THEFT: OCTOBER 1994

I was walking on the Coastal trail near Earthquake Park with blond granola punk Peggy looking for edible mushrooms. The leaves are down, brown, deep cool grey settles on the grey soil. In the dells of shoulders of clay formed by the earthquake lie dark brown pools of perfectly still water. We surf up along the stationary clay waves. We're talking lightly, eyes glued down, carrying plastic grocery bags of mushrooms. Peggy tells the story of her conservative, elderly mother accidently making soup for her out of the far too interesting kind of mushrooms, and watching in growing amazement, on the edge of panic, as her father, a former Republican legislator, her, and mom, begin tripping, star trails brightening the kitchen.

We break the birch grove at the coast and a slick grey form appears prone at high tideline, the size and weight of a human body. It makes no sense for several seconds, it was once alive, familiar and alien, in the first stages of decomposition. It has fins, but wrong, neither fish nor fowl, impossible to recognize, then: the corpse of baby beluga whale. It is a robbery of happiness.