Naturalist's Notes

149 Naturalist's Notes Sarah Reith El Cerrito, California This is a serene, blue-collar neighborhood of thin-walled houses with windows that quiver like wind chimes. Here, the evening haze is sugary and pale. It is several colors at once: spun-candy blue, spiderweb silver, and yellow like the whisper of an old lace ghost. In summertime, it smells of heavy sweating flowers and the slowly melting sea. Because nothing on the water lasts forever, there is a sense in this community of a long, drawn-out grace period, an acknowledgment of intervals. There are people living here, and little creatures, too. A fat skunk with a frazzled tail lopes hunchbacked past a short thick wall of hedges, then climbs casually onto someone’s porch. It stands there blinking underneath the light expectantly, as if it’s waiting for someone to open the door, or for a crowd to burst into applause. The artists here are unassuming, studiously anonymous. Two thick nails drive a Post-it-sized sketch into a phone pole on my street. The picture is quickly drawn, with a sure hand and an eye that seems accurate , though this is hard to say for sure about an illustration of a fluffy Pomeranian revealing several rows of shark teeth. “Biskit, I love you!” reads the caption. It is as calm and absurd as the title of an artwork ought to be. Underneath and to the side of it is a mug shot of a timorously grinning T-Rex. In italics with quotation marks—as if the dinosaur is emphatically saying something, but there is no room for a word balloon—it reads, “Oh, no, we can’t stop here! This is bat country!” The third piece isn’t quickly drawn, but urgently, as if the artist had a sense of limited time or impending disaster. There is passion and power here, a touching lack of irony. This one is done by the gifted kid, in with the practiced young men. In efficiently voluptuous lines, like something from an underground tattoo parlor, a naked bald man draws himself into a ball. His face and 150 Ecotone: reimagining place groin are hidden, but the tension of his limbs is lovingly displayed. He is glued to the gas meter, as if in some obscure act of defiance. People around here have a broad interpretation of the phone pole as a way to communicate. They don’t confine themselves to lost pet fliers or garage sale ads or exhortations to “Lose weight!” and “Earn money from home!” Two blocks from the miniature gallery, there is a large plastic freezer bag nailed to a phone pole. It is partly obscured by a graceful bough of soft green leaves like sweet shy kisses. When I brush this bough aside, as gently as I would a strand of a sleeping infant’s hair, I realize that the freezer bag is bulging heavily with partially liquefied dog shit. There is a carefully laminated note inside, too, smudged but legible: PLEASE CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR DOG. Then, with mounting rage, the tidy capitals begin to slant: I’M SICK OF STEAMING PILES OF DOG SHIT EVERY MORNING!!! Veering unseeingly past all of it is a long-toed trail of bloody footprints, leading from the crossing at Yosemite and Lassen. The story starts between a set of tire marks, with three savage splatters of heavy blood. I can see the fur lines, etched into the ground in vicious silhouette. I can see where the creature gained its feet and then wound hectically along the sidewalks, through the hedges, down San Pablo, towards the sludgy creek beneath the train tracks. The prints are black and faded now, the soggy paws and fat round teardrop splashes. I saw them when the blood was gluey and bright, on the day I stole the shopping cart from Trader Joe’s. I thought it was the trail of a dog in heat, but it was another bloody passion. There is a little hill that oversees the highway and the sunrise and the wetlands, where the loons all dip their bills into the viscous soup. The long white egrets pick their dainty way...