I’m stuck in a rare traffic jam on 101 outside of Santa Rosa, so I contemplate the mundane roadside attractions, debris, new homesteads in the bushes, in the no-man’s-land between freeway and fence. The traffic jam eventually unveils its ugly secret. A big truck hauling a trailer, someone else’s home, did a 180° turn right off the freeway—facing back the way he came. The trailer crumpled like tinfoil, or a Coke can. The truck, still upright, with a starburst pattern in the windshield from someone’s head.
Myriad cops circle the scene. I wonder if the couple survived. And I realize that though the driver did 180° turn going back from where he came, he can never go back there again. Was he yet another victim of COVID homelessness? As this pandemic continues on its inexorable path, more and more people are becoming homeless. It too is a pandemic. Seeking shelter wherever they can. During these dark days of summer, it’s not so much of a problem. Pitch a tent, or pitch a tarp. But come winter, then what?
And a jerk in the SUV, seeing a long line of cars, tries to pass me on the freeway shoulder, right in front of the wreck. He is part of the problem. Let’s just say hand gestures were involved all round.
Some Sunday morning. Our new normal horizon keeps shifting its parameters. What was unthinkable a year ago is now the new normal. But hope is ever present, the Halloween maze corn is growing in the Petaluma field. Waiting for the maze to grow. A bleacher overlooks the green sea of corn. Come October, The Day of the Dead. How many, countless deaths by then?
Indeed, the gates of the Otherworld are open wide, waiting to receive us all.
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