough to eat, the sea lions amused themselves by herding anchovies into the mouths of the humpbacks, for fun. Humpbacks can eat two tons of anchovies a day. (I didn’t take the following picture.)

So all hail the humble anchovy, even if it is nothing more than nature’s taco chip to the birds and fish and mammals above it in the food chain. It did so much: bring the kingdoms of the sea together in one long festival of consumption; save the young pelicans; promote interspecies cooperation between whales and sea lions; make happy the dour German tourists and enrich the tour boat operators; and show we locals a spectacle of crowded seas and skies not seen in our lifetime.

As I write this, the party has ended; the anchovies moved on, and so have the whales and the surfeit of pelicans and migratory gulls and other birds. The young pelicans who grew up at a virtual buffet table of fish will now face more meager prospects, and many competitors; Mother Nature always bats last.

But in a nation where humans themselves increasingly live in uncertainty and need, it gave me deep pleasure to see the animals, at least, have a fine fat season of their own. Thanks to the humble anchovy.

So is the anchovy the fish of the year?

No.

The Alaskan artist and humorist Ray Troll, who loves fish above all things, likes to say “We are all fish.” He regards evolution and the ways of nature with a reverence that most people save for their gods. And he likes to make the point that humans are nothing more than fish that evolved to live on land. Our brains, backbones, guts, limbs, blood: all from our fishy ancestors. Just, modified by the evolution that Troll loves.

As a race, we are anchovy and predator in one. We are our own sustenance; we all produce, we all consume, and we all share, or should. We are the anchovies who feed the sea lions, and the sea lions who feed the whales. We can produce for ourselves a plenty that ten billion anchovies could not match.

And yet, these days it doesn’t work that way. There is more than enough, or can be; but it isn’t shared. A few big fish get bigger; the rest dwindle.

And it has gotten to the point where the Roman Catholic Church had to take a strong and uncompromising stand on world inequality.  This year the Roman church, which takes the fish as one of its oldest symbols, announced for the record that the rise and enshrinement of greed in our civilization is in fact a sin against God and a crime against humanity.

Pope Francis went public on the topic in November. Some excerpts:

“We have created new idols.The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose. The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare their imbalances and, above all, their lack of real concern for human beings; man is reduced to one of his needs alone: consumption.” And:

“I am interested only in helping those who are in thrall to an individualistic, indifferent and self-centered mentality to be freed from those unworthy chains and to attain a way of living and thinking which is more humane, noble and fruitful, and which will bring dignity to their presence on this earth.”

For this I declare Pope Francis, big fish and big fisherman rolled into one, the Fish of the Year. I’m not a perfect fan of any spiritual practice or religious sect; I capitalize the “c” for no church.  But this pope knows that we are the fish who must feed each other, and will say so. 

Many of us think this way; it seems obvious, a low bar to jump intellectually. But we are not world leaders in thrall, as the pope might say, to the idolatry of money. Of all the leaders, only the Pope will say it as it is and make the money face the morality. Because morality is what brings a balanced ecology in which all human fish can thrive. Even Ray Troll might agree.

And if for the time being the fish in the lead of that earth-girdling school of human anchovies is wearing a small red miter: so be it. Have a hopeful New Year. Swim well.

The other day, my wife Rhumba made a startling discovery: ordering a book from the local bookstore is now cheaper and more convenient that ordering it from Amazon.

This is not exactly a secret, and it’s not always true. But it does show that corporate “success” can come as much from working the system as from innovation.

For years Amazon, the online bookseller and now everything-else seller, has been wiping the floor with traditional bookstores, especially local independent bookstores. So many of them are gone now.

Yes, Amazon could offer discounts on most books. But Amazon could offer even better deals because it collected no sales tax; online sales were exempt from state taxes.

Of course, brick-and-mortar bookstores had to charge the tax, and they screamed. They screamed for years.

Amazon also co-opted brick-and-mortal bookstores as its own show-rooms. People could go to them, find  books they liked, and then go home and order them through Amazon instead.

Amazon even published a smart-phone app, Price Check, that scans the bar code of a book (or anything else) and then shows you Amazon’s price. You can order right then and there, while standing in the bookstore that actually showed you the physical book.

This is called parasitism. Amazon calls it good business. I agree that this is what passes for “good business” in America today, and increasingly everywhere else.

But as of this year, Amazon lost a couple of advantages. First, it now has to collect sales taxes for the states it sells in, like any other business. They fought it in court; they lost.

Then Amazon raised the limit on Super Saver Shipping. The Super Saver plan offered free shipping for any purchase over $25. Since many books cost $25 or more, it could make sense to order a single book, or two cheap ones, from Amazon; you’d get the Amazon discount, you’d pay no sales tax, and no shipping fee either.

In October, Amazon raised the free-shipping threshold to $35. Thirty-five bucks is more than the price of most books, and often more than the price of two or even three books. Which means that customers must now pay for shipping on most small Amazon orders. Shipping’s not cheap, either; it more than overwhelms the Amazon discount on most books.

Amazon counters that free shipping is available to all purchases. If you pay them $79 a year for “Amazon Prime” membership. Yeah right.

So when Rhumba saw how much Amazon would charge for shipping on the book she wanted, she went to our local independent bookstore instead and let them special-order the book for her; they’ve been after us to try it for years.

And the book came from the distributor in two days as promised, with no shipping charge. It was a better deal than Amazon could offer.

Mad with power, Rhumba ordered another book from the independent bookstore; she even ordered and paid for it online through the bookstore’s e-commerce site. This book was promised in seven to ten days, but arrived in four after all. I picked it up today. The bookstore is walking-distance. There are advantages to college towns.

So as far as books are concerned, who really needs Amazon – for books, anyway? At least, if your local bookstore still exists.

If it does, go there and try before you buy. Or even special-order a book that you will receive quickly and at competitive prices. And finally, hand your money to the nice people who actually built a place where you could come and look at books. Give the bookstores of America, especially your local independents, a fighting chance.

Yes, Amazon is much more than books these days.  But if its grip is loosening even a bit on its heritage business, how strong is that grip on all the new enterprises that it’s moving into?  The company’s barely making a profit. It might badly need the bucks it saves by charging more for shipping.

Oh, by the way: before going to your local bookstore, you might visit  Amazon.com and read reviews of some books that interest you – before buying them locally.

It’s just good business.

Down at St. Bob the Informal’s Presbymethertarian Church, Rhumba and I are not in the with “in” crowd. This is through no fault of the “in” crowd; they’d love to have us. There’s a choir to staff and fundraisers to run, endless church council meetings to sit through, work days to organize, and on and on.

The “in” crowd means well, but we stay on the sidelines. We lost our taste for church politics at our last church. You can pick up scars at a church as easily as on a battlefield; just not the kind that show. Or always heal.

So when St. Bob’s scheduled a Christmas service for people with scars, Rhumba and I found ourselves volunteering. Even though the scars were of a different sort than ours. Ever hear of Blue Christmas? Elvis is not involved, I guarantee.

Blue Christmas is a service for people who feel pain during the Christmas season: from personal or financial problems, from painful memories linked the holidays, or from endless other sources of distress. Christians are supposed to be joyous at Christmas. The traditional celebrations give no acknowledgement to those who can’t be. That’s what Blue Christmas is for: to make a space for expressing the pain.

The service took place at 3 PM a Sunday or two back; the congregation had already come and gone from the morning services. But this particular service was for Santa Cruz at large, and had been publicized as such.

We arrived early to set up and get briefed on our tasks. I ushered, Rhumba wrangled the Powerpoint hymn slides and media projector, and Pastor Biff was a calm and friendly presence in a black-and-gray ecclesiastical sport shirt and modest stole.

Mainly the “in” crowd wasn’t there. The driving force behind Blue Christmas was a woman parishioner who sometimes led a hymn or two at services and had sung in the praise band when we still had one. But she spoke movingly of loss and pain at the beginning of the service – from experience.  The she introduced a friend who also spoke of grief and loss, and sang a solo.

Fifteen or twenty people attended the service. Some alone, some in couples. You would see a man or woman slump over in their seat from time to time, and then the spouse – if there was one – would slip an arm around their shoulders.

A few of the worshipers were from St. Bob’s: a woman whose parents had died recently, and badly, after years of acute health problems, financial ruin, and despair. And another man whose story I don’t know, but who never seems at ease anywhere or at any time.

Pastor Biff invited the congregation to bring lighted candles to the altar and place them there in honor of their loss. I must admit that I hadn’t been clear on what precisely brought the people to Blue Christmas; throughout the service there’d been talk of pain and loss in general terms only. But many of the people also brought photographs with them to place on the altar with the candles, and I finally understood: they had lost loved ones, and felt the loss cruelly at Christmas time for whatever reason.

As the service drew to a close we sang a song while Pastor Biff laid healing hands on those who wanted them. Then there was a prayer, and then the worshipers repaired to the narthex where an absolutely stupendous spread of baked goods awaited. It was the gift of a cheerful, middle-aged man who’s widely acknowledged as the best baker at St. Bob’s. I don’t know his story; but I’m pretty sure that he raised a daughter to adulthood by himself. Presbymethertarians don’t ask.

And he was there, serving his own goods. He recommended to me his home-made apricot-jalapeno butter with cream cheese on a slice of fruit bread. It set fire to the back of my mouth. But in a good way.

I’m no psychiatrist, but it seemed to me that Blue Christmas had done its job. The worshipers chatted with Pastor Biff and the other service participants, and with each other. Smiles were evident; the mood, relaxed and friendly. For the time being, at least, they seemed at peace. And just happy to be there, talking.

I have little to say to people that I don’t know. So after too much fruit bread and too many chocolate-dipped tollhouse cookies, I walked back into the empty church for a little quiet. From curiosity, I climbed the altar and looked at the pictures the worshipers had left behind, seven of them.

Six of them were of children. Sometimes I wonder how people can bear the grief they hold.

But I guess that’s why there’s church — as well as spiritual teachers, social workers, and psychologists. In the end what really matters is that someone makes a safe space where you can acknowledge your pain. With a slice of fruit bread, offered in all compassion.

Merry Christmas to all! But if you don’t feel merry – remember that you’re not alone.

I spent the past week crafting a long post about an important issue that I have first-hand knowledge of.  I think it’s  good.

Unfortunately, I can’t post it here.  There could be repercussions that I can’t risk. There might not be; but who knows?

So I put the post up on another site where I post occasionally under yet another pseudonym.If you’ve posted comments on this blog, I’ve got your email address (you had to enter it in order to post) and I have mailed you the URL   If you’ve not commented here, you’re out of luck.  Unless you want to post a comment begging me for the URL; But I don’t see why you’d want to do that.

I’ll post again soon – and I mean soon.  Rhumba and I have got two weeks off and plenty of things to do.  But it’s not all housework and trips to the dump, and late-night blogging’s a lot more fun in than the nth rerun of “A Chistmas Story.”  Especially when I know I can sleep late every morning.

In the meantime, my quick start project for Police Blotter Haiku: the Book quickly rose to 78 percent of goal – and stalled out.  Nothing’s happening.  The Kickstarter Community has all dispersed for Christmas-shopping, I suppose. If you know anybody who’d be interested, or just wants to see my film-noir performance-art pitch video including a brief moment of full dorsal nudity on my part, send them the link.

Enough groveling.  There’s recycling to take out.

I put up a project on Kickstarter to fund the launch of “Police Blotter Haiku: the Book” (not what I’ll call it). And you are more than welcome to go over there and see the rather odd video I made in support of the project.  And maybe even drop a dollar or two to help it along, though that is not at all obligatory.  Here’s the link.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/572102501/help-launch-police-blotter-haiku

For those of you with other things to do besides keep track of my life:

Police blotter haiku are 5-7-5 haiku based on true crime stories taken from the police blotter columns of newspapers large and small.  The police blotter column is where the human comedy –and human tragedy – lives: the two drunks who crash a truck and each claim the other was driving; the jilted boyfriend who deflates his ex-girlfriend’s tires in retaliation; the man whose guilty conscience makes him run from the cops – even though he’s not wanted for anything. By anybody.

I’ve been writing these haiku for years.  People seem to like them. The haiku now have their own blog, Police Blotter Haiku, although only a small proportion of the haiku I’ve written appear there.  Most of them appeared in a now-vanished blog of mine and haven’t been republished.

So I think it’s time for a book.

That’s where Kickstarter comes in.  It’s a social-media platform for funding projects of any sort: artistic, technological, for-profit, non-profit, whatever. You make a proposal, set a target amount, and provide prizes and rewards that persuade people to back you.  You only get the money if you meet your target goal.  But it seems to work for a lot of people.  Maybe it’ll work for me.

I want the money for publicity.  Because thought people seem the books I’ve written, nobody much buys them.  It’s hard to get publicity.  But I have a plan this time, and you can hear all about it at Kickstarter.  And there are a few other ways in which money can make the book better.

Anyway, follow the Kickstarter link to at least watch a bizarre video and listen to me orate police blotter haiku (with reverb effects), and perhaps make a pledge if you’re so inclined.  But I’ll still be your pal if you’re not.

I haven’t written new haiku for a few months, but I’ve start again and they’re working out fairly well. I put up a new batch on www.policeblotterhaiku.com just a few days ago. Here’s one:

Shots fired, three men flee.
The bullet holes in the wall
have little to say.

I feel a little odd about asking for support. Maybe I shouldn’t feel odd.  We’ll see. In the meantime, thanks as always for being here.

We may struggle in this country to provide health care for all.  We may be failing in our quest to provide equality of opportunity for everyone. We may be impoverishing the many to enrich the few.

But by God, where else on this earth can you buy a table lamp in the shape of a gekko for a low, low $68.99? Made in China.

I am ceaselessly amazed.  All hail the Electric Gekko, in the spirit of Christmas.

I’m not supposed to have these thoughts during the Christmas buying season; but they’re hard to avoid.  Christmas is a retreaded pagan holiday re-popularized by Charles Dickens and taken up by retailers in the 19th century as a way of selling consumer goods to the burgeoning middle class.  It still works as designed, even though the middle classes don’t exactly burgeon these days.

Easter is by far the most important Christian holiday; but it’s hard to market.  People can eat only so many chocolate eggs, and the Easter Bunny lacks the panache of the Man in Red. That said, I see the younger generations adopting Easter as a barbecue/party day in honor of the coming of, I suppose, swimsuit weather.  Perhaps Santa can be persuaded to surf.

But until that happens, the secular Christmas rules over all other holidays in American culture.  You don’t even have to be Christian.  Heck, it helps if you aren’t — unless you’re an observant Jew or Hindu or Muslim or whatever, and your kids are running around the house blubbering because all their more-or-less Christian friends get presents, but your religion doesn’t allow it.  I sometimes wonder if Secular Christmas as we know it was designed by demons to bring maximum disruption to the human psyche.

About the only things you can do to make the bloody day positive are 1) give to the poor and deserving, and 2) if you are buying presents, buy from a local business that treats its employees well and gives back to the community.  One sure sign of a such business is The Dog in the Middle of the Sales Floor. We bought my niece a Christmas present at such a place (see below).

Doing business with good people makes the Christmas Buying Ritual a little more bearable. But nevertheless Secular Christmas sends all the wrong messages: big presents equal big love, small presents are shameful and say that you don’t care.  And there’s the emotional blackmail angle.

If you love somebody, show it 364 days a year and take Christmas off if you like, as your present to you.  Or join the crowd and worship at the altar of the Electric Gekko.  Or is it the Golden Calf?

Meanwhile, in my next post, I will solicit money from you.  Happy Holiday!

I keep going to Amazon.com to look at reviews for video-camera sunglasses. You put them on, turn them on, and then they see what you see. But nobody sees the camera.

This may seem creepy to you, but I imagine myself wearing video glasses every time I walk down Pacific Avenue here in Santa Cruz. Pacific is the heart of the downtown, and its sidewalks never lack for traffic. Some days the scene becomes so varied that it cries for a video record; one made secretly, so that no one reacts.

I may never buy the spy glasses – not when a good pair costs $300. But I often pack a camera; and following are a few random pictures of Pacific that I’ve taken lately.

This week on a slow Tuesday afternoon — I’ve a few days off — I took a casual stroll down Pacific for the exercise. In the space of a couple of blocks I ran into a free-form jazz jam; a college class listening to a lecture on trees; giggling teen-agers slurping ice cream, and a sun-blackened woman with all the misery of the world in her eyes.

An anxious, long-haired man implores me to sign a petition to place a certain proposition on the ballot. The proposition is not what he claims it is. But if he explained it clearly, few would sign. And he is paid by the signature, and seems in need of a good meal.

A steel guitarist picks out a twangy tune from behind a large banana leaf on which he’s scrawled “Bless God, Bless the World.” A trio of traveling musicians, back-packs and all, sets up to play some serious folk-music. Because though crowds won’t appear on Pacific until the Thanksgiving weekend, you just never know. And a dollar or two would be welcome.

And at the natural foods market a block further on, Miss Evangeline the elderly cashier sells me a snack. She asks me how I am; fine, I answer, and her? “Wonderful,” she says with feeling. She always says that, and she always means it. Though she has the lined face of one who has seen the elephant, perhaps several times.

And if Miss Evangeline can be wonderful after several hours behind a smoking-hot cash register, what in the world are my problems worth?

Pacific Avenue is the main street that every city in America says that it wants: a truly public crossroads where everyone comes together to talk, meet, celebrate, incite, shop, dine, or just hang out.

But here’s the joke: if a town ever gets such a place, citizens start complaining at once. Because a truly public meeting place is open to the grim side of life as well as the pretty side. And this is true on Pacific,

Some people prefer the Disney version of reality, which holds only the things that make them happy. But for that you need walls and an admission fee. Such things are not the point; in fact, they’re the antithesis of the point.

I know people who never go to Pacific Avenue. Others can’t stay away from the place. Even when they leave the area, they do so on a long, strange orbit that will bring them back to Pacific once, twice, or three times as the years pass. They go, they come, and they come again.

Which is why, on my last lap down Pacific, I ran into a Hindu god named Kevin. I hadn’t seen him in several years. But whenever I had seen him, from time to time over the past decade, I’d seen him on Pacific Avenue.

Kevin and I met years ago as fellow employees at a school for homeless children. I was an out-of-work high-tech drone looking at a career in education. Kevin was an old hippie more at home in the wilderness than in a house. He made his very small living as a nature guide and resource person at alternative schools, summer camps, and the like. He had no fixed address; he liked life simple, and as close to the land as possible. When I knew him, he was living in his jeep — not one of the large or fancy ones, either.

Kevin had spent a lot of time in India, where he developed a sort of whole-face-and-head beard with integrated mustachios that extended six inches from his face in all directions. Solid silver it was, around a face as tanned and wrinkled as any Hindu holy man’s. He wanted to go to back India someday, when he qualified for Social Security. “You can live really well there on a few hundred bucks a month,” he told me several times.

We got along very well because Kevin was a live-wire, a talkative guy; and because we’d grown up only ten miles apart and had a lot to talk about. But he was eight or ten years older than I and had jumped straight into the whole Summer-of-Love alternative lifestyle scene that made the ’60s so interesting. And unlike most, he stuck it out. It suited him. He made his own way through life and had enjoyed it.

We both left the school and went our own ways. But every couple of years I’d see Kevin on Pacific Avenue as he orbited through town. Each time, the orbit grew wider and longer: from a cabin up beyond Big Basin, to a homestead out beyond Yosemite, to places even further out. And finally, he disappeared.

Until today. Smaller, older, but vigorous as ever. And unmistakable. I stopped him in the street and we talked as if we’d last met yesterday. He’d finally made it back to India.

“I’m middle-class there, man,” Kevin said. “I get $500 from Social Security, live on $300 and bank the rest.” He’d settled in the North, away from the heat and the cities in a place he’d lived before. He worked with orphans, loved the people of the countryside, and was perfectly happy with his life.

But Pacific Avenue called him back. Literally.

“It’s like those lizards with the three-foot long tongue,” he said. “I was on my way to Nepal when BAM! That tongue just caught up with me and pulled me back.”

It was a supoena. Twenty five years ago Kevin had been nearby when an insane man tried to hack someone to death with a machete in from of Lulu Carpenter’s coffee house on Pacific. (Which was, coincidentally, about where Kevin and I were standing.) Kevin was not the closest witness, but he was the first one to give his name to the police. Twenty-five years later, the attacker was finally judged sane enough to stand trial. And the DA sent for Kevin.

“Why didn’t you just ignore the supoena?” I asked.

“Because supoenas have a way of turning into warrants,” Kevin said, “and warrants are bad news.”

“Did they pay for your trip?”

“Nah. They said they’d pay mileage, so I’m going to submit a claim for 15,000 miles. They’ll wiggle out of it, but I’m going to have some fun with them.” He chuckled, eyes flashing.

At that point a stout young woman with the look of Doing Good walked up to us and tried to persuade Kevin to come to her community supper. He turned her down politely.

“Ah, she keeps trying to feed me,” he said. “Look, great seeing you but I’ve got a couple of things to do and this — ” he spread his arms wide to encompass the street and the people and the buildings “– is my office!” He ran across the street and out of sight.

Maybe he’ll orbit back through in another five years. As for Disneyland, you can keep it.

Several thousand dollars worth of bills await me on the dining room table. I am urgently advised, the cover letters all say, to pay them in a timely fashion. I image the bills milling around me like hungry cats, each angling for my attention: “Feed ME first;” “No, feed ME, i’m HUUNGRY!” “No, ME, ME, ME!”

Sadly for them, I liken bills to fine wine or cheese; I prefer to let them age. Especially big ones.

I owe six hundred dollars to a lumber yard that tried to dun me for somebody else’s bill. Twice. I owe several thousand for the deductible on my recent hospitalization. I owe the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, the hospital, the primary care medical group, and even the emergency room. Everybody bills separately these days.

I always pay actual people on time; and that includes local small businesses which consider themselves members of the community.

The self-employed workmen who re-sided and painted and repaired our house this year? We had a relationship; we treated each other with respect. So why wouldn’t I pay them on time? My checks were their livelihood. And we’ve all got to live.

But institutions? EVIL! Institutions aren’t alive, and they aren’t people, though they’re made of people. Today’s institutions, many of them, bill early and pay late. They demand as much as they can get, deliver as little as they can get away with. Corporations are the worst; but even public institutions, starved for money, are raising fees and fines while shrinking services.

I give them all the respect they deserve. I pay — eventually. It’s a small rebellion.

Once, I didn’t pay. A couple of years back we closed our account with AT&T, and they delivered us a final billl after we were told we’d paid everything: $79. While we argued back and forth with them, they abruptly stopped talking and sold the debt to a collection agency which was on us in a flash.

Since then I’ve made a hobby of not paying that bill. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not real. AT&T just claimed it was.

At any rate, there’s not much a collection agency can do if you don’t pick up the phone or sign for the certified mail. Not for seventy nine bucks. I just let the answering machine take all the calls. Don’t worry; if you prove to be a real person, I always pick up.

The bill has passed through at least five different collection bureaus: when one can’t collect, it sells the debt to another at a reduced price. The bill must go for no more than a few bucks now, because they’ve started offering me discounts if I’ll just pay what I owe. Or what somebody claimed I owed, once upon a time.

And you have to start wondering how much debt is really “real,” when somebody can just say you owe them something, and then start compounding the bill with fees and late charges and penalties that you “agreed” to by not reading the three thousand words of fine print that they knew you wouldn’t read.

The hospital’s official bill for my overnight stay — not counting the surgeon and the anesthesiologist and all the rest — was $39,000. For an overnight stay. How real is that? The insurance company “negotiated” the price down to seven thousand, and I only paid a fraction of that. But I’m not even sure that price is real.

And yet if I’d walked in the front door without insurance, I’d be on the hook for the thirty-nine thousand. For one day’s stay for an infected thumb. So what’s the real price? What’s the real debt? Who owes what to whom?

Dangerous words. In the days of slavery, the slaveholders lived high – yet lived in fear of slave rebellions. In the same way, in the heart of every financier there must live a cold spot of fear that all the debt they own, buy, and sell might someday not be paid. That we might just decide not to, and walk away. It happened in 2009, with over-priced houses whose value had crashed.

And yet the moneymen are doing all they can to make it happen again. When all but a few are struggling, who’s going to pay all those debts? And what will happen to them if they don’t try to? In the semi-immortal words of Bob Dylan, “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”

Must be something about extreme wealth that causes insanity. That’s all I can figure. We shall see. Indeed we shall. Barring surprises, I’ll live long enough to see it from the cheap seats.

In the meantime, I still have something to lose. And the bills are waiting. Grrrrr.

I can’t seem to write anything. He said, proceeding to write. Life, lately, has been a marathon stint on a bumper car carnival ride, where all the other cars are driven by 400-pound nightclub bouncers named Big Todd. Health, work, bureaucracy: it’s all been weird.

I have an incisor that’s literally wearing out. You can just about see through the biting surface. The tooth could break. So it was time for a fix. I hadn’t visited a dentist in many years, except for an emergency patch a year back when I scratched a tooth. That dentist, Doctor X, had a spiffy office with all the latest equipment; and everyone was very friendly. So I went back to him for teeth cleaning and an exam.

Bad mistake. When a dentist has all the latest and greatest equipment, it that means he has to pay for it somehow. Or rather, you do.

The cheerful, chirpy dental hygienist saw me first; she ushered me into a chair and after that everything became a blur of masked figuring buzzing instruments, digital x-rays, and payment specialists who flitted in and out.

Somehow it became inevitable that I should come back for a “deep cleaning” that would take four one hour sessions and cost thirteen hundred dollars. With follow-up treatments four times a year for the rest of my life. Because my teeth were in danger and it was urgent, URGENT that I have this valuable treatment and commit NOW. “We’ve ALL had it,” the payment specialist said. “It’s wonderful.”

By the time I saw Doctor X, it seemed all settled. “Any questions?” he asked. “Although by this time you probably have ‘too much information.” He smiled at me. He really was a pleasant guy. And, by the way, he told me, I had four cavities. He showed me one on a flat-screen TV; it looked like a tooth with a shadow falling across it.

I was too run over to pose any questions. A few minutes later I was on a street with a card detailing my next six appointments: as many as possible before the end of the year to harvest all the year’s insurance money.

My head cleared. “Wait a second…” I thought.

I did some research. I do have gum disease, periodontitis. My last dentist, Doctor Funkensoul (the office sound system played only Motown), told me it would happen if I didn’t floss, many years ago.

I didn’t floss. My teeth felt fine. They still do. But like many people I stayed away from the dentist because I was afraid he’d tell me something I didn’t want to hear.

And now I have periodontitis. “Deep pockets,” “4’s and 5’s:” that’s the lingo. The way I understand it, in a few more years my teeth could be falling out of my head; maybe. Possibly. But not today. “Deep cleaning” is a treatment for gum disease. The fact that “everybody in the office” had the treatment means that Dr. X only hires people with gum disease. Or to Doctor X, everybody has gum disease. (Insert cash register sound effects).

The deep cleaning may now be necessary — or not. Opinions vary on the Internet. And by the way, the procedure hurts; and the teeth will ache for weeks or months. Anesthetic may be offered. They didn’t tell me that. Nor that infection was an issue.

No, they hard-sold me. And they’re not even periodontists. I didn’t get time to make an informed decision, much less all the facts. “Too much information,” my ass; they hardly gave me any. Just used the authority of white coats and x-rays to scare the hell out of me.

My conclusion: Doctor X doesn’t have patients. He has cash flows. And if you can believe the Internet, there are many such dentists out there these days. At this point I’m not even sure all those “cavities” are real.

So I’m headed back to Doctor Funkensoul for a second opinion. He never tried to push anything on me, except may flossing. Once, when I had a particularly bad tooth that I thought he could have treated, he referred me to a specialist who he thought could do the job better.  And he was right.

Anyway, Funkensoul’s still in practice, and hopefully he hasn’t gone over to the Dark Side. His office isn’t nearly as spiffy as Doctor X’s; and to me, right now, that’s a good sign.

After all, and after all this: I still have a see-through tooth that needs looking at.

Interesting times we live in. It’s no longer smart to trust politicians; no longer smart to trust corporations; it’s really not smart to trust insurance companies or banks. Or hospitals; for my recent one-night stay, my hospital had the nerve to claim that “list price” (not counting the actual treatments) was $39,000. I’m not paying that much, but — the nerve.

And now even dentists can’t be taken for granted. The common theme, I suppose, is money and the pursuit of it above all other things. Teeth aren’t the only thing that the Doctor X’s of this world are good at extracting.

And that was only part of the week. Maybe you don’t want to hear about the rest of it.