MacArthur Park

As I was walking to work, late as usual, I passed an apartment complex, and out of a pavilion in the yard where there was a fitness center, emerged my old girlfriend holding two fuzzy balls.  I took one of them from her and continued.. When I arrived at the office, my co-worker Keith was humming a tune that sounded familiar but I was unable to name it, and only remembered that it was some schlocky ballad.

"How can you sing such trash?" I asked,"I bet you also listened to Rod McKuen!"

He  replied, "You ought to visit me, I'll play you some good music".

Another co-worker joined us. What was her name?

Just then my old girlfriend came in and remembered the title of the song Keith was humming, "MacArthur Park".

I handed Keith the fuzzy ball saying, "This is from MacArthur Park, my old girlfriend gave it to me, I loved her when we were young and she didn't want me, and I still love her when  we're old, and she still doesn't want me."

We walked away and my old girlfriend asked," Why didn't you introduce us?"

"Because I momentarily forgot Keith's name and didn't know that woman's name. I happens to me all the time."

"Don't worry," she said, "It happens to me too."

I then remembered that she had been in a horrible automobile accident, her face was smashed and surgeons transplanted her Donald Duck's face.  But I still loved her.

Literary Dreams

A colleague working at a remote office has requested that we provide him with photographs of the inner workings of the letter 'Y'.   He is convinced that there are wires inside the letter.  It was news to me and I consulted my co-workers as well as the boss.   I learned that there isn't anything inside letter 'Y', but that several letters of the alphabet do indeed contain things. For example, one of the letters, I don't recall which at the moment, contains garlic.   This morning I composed a polite letter to our remote colleague explaining the situation.

Argentinian Threads

I have been watching on Netflix an Argentinian soap opera-mystery  and last night after seeing episode 5, I noticed the uncommon complexity and depth of the plot.  There are two principal characters and about six main characters and as many regular supporting characters.  The two principal characters each pursue their projects one of which converges in this episode, while at the same time we follow the plot threads of the remaining six main characters who are in one way or another related to one of the principal characters. You'd think that following the plot and subplots would be annoying and confusing but the series flows smoothly and engagingly.

I compare this to a Scandinavian mystery series I saw recently where there are half as many characters and the story could not be more confusing (as noted by several viewers in  the series' reviews.)  This is because much happens offscreen and is described by the onscreen characters referring to the absent characters  whose names are confusing enough to the viewer.

Hong Kong

I found myself visiting Hong Kong in this dream, where three girlfriends and one male friend awaited me, none of them Chinese, and all wishing to move to the States with me while I wanted to settle there. My male friend showed me around his tiny apartment, "Typical", he said, which he shared with a young Chinese woman, and while I looked around and up and down wondering how I would fit all my books, computers and jeans into such small space, were I decide to stay in Hong Kong and rent a "typical" dwelling, he confessed that he was there illegally, without a visa, but that he was safe from the authorities in this neighbourhood.

Lana Del Rey

I dreamt that I was a attorney with celebrities, movie stars and popular singers as clients.  One time, songstress Lana Del Ray phoned me asking for an appointment.  I told her that I wan't taking on new clients.  The next day I walk into my suite and my secretary Kate tells me that Lana Del Rey is waiting in my office.

"She can't sing!", adds Kate.
"With a stage name like that, she doesn't have to," I say, "I told her over the phone that I couldn't see her. What's the story?"

Kate has done her homework.

"She insisted," says Kate.  "Apparently, she broken up with her manager Hem Schneider, who stole millions from her, won a lawsuit against him, and she's up for a new contract with the record company."

"Hem?"

"Herman"

"As in Herman's Hermits?  With a name like that you can only be a manager.'

I walk into my office.   She's sitting cross-legged, short dress barely covering inches of her upper thighs.  Baby face, ton of make-up. Definitely not my type.

"Miss Lana, as I have told you I am not accepting new clients."

I sit down behind my desk, she uncrosses her legs.  She is not wearing panties.  I've seen that weapon before.

"You can call me Liz," she says (Her birth name is or was Elizabeth Woolridge). I am about to start recording a new album Produced by S. who recommended that I speak to you."

S. is a client, an old friend and an accomplished producer who's worked with Tina Turner, Mick Jagger and many others. Maybe he's decided that Lana can sing after all.

"Very well then, Lana, eh, Liz, what kind of legal work do you need?  And let me state in the beginning that I won't take any case having to do with your past."

"I need a management contract and a review of a record contract," says Lana.

Silence

I got silence on my radio,

Let the airwaves flow,

Let the airwaves flow

I spent a day in silence - spoke to no one, heard no one speak.  I heard traffic noises, dogs barking, children arguing outside, fire engine siren in the distance, and silence.

Silence is different for different people in different situation. Poet and singer Leonard Cohen went to a silent Buddhist retreat somewhere in the mountains of California.  While he was there his trusted accountant emptied his bank accounts.  When he emerged, Leonard Cohen was bankrupt.

Silence is not golden.  When I  served at a grand jury, one of the eighteen jurors stayed silent during the entire proceedings which lasted two weeks.  He served his civic duty, but no government could force him to speak.  At one time,  I was ordered to remain silent when encountering a certain work colleague.  It took me some time to learn to stay silent during business team meetings.

I think of people I have known who have stayed silent with me for decades, and those I've stayed silent with.   Some I'd wish to hear from, others not.  Who's wishing to hear from me, if anyone? Some punish you by keeping silent. That's all right, I get it.

Horrible Persons

I'm looking at the other  screen in front of me showing a photograph taken a hundred years ago of a marketplace in some provincial European town that I couldn't for the life of me place on a map.  Trucks, dirt, roofs of sellers' stands - the camera  is stationed overhead, we can't see what's being sold - people milling about, some of them looking back at the cameraman, a lost world.  All long dead by now.

I once made a similar comment about another old photograph, and was met with somebody's instant reaction, "You're a horrible person, if that's the first though that comes to your mind". Well, it wasn't and it isn't the first thought, but I do think that it is horrible to call somebody a "horrible person" for making such innocuous  observations.

There are so many photographs taken today everywhere you go that it isn't likely many of them will be as fascinating to people one hundred years from now as the ones from a hundred years ago.  And no one looks back at the cameraman as they did then.   This world will be lost too, though.

But I and many others I know more or less, are deemed "horrible persons" today to members of their families, to their friends, or I should say former friends for exercising their right to vote in recent elections, and voting not according to the way these friends and family members expected them to vote.  There is a large contingent of self-appointed moralizers, church ladies on high horses, saintly do-gooders, ideologues of Utopia, all  wagging fingers and condemning others to hell for voting the way they voted.  All of them, as far as I can tell, from among the educated classes.

A commentator I read yesterday says we are in the start of a Second Civil War in America.  I'm betting on horrible persons.