I was ten minutes into a morning tennis lesson with my ex wife and her son, when an older man came up to me from outside the fence when I was picking up balls for the next drill. He had something to tell me, that was clear.

He wore the sleek attire of a serious athlete. He was probably on a routine fitness walk through the park. He held out a phone and informed me that he had just called 911 because a man inside a portable toilet, the one I was now looking at 30 yards away from the court, had apparently trapped himself inside, was screaming, and also attempting to free himself with a knife, even though he had apparently chained himself inside.

Phone man had been walking by the toilet and heard the commotion, tried to aid the trapped man, something went wrong, there was cursing and pounding, threats, and thus, the call. It didn’t make much sense to me and was happening very, very fast.

“He’s crazy,” said phone man. “And he has a knife and I wanted to warn you. He might be coming out and over here.”

I’ve played a lot of Oregon tennis in my life, and….forget it…all of the old ways are out the Oregon window for good. An encounter with a homeless person while playing tennis on a public outdoor court is going to happen, so buck up, maybe bring along an extra racket, and see if he or she wants to join the lesson.

I am not kidding. I am not being facile. Stick a racket in his fucking hand and let’s play! I might learn something new about this issue that can only originate across the net. Tennis is great for conversation.

My ex and her some came over and listened to phone man conclude his report. So did the the two older women playing on the other court. The homeless man reading a book in the grass while his dog snoozed near him, didn’t notice a thing.

Phone call man seemed nervous and started wandering away. I didn’t really blame him, but suggested he should probably stick around because he made the call and knew the details. He said nothing. I went over to the gate to the court and tried closing it. It was so beaten up that it didn’t really fit so I kicked the son-of-a-bitch into place and latched the handle.

Then…the man in the portable toilet wasn’t in the portable toilet anymore. He came out swearing “fuck you” and “fucking” this and that. He was thin, tall, with scraggly black hair, wearing red, and exuded the unmistakable look of an unhinged homeless man. He looked toward the courts and directed his fury at phone man and kept screaming that “you didn’t have to fucking call it in” and “fuck you.”

The phone man said he was trying to help. He was concerned for screaming man’s welfare.

“Fuck you. I don’t need your fucking help. Fuck you,” and “fuck” this and “fuck” that.

Screaming man made a slight move toward the courts.

This is really happening. My ex looked at me. I looked at her, the kid, the two woman, and the screaming man outside the fence. I sized up escape routes. Was I going to have to batter this maniac senseless with a tennis racket? He was a lot bigger than me and out of his mind.

The screaming man produced some kind of wooden staff, or walking stick or weapon from the toilet, a real heavy duty Moses-grade implement.

He then threw it to the ground, picked up a garbage bag, and headed away from us into another part of the park, yelling “fuck” this and “fuck” that the whole time.

Everyone calmed down. The 911 man maneuvered away.

Those of us on the court held a brief discussion. We tried figuring out what had just transpired.

The tennis lesson resumed.

Five minutes later, a Portland police SUV rolled up on an access road above the park. I left the court and sprinted up a bark-dusted slope to give the officers the lowdown. They emerged from the SUV: a young bearded man slighter than me, and a woman with gelled-up, spiked hair and a tiny neck tattoo.

I gave my report. I used the word “rigmarole,” in what context I no longer recall. The officers left to investigate. I wouldn’t want this fucking job. What if they encountered the man and he had a knife? Right there in a park with kids and moms and walkers all around? What if they had rolled up to the court and he was brandishing a knife and the five of us were inside the fence holding him off with tennis rackets.

It could have happened. Then what?

Lesson three in a week.

I needed to kill some time before an auto repair appointment. Clackamette Park in Oregon City beckoned. There was always interesting people and bird watching there, and I occasionally found choice cuts of beaverwood to add to my Portland-area collection, surely the only one of its kind outside of the homeless people living along various watercourses who collected beaverwood for the construction of their shanties. I guess that technically doesn’t qualify as a collection. To think that homeless Oregonians would utilize beaverwood in the building of their shelter in 2021 defies reality, but I have seen it with my own eyes.

I parked the car and walked a path toward the Willamette River. A few men fished. A few men sat in chairs and drank coffee. Hundreds of geese and ducks and gulls did their avian thing.

A woman stood near a picnic table and smoked. She had several plastic bags full of something around here. She had the unmistakable look of a homeless person. I passed her and stopped at the river’s edge.

I looked upriver. No boats. A bird came into view. It flew like a raptor. It landed atop a dead tree 30 yards away. It turned its profile to me—a peregrine falcon.

It’s a great moment whenever you see a peregrine falcon and I moved toward it. I watched the falcon for a good five minutes as it surveyed the river. Nothing like killing time watching a falcon perched in a snag waiting to launch and rip some prey out of the sky.

Something crackled in the trees behind me. I turned around and began walking toward the sound. It was the homeless woman standing and apparently searching in a stack of driftwood doubtless thrown up during high flows.

She saw me and smiled.

“I’m looking for the right stick for a cane for my husband,” she said.

“Good luck,” I said.

I turned back toward the falcon. Gone.

This disappointed me. I wanted to tell the woman about the falcon and let her marvel as I had.

A man carrying a Santa Claus bag full of empty cans and bottles over his shoulder eats a vanilla Popsicle in 101-degree heat.

A man with red hair, wearing pink shorts and an orange t-shirt panhandles with a cardboard sign in the median of a busy boulevard.

A man sleeps with his feet up in an abandoned recliner on a street corner.

A man sleeps on piles of bagged manure compost in front of a grocery store.

A man dressed like one of the Ramones plays a Ramones song on a boombox strapped around his shoulder.

A woman argues with a full shopping cart full of shit she’s pushing across a busy intersection. The shopping cart is apparently a real bastard.

A tall man wearing the leather and chain outfit of a bondage master bicycles in 102-degree heat with an attached cart full of shit. Taped to the back of the cart is a sign declaring he needs $80 to make rent. Considering the outfit, need for money and mobility, I took the sign as an advertisement for an impromptu, quickie S&M session to pay the rent.

I arrived early at a public tennis court to prep for a lesson I would give to my ex wife’s son. I hadn’t taught anyone tennis in over two decades, but wasn’t worried; it was like riding a bicycle.

My ex had called me and asked a favor: would I teach him how to play? He needed to get out more, get active. The Pandemic had driven him largely indoors and he struggled with his fitness.

I was happy to assist and continue the gospel of tennis, once a great and free recreational pastime in America, but now largely gone from our cultural life.

It was an overcast morning. I parked my car alongside a park. Across the street, in front of a brick grade school, a food giveaway was underway and the line was long. Many people waiting to receive food looked like they were living outdoors.

In all my long years of playing tennis, I had never played in view of a food line.

I carried rackets and a bucket of balls inside the fence and beheld the courts: cracked here and there, but the nets were decent and regulation height. I also beheld a bedraggled and bearded man sleeping flat on his back against the fence. He had some meager possessions around him, a bottle of water, and a vaping pen the size of hatchet.

In all my long years of playing tennis, I’d never played where a man was asleep on a court.

But this is Portland, Oregon, America, 2021, so, you roll with it. Anyone for tennis?

My ex showed up with her son. We started with some simple coordination drills and orientation to the court. As I suspected, just like riding a bicycle.

We moved onto basic forehand instruction and the kid showed promise. He also seemed to be enjoying himself and responded well to my coaching.

At one point, a father with rackets and a can of tennis approached the courts with his young daughter in tow. The other court was open. The father saw the man asleep and turned his daughter around and began walking away. I caught her protesting but didn’t hear his response. I would given 50 bucks to hear it.

The lesson was winding down. The kid only whacked three balls over the fence and managed just one errant shot in the direction of the sleeping man. The ball crashed against the fence a sliver over his head, and he sort of grunted, then went back to the land of Nod or wherever he was at that moment. Is it really sleep if you’re sleeping on a public tennis court with all your possessions around you? There must be another word for it.

My ex’s kid thanked me profusely and was game for another lesson. He said it was FUN! I told him that would be great, but he had to practice on his own at least once before our next lesson. He agreed. Then I gave him a racket and the bucket of balls and told him good luck and keep that arm straight and get your racket back. That’s all good tennis really is, and one other little thing—you got to move your ass.

I walked down a sloped sidewalk on a weekday morning. The sun was out and heating up the big city.

Something above me, in the parking lot of a sushi restaurant, arrested my attention. I stopped and looked up and saw a young woman atop a dumpster emptying the contents of a coffee carafe. Then she dropped the carafe in the dumpster and jumped off into some shrubbery. A seconds later she materialized onto the sidewalk a few feet away from me.

She dressed in a black sports bra, black yoga pants and black boots. Her black hair was covered with a green and white paisley bandanna. She wore heart-shaped, rose-tinted sunglasses. She twitched the unmistakable vibe of a meth miscreant happy with the prospect of potential mayhem.

The woman paid me no mind. She hustled over to a public electric scooter that was laden with an astonishing amount of gear ingeniously strapped to the scooter with rope and bungee cords. She strapped on a backpack, fired up the scooter, and also fired on some audio device because music instantly blasted out of speaker stashed somewhere in her gear.

I heard a rapper rap: My dick is hard as an elephant’s ivory tusk.

The woman rapped along with the song and rocketed the scooter out into the street. I watched her zig and zag and weave and wind behind a car. I heard her rap about a hard dick as she zoomed away out of sight.

I laughed. How could I not? Wherever she was going, she appeared a lot happier than I felt, but I was now just a bit happier. Elephants are like that.

I am sitting outside a new Sellwood coffee joint, one that dedicates some of its profits to the welfare of shelter dogs. I’ll drink my iced coffee to that!

It’s pushing 90 degrees. The interior of the joint boasts a good vibe with the usual suspects on tablets and phones. Unfortunately, there is no reading material present for a patron to pick up and read. Is reading material ever coming back to coffee joints?

Give this place 200 years and it may vaguely resemble a European street corner in the old part of the city.

I just wrote a letter to a friend in a distant city.

It’s pretty low key around me as I write this. Nevertheless, the pandemic rages on and I canceled my writing workshop that would have taken place today.

Everyone around here is complying with the mask mandate. Elsewhere, morons wave flags and pitchforks. It’s hard to believe that people will die from attending a rock or country music festival. And they weren’t even shot!

This could be a good spot to write this fall and winter if I had anything to write.

People and their dogs pass by me. They are shopping or heading to and from restaurants.

After writing this in my notebook, I have nothing left to do all day except cook dinner for Dad.

I’ll probably finish the Upton Sinclair biography I started reading yesterday. He has to be one of the more peculiar American writers who ever lived. He wrote 90 books! He was a ranked tennis player! He was a socialist! He concocted literary hoaxes and sham controversies to promote his books! He ran for Governor of California!

Earlier this morning, I bicycled through the homeless encampment near the park. It had grown by another RV and another van. Whatever goes on there is beyond my comprehension. Still, I try comprehending. Maybe that’s the whole point of my writing about it. Comprehension = Incomprehension. Maybe that’s the theme of the book about the homeless I am marinating in my mind.

Who says you have to write about something to make sense of it? How about writing on a subject as an act to not understand a damn thing and thereby settling the nerves? What an interesting theory.