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Bollan’s Beefs<br />
On my way<br />
out of Phoenix,<br />
I didn’t stop for<br />
breakfast, but I<br />
did stop for gas at the truck stop<br />
at South 35 th Avenue and Buckeye,<br />
where I bought a big can of Arizona<br />
green tea and a Milky Way candy<br />
bar.<br />
It was the first time in my life that<br />
I felt—and actually was—homeless.<br />
Two thundering bolts struck within<br />
a single week.<br />
<strong>The</strong> tea and candy bar disappeared<br />
unnoticed, offering no distraction,<br />
nourishment or healing.<br />
I pointed the car toward Berkeley,<br />
and the car found the desert that lies<br />
between Phoenix and LA on I-10. I<br />
kept telling myself, “you’re in no<br />
condition to drive,” but the dutiful<br />
car had its mind made up.<br />
In Indio, California, the car<br />
pulled into Burger King. I ordered<br />
a Whopper and onion rings. When<br />
my mind is functioning well, I know<br />
better than to order greasy onion<br />
rings from Burger King.<br />
A woman in a van asked me to<br />
follow her to the nearest gas station<br />
“just in case,” and the car understood<br />
and obeyed. <strong>The</strong> woman’s<br />
genuine smile and “thank you”<br />
were vaguely nourishing.<br />
I choked back the food and drove<br />
on toward LA. Near Palm Springs,<br />
I found myself in a surreal world<br />
of twirling pinwheels, thousands<br />
of them in every direction, fields of<br />
power-generating windmills. It was<br />
a frivolously delightful, momentary<br />
Food in Famine<br />
Hardwood<br />
By Jack Bollan<br />
jgbollan@aol.com<br />
distraction from my scattered emotions.<br />
I planned to stop in LA for the<br />
night and to dine at a café on Santa<br />
Monica Pier, where years before I’d<br />
had one of the best meals of my life.<br />
I also planned to walk the beach to<br />
see if the Pacific offered words of<br />
solace. I even thought of stopping<br />
to see my friends—our friends—<br />
Mandy and Larry. But how could<br />
I explain my condition to them? I<br />
would be an unwelcome burden.<br />
As the huge sprawling city<br />
unfolded before me, I couldn’t find<br />
the strength to persuade the car to<br />
find the Santa Monica Pier. It told<br />
me that I had to sleep in Berkeley.<br />
It said that I would do well to see<br />
the face of someone I love as I love<br />
myself.<br />
<strong>The</strong> car found I-5 and continued<br />
racing toward Berkeley, a robot<br />
ambulance bearing a patient with<br />
critical emotional lacerations. <strong>The</strong><br />
patient himself feverishly plotted the<br />
course and calculated the hours and<br />
miles that lay between whereverwe-were<br />
and Berkeley. <strong>The</strong> neutral<br />
mathematical calculations diverted<br />
my focus to simple, uncomplicated<br />
regions of my mind.<br />
At nine, the car found a pay<br />
phone. I submitted to the car’s<br />
entreaty and called some people<br />
I love. After the brief telephone<br />
exchanges, I found a cup of coffee<br />
with cream and sugar and returned<br />
to the road, to the kindly authority<br />
of the car.<br />
<strong>The</strong> coffee and the loving telephone<br />
exchanges turned my<br />
thoughts to God, to guilt, to hope,<br />
to salvation. But I also began to suffer<br />
delusions. Twisted, psychotic<br />
ideas entered my mind, offering<br />
false comfort.<br />
But by now the real comfort that<br />
was in Berkeley was only two hours<br />
away. I felt so much better that I<br />
began to imagine that this weird<br />
state was actually what I would call<br />
“feeling good” in ordinary times.<br />
It was only a mirage, but a mirage<br />
that reminded me that life, even at<br />
worst, has its moments. Life has its<br />
moments.<br />
I found rest and healing in<br />
Berkeley. <strong>The</strong> severe lacerations<br />
stopped bleeding and scabbed over,<br />
though the condition of the patient<br />
remained fragile.<br />
I spent one morning alone on the<br />
Berkeley pier, a lovely warm, sunny<br />
late-summer morning. Beautiful<br />
San Francisco stood across the calm<br />
water, as playful seabirds and fishermen<br />
dipped into the bay for food.<br />
I found nourishment in the beauty<br />
around me. I consumed the scene<br />
piggishly, trying to hoard enough<br />
to last during the hard weeks and<br />
months ahead.<br />
On my last day in Berkeley, my<br />
son—our son—and I took BART<br />
to the Market Street station and a<br />
trolley to Fisherman’s Wharf. We<br />
found a small, homey café on the<br />
bay where I ordered grilled sole and<br />
Chardonnay.<br />
<strong>The</strong> conversation was warm and<br />
healing, as was the meal and the efficient,<br />
handsome twenty-something<br />
waitress. I forcefully suppressed<br />
thoughts of the frightening nowhere<br />
that I would drive toward in the<br />
morning. I voraciously consumed<br />
the food and the company, naively<br />
believing that it might be nourishment<br />
enough to last during the hard<br />
weeks and months ahead.<br />
I was awake early the following<br />
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morning, dreading the long drive<br />
and the hard matters I would face<br />
at road’s end. But the stalwart,<br />
kindly car greeted me, reminded<br />
me of grateful smiles, windmills,<br />
God, piers, meals and love. “<strong>The</strong>re’s<br />
hope,” I assured myself as the car<br />
pulled onto Berkeley Way.<br />
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