A Knife's Tale

We've been picking apples from the same tree for a few weeks. My little boy loves the experience of picking "funny butt-shaped apples" and chewing them. It's great for his teeth, jaws, gut, everything. But he eats so many that he gets tired and started to swallow large pieces that we find in his poop. So I loaded a pocket knife into the stroller accessory rack. A place where used tissues, apple cores, bottles, snacks, receipts, and keys share a small grimy pocket. Not any knife.

I was out for my green card biometrics appointment in the east-east bay, close to the coliseum where dumping areas and homeless camps puncture the landscape of storage facilities and other industrial buildings. I went on my bike because, oddly enough, there is a « bike-friendly » path from Berkeley to this area where zoning law seems not to apply. I added a 1h buffer to the Google map estimate. By way of slow meanderings, I stopped in one of the estuary vista points mini-parks. The knife was found while looking for a nice photo composition. At the time, I was knee-deep in Instagram, constantly looking for a nice frame or good light, especially when in a new place, leading me to dodgy spots like this one. It clearly was abandoned by someone who used it, not to slice apples. I won't try to poetically elude to the amount of drug-use-related artifacts I encountered in the bay. I'm uneasy about picking up free, abandoned, or trashed stuff, yet I'm too cheap and now okay enough with being a weirdo doing it. I took the pocket knife while hearing in my head my wife speculating about what it could be covered in or was used for. I cleaned it thoroughly and relegated it to my bike tool kit where it remained until this week.

I can't remove the images of manly, handy tacticool, everyday-carry enthusiast guys. In my narrow mind, this is the majority of knife-carrying people. I hope to be wrong but discomfort with the association is undeniable. It’s similar to the weirdness of picking up stuff from the side of the road, or apples from someone's garden to that effect. My feelings regarding navigating mundane stigmas like these occupy my ego a lot. Right now my social role is being a dad. It's not incompatible but it takes dedication to own one's quirks. In the case of the knife, it means working through the side eye as I'm yelling at my kid shoving a massive chunk of apple in his mouth while doing gestures with a knife I'm cleaning using a dirty bib. Or many other weird looks from moms at the park as I cut a slice when everyone eats stuff out of a bag. There are so many, tiny situations where this trivial detail adds just enough friction for the feeling of inadequacy to quick in. That builds character.

I had fun trying to explain to my 2-year-old that this knife is from the same place he was born. Oakland has for me a Harmonica-like quality. The mere experience of it didn’t feel particularly nice but the memory has a golden nostalgic glow. The streets of Oakland are dodgy and grimy, affirming a strong and unique character. Also, more rarely, charming, artsy, and sometimes gross. Public transport and parks often felt like disgusting pits of dust, piss, and other substances. I met my wife there. We both got our bikes stolen there. I did awesome golden hour rides in the hills. We witnessed a drive-by shooting. All in a 3-mile radius. Oakland is a cloud of memories blurring in a blues-like feeling.

← Index / Published on 2024-10-26