The Secret Best Park Ever.

It is getting incredibly difficult to make a blog entry, these days.

I get on here and the first thing I do is scroll down the side, looking for updates to the blogs that I read. Then I click on them all, and watch the tabs line up like bowling pins. Then I click them. I skim the text, glance at the pictures, follow the links, look at more pictures, skim some more text, and by the time I remember that I wanted to post a blog, the baby wakes up from her nap, or she is already awake and I become aware that she is (A) eating cat food or (B) on top of the computer desk via her new magical climbing skills.

Once in a while she is (C) conducting experiments that involve the toilet.
between you and I.

The internet is becoming a problem. The internet is something I do instead of knit, instead of write, instead of nourish my growing child's curiosity about the world, and the last thing is the reason I am going to redouble my efforts to halve the time I spend staring into a glowing screen. It is cute, but it also breaks my heart that while my daughter does not yet say many words, she knows exactly how to hold a cell phone (between her shoulder and ear) while she pretends to talk like everybody else does. Technology has crept into our lives so steadily that I don't even take notice of well dressed people who seem to be talking to themselves, or teenagers who type with their thumbs on the bus. It's just another day.

The interview in the March 2009 Sun Magazine speaks to all my hidden fears about our connected society. I don't think you can read the whole thing online, but if it interests you, please consider buying a copy or subscribing. The printed word is in some danger, and would appreciate it awfully much if we could show it some love. The Sun is one of those things that keeps me going, through good times and bad, with its simple design, lack of advertising, and personal stories that remind me that nobody is alone in this world. Black letters on white paper.
I have conducted much of my life here online, posting pictures and jotting down thoughts and following links and making inane comments on social networking sites, so much that I feel a deep loss of real experience. I crave quiet moments spent enjoying the way light plays on a glass of water as I write with a pencil on paper. I crave moments with Edie noticing leaves or the way a slug moves patiently over slick grass. I crave time to think. I crave space to inhabit.

So I'll be restricting my time on the computer. I appreciate the way the internet has allowed me to keep in touch with people I wouldn't otherwise get to see, friends and family, but I get so easily sucked into its distractions.

For now, something has been bugging me to tell you.

There is a park down the street from the house. This is not the park that I take the Bean to regularly, the one just up the street. This park lives across the railroad tracks, a fact I only just became conscious of the other day when I explored it for the first time. You see, one of the first days we were here, Kenneth drove us past this park which looked full of promise, by which I mean trees. Green trees, green grass hills, and it looked like it went on for more than a block.
"Hey that looks like a nice park, are those trails!?" I pointed out my window.
Kenneth glanced in the direction I was pointing, then said, "that park is not safe. You can't go in there." Or something to the effect that I actually wiped my memory clean of the park. That park became a hazy border on the map in my head labeled Inglewood. Walk far enough one way, and you run into the cement walls bordering the massive cemetery - a nice enough place, but not worth the walk along busy streets just to reach the entrance gate. Walk far enough another way, and you reach the thrift store, beyond which the airplanes are just too large on the horizon. Walk far enough the other way, and you can catch a bus to Westchester for bubble tea and spaghetti. But for some reason, that last direction on my map just ended at the railroad tracks. Maybe because Florence is so busy, I don't like walking along busy streets with the baby in her sling, so I've always turned back before reaching the tracks. Edie, Peggy-dog, and I have worn a tight little square around the neighborhood.

The other day, though, I was feeling pretty bored of the route, so I dared to cross the tracks. I was just going to explore a street I'd seen that was fenced off from the main road, to see what those houses looked like. As soon as I'd crossed the busy street, though, I noticed the park again, as if for the first time. "Look, Edie, there's a park, and trails, and trees..."
I had completely forgot it was there. So we went in. On the trails were students from a nearby Catholic high school, laughing and talking on their way home. There were people with dogs, and there were joggers wearing shiny, plasticky sweat suits and carrying weights. We descended into a valley and there was a little playground, with baby swings! The park by our house has two squeaky swings that I sit on while Edie sits on my lap, octopus style, and hangs on while we swing together. Here she could ride by herself, so we hung out at the playground for a long time. There was a simple climber, just stairs and a slide, and crumbling asphalt all around us. We made Peggy wait, though she was eager to keep exploring; I tied her to a post. It was a little bit of magic, the sudden appearance of the perfect place to be, a wooded oasis in the middle of a desert city. Just down the path there was a little skate park with a few kids practicing tricks. Edie watched them for a while, and they smiled at us. It was getting late and a few drops of rain started to fall, but before leaving I really wanted to see what else was in this park, so we continued down the path into the heart of the park. To the right there were eight tennis courts, and two baseball fields. A team of girls was playing and we watched them for a second, but then my attention was diverted. Not one more playground, but two! Two towering blue and yellow structures, like castle grounds, with moats and bridges and slides and stairs and tunnels, connected by a wading pool which was not filled but probably would be this summer. I couldn't believe it. To get to the climbers, we passed something called "The Inglewood Playhouse", a little brick building, beyond which was an amphitheater built into the grassy hill. We also walked by two swimming pools. Since Edie had already played and it was time to be getting home, we kept going but I made a note to return. Then, as if the cosmic joke needed any extra punchlines, we came upon another playground, with more baby swings, and just beyond that? Another one. I counted five separate playgrounds at the park that day.

In case the meaning of all this isn't clear, I will mention that the entire time we've lived here I've made snide little comments about the shitty park up the street, where I found broken glass in the sandbox twice, saw a dog piss in it once, and watched Siddhartha kitty bury a turd once as well. The park where I was informed not to sit on the grass because they use recycled waste water to keep it green, and where mysterious bugs like sand fleas settle on our blanket. We've driven miles across town in all directions to visit the nicer parks in nicer neighborhoods. I rode my bike all over the other day, trying to find another park to take Edie. I have begged Kenneth to drive us to the good parks on days when he'd worked the extra early shift and wanted to take a nap, but the baby had woken up from hers and I wanted to take her somewhere different from the dirty, abandoned park up the street. As I stood in front of the fifth climber and watched a group of men set up a volleyball net and rake the sand flat, as they played tapes on a boombox sitting in the back of a truck, I wanted to call Kenneth at work and demand an explanation as to why this paradise had been kept from me and the baby, but I settled for calling my mom and describing the scene to her instead. The baby climbed out of her sling and tried to steal a volleyball from the game, so I got off the phone quickly and chased her back into the sling.
I walked through some unfamiliar neighborhoods on the way out, hungrily taking in the newness of streets I've never seen. I walked all the way home before I realized that I'd dropped my cell phone right by the volleyball court.
Grandpa got home at the same time, and I made a big deal about the secret park we'd found.
"It's not a secret," he told me.
"Well, how come nobody told me about it?"
He didn't answer, but called my phone several times. One of the men from the volleyball game called back, and told him in halting English to meet at the park. A little while later Grandpa called from the park to ask where I'd dropped the phone. It is a huge park.
"All the way back, by the volleyball court. Past the fifth playground."
"You went all the way in, huh?"

Later, Grammy called from her car on the way home from work.
"Nobody told you about that park?" She was laughing.
"Yeah, and it's really nice!" I said.
"This whole time you've been asking where a park was, and nobody told you about that one?"
"Exactly!" I said, indignant.
"It's not safe there." .

When she got home, I argued with her a bit, as I like to do, because Kenneth's mother and I are like the opposite of soul-mates. We are soul-opposites. Everything down to the tiniest opinion about the silliest things, we disagree on. It has made for an interesting leg on this spiritual journey, and a good challenge. Anyways, she confessed that she hasn't been to the park since she was practically a teenager herself. Somewhere along the way, the park got a bad reputation for violent gang activity and she'd just never gone back. I told her it was even better than Polliwog park, the place in Manhattan Beach with a duck and turtle pond.

"Hey Eric, Kendal says Centinela's even better than Polliwog," said Grammy.
"Yeah, it's pretty big."

And it is. It is a massive, wooded area, with plenty of space for dogs and kids and stressed out grownups to stretch out, unwind, and run. The cement paths go up and down hills, through shade and sun, and I just can't say enough about it. I still have trouble believing it has been there this whole time and we never knew about it. Or, we knew about it, but we never went there, because we were told not to. And I guess when I say we, I mean Kenneth and I both. When he got home and I told him about the park, he explained that he'd never been there either. He wasn't allowed to, growing up.

So, the next day I dragged him to the park. I don't know if it was good of me to push it or not. Was he better off not knowing what a great place had been just down the road his whole life, or was he better off seeing with his own eyes what local lore had branded too dangerous to risk venturing into? I didn't care. I just wanted to spend some time at the park with my family, so we went. We watched the skaters and we played on the slides, getting shocked by the static electricity. We met a dad and his baby girl, from South Central.
"There's parks in my neighborhood but we drive over here because it's so nice, you know?"

Yeah.

We are moving to Seattle in a week, by the way.
We both have jobs lined up, and Edie will go to the daycare I've worked at off and on since I was 18 years old. I am so excited for her to go to school, and have other friends like her (and by that I mean Wee.)

It's time to make dinner before the wee one awakens.

If you are still reading this.