Fragments of Tulsa Time

The food – wonderful & plentiful, food in stores, food at home and food in restaurants. The USA’s birthday is July 4, the sign of Cancer the crab – food and nourishment, the family, the home.

Photo credit: @FJSobriquet

There’s family, of course, part of your own heart beat. There’s extended family, who may not be genetically related to you, yet they are. Then there are fascinating branches of the extensions, such as H who says he’s sure his dog is a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, he’s looked it up on the internet – and he shows me an image on his phone. They look similar, I agree. He’s got arthritis says H and he’s only 5 years old, that’s young –

His son interrupts – that dog’s got ill, he says – because you spend so much time worrying about him and his health, he had to produce something real, some real symptoms. You remember that time I walked past him without saying hallo and you said I hurt his feelings because I didn’t say hallo to him? – all your worrying about him has manifested this, now you’ve got something real to worry about.

H smiles, looks a little quizzical, looks at me, I look at him, and I laugh, as much at C’s precise, pin-point diagnosis, as H’s look of bemused innocence, shrugging off the verdict, in the late autumn sunshine, sprinkled with broad leaf shadow like black pepper on the table.

*
One day is really hot and we have a morning yoga session, then M & I stroll down Cherry Street before meeting up with the others at Roosevelt’s restaurant where the sun is so bright and hot we have to ask for the awning to cover the table and give us some shade.

Later we all go to the Gathering Place, leaving the car in the overflow car park, all dust blown, as if we’re in the centre of a desert though it’s a densely populated desert. The creation of the park itself was the idea of a monied philanthropist, who gifted it to the people of Tulsa. The park has many paths, trails, climbing areas, a Boathouse – with cafe – mirror areas, sound areas with metal or wooden xylophones – bridges, open areas and lots we didn’t see. There will be canoes to go out on the lake which will be joined to the river.

On the skyline as the sun goes down, an industrial complex with chimneys & cranes, mechanical herons with long necks and metal probing beaks, showing up black against red sky.

The next day it’s turned cold and the wind’s so strong, the wide and crackly curled up at the edges leaves have piled up in the entrance-way between house wall and garage so you come in wading through a tunnel of leaves.

And in the park near the house the leaves have climbed up the wire fence enclosing the tennis court, because the wind pushed them into a drift, like snow, then pasted them up the fence. They look like some flag-strewn artistic faux-natural design. Awards are won for less. This is the real thing, gains no award. It is itself, the bestower of awards.

The park this morning is mono-coloured, creamy pale brown with a hint of russet, the grass and leaves more faded than coloured, like an old shirt bleached by the sun. If wind has any colour, it’s this one today, woody, bark-scented, dry and crackling.

*
I wait outside the bookstore. The temperature has changed again and though the air is still cold, the wind has dropped and the sun, high up in the sky, is warm on my face.

The square of shops is vast. In fact there’s probably a word for it, other than square. The shops are huge, the sign Barnes & Noble is written above the entrance in enormous letters. Signs above the other stores are almost as big – Trader Joe’s, Surplus Stores, Ross’s, where you can ‘Dress for Less’ and where I’d just bought a pair of jeans (VIP – Must Have).

As I wait, I watch a few cars pull up near Barnes & Noble, people get out and walk towards the store. They walk slowly. No-one ever hurries. The pace is languid.

I stand in the vast square of buildings, set back from the road, so there’s no traffic noise here in this other world, quiet and peaceful, sun warm on my face.

Brookside