Two days after finishing my third cycle of BCG immunotherapy for bladder cancer, I am either sick or just old. Probably some of both.
I'll be eighty next month.
When we moved into our house in Oakland in 2015, I could ride my bicycle from 55th Avenue to San Leandro and back, 15 miles, without thinking much about it. This morning I rode from the Shell station in the Laurel to Santana's coffee shop, maybe a mile. I arrived tired. It was work. My heart was beating hard, and I was out of breath.
But I'm out and about.
I didn't particularly want to get out of bed this morning. Everything ached. The immunotherapy, BCG, takes a day or two or three to work its way through me, and staying under the covers seemed reasonable. Eventually I got up at 7:30 and made coffee.
It was a disaster. The paper filter slipped in my AeroPress and the water went straight through the grounds. I ran it through again, then once more, added another couple of spoonfuls of coffee and somehow rescued it. Not bad actually, recovered coffee.
Our 2014 Honda needed a smog check before I could renew its registration. That gave me somewhere to go.
I drove to the Shell station near 35th Avenue. Chris, the owner's son, took care of me. He grew up in the neighborhood and now helps his father run the station. His father has owned the garage there for over 25 years.
From the back of the Honda I took my bicycle, with its newly pumped tires, and rode down the street to say hello to my friend Barry at the bicycle shop.
He wasn't open yet. Barry and I share bladder cancer, although his muscle-invasive form took him through a much rougher course than mine. It's an odd thing to have in common.
I bicycled the mile or so to Richard Santana's new café.
I had put breakfast off too long and was hungry. Coffee and a poppy-seed bagel with egg and cheese, too close to the barrio and too far from the shtetl for lox and bagels. I brought my computer because I thought I might write for an hour while I waited for the smog check.
The new Santana's is more open than the old place. Perhaps nicer in many ways. The neighborhood is less commercial, not so busy, and the café seems to fit easily here. The coffee roasting machine has been moved to the new place but is sitting idle, waiting for permits before Richard can hook it up.
The café is already popular.
Maybe it's too comfortable.
Inside, nearly every table had one person sitting at it with a computer. The old Santana's was cramped. People talked. There were computers, but not so many. I think there was a shortage of outlets. The computers hadn't taken possession of the place.
I sat at a table for three, my computer open, waiting for my coffee and bagel. I was uncomfortable. I was becoming exactly what I complain about: one man and one computer occupying a table where three people might sit together and have a conversation.
When my breakfast came, I went outside.
Now it is almost noon and I have the outside mostly to myself.
A trash truck has arrived, one of those enormous mechanical beasts with arms that grab the bins, hoist them into the air and dump them inside. Even with all that machinery, it still requires a swamper on the ground, arranging the bins so the machine can grab them.
Across the street is a small, cramped apartment building. A gardener is working out front. Sitting on the porch along the front is a woman in a wheelchair who has no legs. There are flowers, a large cat, little knickknacks and bits of people's lives accumulated over the years.
While I watch, the very large brown-and-gold cat, maybe twenty pounds, wanders away from the apartments and up the street. He appears to be making the rounds.
Around it all is the sound of MacArthur Boulevard.
The continuous whoosh of tires on pavement. A bus rattles past. The trash truck works. Neighbors talk. Another bus, another car, tires whooshing on pavement.
It's the sounds of the city we usually ignore.
We think of the countryside as quiet, but of course, it has its own background of sound. The sounds of traffic, engines, tires, and machines are replaced by the sounds of birds, water, and wind.
Sitting here, with the soundtrack of the city, there is calmness too.
This is East Oakland, between the Laurel and the Dimond. It's not picturesque. Traffic moves along MacArthur. Somebody tends a garden. Chris is smogging my old Honda. Richard is waiting for permission to hook up his coffee roaster. A cat patrols the neighborhood. I'm eating a bagel and writing.
My cycling isn't what it was eleven years ago. Neither am I.
But I don't think the morning has diminished.
It's different.
I'm here. And I'm enjoying it.
