Outside of the Gathering, there is another group that I stumbled across around the same time the pandemic broke out, and that is the Drum Circle that meets Sunday night.  While the Gathering attracts ghosts who want to work through their issues and resolve their afflictions, the Drum Circle draws most of the poltergeists in the area, who are just looking to party and have a good time.  I feel at ease in both circles, but don’t know many of the poltergeists by name since they are often incapacitated and can be extremely antisocial.

The first time I happened upon the Drum Circle I was mesmerized by the beat and wanted to participate.  The only thing I could think of to do was to dance, strut, and point at the drummers.  They knew what I was talking about.  The next time I showed up, I dropped some gravel into a plastic coke bottle, screwed the lid on, and began to shake it like a maraca.  At last, I got my hands on a black djembe drum, never tightening the head, instead just thumping out the same low tone.

The second evening of the US Open, there was a smaller crowd of drummers than usual holding down their corner of the plaza.  Most of the hardcore regulars were there.  As far as poltergeists, I recognized one they call Big Steve, wearing a blue nylon over his face and playing a bass drum.  The Wizard was there, twirling a stick with a roll of paper streaming from the end of it, casting a spell over the proceedings.  Susan, a ghost from Gathering, showed up with Mark the Shark.  That probably meant bad news but I didn’t know her that well.  On one of the backwalls the White Rastafarian stood, screaming his head off in time to the music, that being his signature expression.

There was too much rhythm and too little beat, so everything felt off and disjointed.  I began to feel very alone, so got on the Cruiser as the sun was setting over the sea, and headed north on the bike trail.  At the Dog Beach I ran into Ezra, the dark prophet of the Gallows surf crew.  He was hunched over the railing, glaring into the sunset, the whiskers spouting from his face, which was drawn up like a shrunken apple.  He was contemplating the end of the world as he’d been known to do.

Ezra had been rooting for the destruction of society half of his life, yet here it continued to prosper all around him, and he remained squatting in his van, preaching mostly to his dog.   In a similar way, I had counted on the system being too wicked to survive.  Yet the winners continued to win while I sat playing my ukulele on the pier to no one. 

If there is justice in the world, where is the evidence?   The game that we’d been taught as kids was too rigged to want to play.  Still, Ezra reminded me that it could be worse.  How was that, I wondered. 

We could be in San Bernardino.