Canal Ghosts

Here's what I read to my writing class today.  

Here goes:

I hold this white laptop as I recline on my dirty yellow sofa in my slice of a small white cottage that sits on a palm-tree lined street that had once been filled with water. Sometimes the spirits of those canal days, those amusement park days, those days of prohibition and hidden rooms under local hotels, break the water mains to recreate those canals. but not this year. Last year, when the temperature dipped below 32, the spirits converged in the tiny intersection of Altair and Andalusia to set up a geyser that squirted a fountain--like a New York City summer fire hydrant. It lasted for days. On a dark night under the palms and the branches of a giant Chinese elm that droops over the corner and blocks out the light from the street lamp, a workman argued with me. Pipes don't burst from freezing temperatures in Los Angeles, I told him. It was some ghost. I didn't mention that. If I were a ghost and could hose out the concrete and asphalt to reveal the canal in which roaring twenties bathing beauties dived, I'd grab my canoe and paddle over to the lagoon to see if the naked black torso (sometimes decorated with marde gras paper mache head or peace sign stickers on her buttocks and breasts) was still there. In my time she stands facing the ocean, armless and headless, voluptuous, black and gleaming. The spirits pull her into the lagoon--an obstacle hidden under water, to paddle around--or crash into deliberately so as to join her for a wade and a splash. Under the arch-way hotels the drunken spirits sway and laugh, trudge up hidden stairs, sway through hidden pathways to see her gleaming shoulders caressed by waves from the boats. Everyone in! they yell. The roller coaster rails tumble over the crash of the waves. The park workers sleep in their small white cottages fronted with palms with fronds that explode fourth of July all the time. The ghosts of the depression sit on porches to see the fireworks and the stars--to see Altair and Orion.

I live in Venice, California--a mere five minute walk from my door to where the ocean touches the sand.  Although I grew up in a different part of West Los Angeles, my grandparents lived here for a summer--in 1929, when my grandmother was pregnant with my uncle (who's a few years older than my dad).  She told me about going for walks in the neighborhood around 6th and Rose with her dad.  They were all from Youngstown Ohio and thought LA was hicksville.

There are some good websites to learn about the history of Venice.  That statue I mention is by Robert Graham--there is a very funny article in the Venice Free Press (a hippie poet's paper if there ever was one) about him removing peace sign stickers from the statue.  Google Venice History or Venice Free Press (I think it's the August issues).

I'm a student.  Forever a student.