The Albany Landfill brings out the best in most people. And it's because we make our own rules out there, our own imaginations guide our steps and the eccentric in us has room to move and breathe.
There's Osha, my friend and comrade in the battle to save the Albany Bulb or landfill or waterfront or whatever you want to call it from the machinations of the State Park system and the park planners who never met an open space they didn't think they could improve on by 'developing' is as a 'park'. Osha Neumann is a civil rights attorney who has devoted his life to representing the under-man and woman - the poor, the disposesessed, the disposed, the homeless, the activist.
And Osha is one of the artists who has transformed the Bulb with his hands through reclaimed metal and wood found on the landfill and made sculptures of dragons and birds, dogs and warrior women and fishermen reclining. For years he painted alongside the four artists in Sniff, whose large paintings on found surfaces were described as inappropriate for a 'family park' by the same park planners who thought 'interpretive signs' and picnic areas were a good idea. Whose family were they talking about? Osha engaged once in a lengthy discussion with a man at the landfill who destroyed some of the art because he thought it satanic and erected a large cross at the tip of the Bulb in an effort to redress the imbalance.
There's Tom, also an attorney, who would come to the Bulb at the end of the day and collect all the bicycle parts and car hub caps and metal objects he found and constructed an astonishing sculture wall, to which visitors would add their own finds. These days Tom can be found deep among the fennel and rose bushes extracting metals, which Mark then collects and takes as scrap to the metal recycling yards in town earning enough to feed himself. For those of us who live and breathe with the landfill there is just a hint of smile as people remove metals from a landfill to recycle.
And Mark, who built the castle, an homage to Rocky and Bulwinkle, overlooking the Bay to San Francisco has had to abandon his maintenance on his magnificent achievement. Vandals and taggers have so defaced and disrespected his creation that he no longer tries to upkeep the paint job or the front patio. Recently a tagger painted a massive penis on the turret, a glob of machismo waving at us as a reminder that even here in our unregulated park there is no refuge from the domination of the stupid.
Jimbo, who has lived on the landfill on and off for 15 years, still invites visitors into his home, the Albany Free Library, where people can bring or borrow books. Sarah and Richard recently had to have their beautiful dog Rowdy put to sleep, Amber passes me on the trails on her bike heading home. They are all part of the neighborhood on the landfill, and I love them for the friendship they show me.
Dog walkers, bird watchers, bicyclists, groups of teens hiding their spray cans under their jackets, school outings, fisherman, artists, residents, and the increasing number of 'tourists' mingle on this magnificent place of wild imagination and every day brings a new view, a stone moved by a visitor, a new bird I've never seen and I bring my own eccentric habit. There is a huge concrete box - who knows what it might have been in it's former life in a building on land - and every year during the rains it fills to the brim. As the weeks go by and spring melds into summer, the water greens and mosquitoes begin to hatch. Walking in that area of the landfill always means a tangle of the buzzing insects. I decided to fill the box with rocks and dirt so the next year there will be no breeding ground for these nasty creatures. So, in the evenings my dogs lay around in the grasses while I go about my little task, carrying rocks and stones and hurling them into what seems a bottomless pit. For half an hour I play like a little boy watching the splashes and hearing the splat of the rocks. It makes me happy.
As the state presents it's solution to the economic crisis it has plunged us into, and closing our park is on the list, I contemplate the beauty of the most simple of pleasures, and the joy of eccentricity.
That second picture, which I have seen several times here on your blog, has always taken my breath away. I would give anything to see it in person.
Posted by: nina | June 04, 2009 at 11:40 AM