What do you do with a premonition? I think I didn't even know the word for a long time, using its synonyms, hunch, foreboding, omen, rarely portent, more often suspicion, and never to any such apprehensions that I myself felt, because I never had them, only others reported such things, some of them close to me, most elsewhere, in newspapers, television or books.
One dictionary definition (and there are several with subtle but significant differences) has 'premonition' meaning . "a strong feeling that something is about to happen, esp. something unpleasant." (the 'especially unpleasant' part doesn't figure in all definitions.)
It just happened a month or so ago, around the Thanksgiving Day that I had a premonition, and it was not about something 'especially unpleasant', but about something either pleasant or neutral. It hit me strongly and unexpectedly, I don't know why or how - I was awake and perfectly sober at the time, standing in front of the city's Central Post Office and hesitating a minute before dropping into the mailbox some envelopes containing checks or business correspondence, nothing personal anyway. I hesitated trying to remember if I had signed and dated some document or check, I no longer recall.
And it came to me that before the New Year's Day I would receive in the mail Christmas Greetings from an unexpected source, someone I hadn't seen or heard from for years and decades. It wasn't a fantasy, wishful thinking, no one's name came to mind, no speculations, no guesses. I shook it off and forgot about it, the way one forgets most random thoughts and observations.
What do you think happened next? A story must have some point, a pay off, and if we're lucky, even a moral. It's now New Year's Eve, the last day of the year, the postman reaches my house late in the day on his route, after 6, sometimes 7PM, so there is still a chance for the premonition to prove itself, because (if I have to serve it explicitly) nothing happened.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Monday, December 30, 2013
Not Into What I Like
Have you ever tried to change your identity? I don't mean changing your first, last names and the middle initial, no, I mean changing your persona, the way that others will or ought to perceive you. I suppose that joining a mad religious cult or becoming a drug addict on the streets of the city would be changing one's identity, but again, I have in mind a conscious effort to do it.
It's a subject that has fascinated me since childhood. Literature and arts are full of explorations of it: The Count of Monte Cristo, Jekyll and Hyde, Michelangelo Antonioni's Passenger, examples off the top of my head, not even including the novels I've read this year, where in at least three of them this topic dominates or comes up in one way or another in countries such as 18th century France and 21st century North Korea. (Here allow me to recommend Jean Renoir's excellent adaptation of Stevenson's classic, titled Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier, with the great Jean-Louis Barrault.)
It was a marvelous opportunity. My friend James, whose sister married into the family that owned Desmond Industries, alerted me to it. The job was that of a public relations man for the family and for the privately held company. But it required someone from a higher social class than mine. I hadn't gone to the right schools with the right people, didn't speak French or German, only colloquial Puerto Rican Spanish that I had picked up while living in the islands, didn't have the proper manners, and my socks didn't reach my knees. "You can do it," assured me James, whose own sister had climbed the same steps becoming a refined New England princess in the process. It would be like the carefree and clumsy Bertie Wooster trying to become the fine Mr Jeeves, a prole more aristocratic in manner than himself.
And so I bought a navy blue suit, white shirt and red necktie, all for $15 at a Salvation Army store downtown, and I headed to the mansion in Connecticut for the interview with the family. I had prepared myself recalling from high school all the Latin sayings and cliches, and looking up some French proverbs, as well as a handful of Russian ones. "No, not the Russian!" warned me James, "That would be going downscale, peasantry and tsars!". After a lookover by a couple of stiff looking servants, I was led to the library and met there by Sylvia, the attractive thirtyish matriarch of the family and chairwoman of the company's board of directors, who I later learned was separated from her husband, an executive there, and her brother Laurent, whose middle initial on the business card he handed me was "D", making me wonder if it stood for Desmond, because their last names were not Desmond, and neither was the last name of the founder of the company one hundred years earlier, but I didn't dare asking.
They described the job and told me that it was being held by Jacques B. a French Canadian, who, after training me, would be leaving in three month's time for Canadian diplomatic service. They asked me a few questions about myself, and I managed to pepper my answers with a few of those Latin and French bon mots which they understood perfectly, before Laurent excused himself saying he had a polo game to attend with writer Jerzy Kosinski. After he left, Sylvia pulled her dress above her knees, and insisted that I join her in a drink of sherry and espresso coffee which were brought on a silver tray by one of the servants.(Yes, there was a button by her chair to ring up a servant.) She asked me if I had read Kosinski, and I had, in contrast to the popular New York writers, whose neurotic topical novels I disdained, and she offered before I said anything that she hated them too, preferring Borges, Cortazar and Cela, the only American I've ever met who read Camilo Jose Cela. I lied and told her that I intended to read Cela in the original Spanish. Then she asked my favorite Mozart symphony, and I said the Haffner, which happened to play on the radio as I was driving there, "Especially the second movement", and I hummed the melody for her. "Yes, the Haffner!" she exclaimed, and I figured she must have been listening to the same station.
I was hired for a month long trial period, which suggested to me that they would be testing two more candidates before Jacques' departure in three months. They gave me a cash advance to fill my wardrobe, I bought suits and shirts and neckties, returning the sales receipts as requested.
Jacques turned out to be a pleasant chap, and a character I figured I'd have to emulate to succeed at this job. I aped his relaxed manner, his half-smile and his light joke making, suppressing as well as I could my usual crude habits, backslapping and "a man walks into a bar with a crocodile" jokes, while we traveled to Washington where we met both Senators from the state, and to New York where we spoke with the mayor. No hard bargains were made with the politicians, just casual conversations about the weather and sports (I needed to catch up on baseball knowledge), but however obliquely they were discussed, there were deals, favors, and promised contributions to re-election campaigns. "Don't ever mention or even think the word 'bribe'!" told me Jacques after one visit, "We're not in Paraguay!" He had an office at the company headquarters, and a salary paid by the company, but he reported to Sylvia. He assured me that I wasn't to be overly concerned with the internal politics between the company and the family. "Easy does it," he advised.
I was acquiring a new identity. My girlfriend Marilyn confirmed it shortly before the month passed, telling me:
"You've changed!"
"Well, thank you very much, my dear lady," I replied.
"Not into what I like!", she retorted. She used those exact words, which I've retained in memory all those years, 'not into what I like!'
Her worries would soon be over, as after a month I was thanked, paid in cash, tax free, and asked to sign a secrecy agreement. I didn't get the job, and didn't get it two months later after they presumably tried two other candidates. Who got it, I didn't know, and didn't care to know. As to why, James told me, "It was Sylvia!", just as I had suspected. She expected me to make a pass at her, I was certain, and I hesitated, kept postponing, waiting for the right occasion that never arrived. Time was short, and I simply flopped. And then, it was the matter of a test. She tested me once, telling me in confidence that her husband's time at the company was coming to an end. It sounded like I was the only one to know about it. I can keep a secret, and kept it, which was, I figured later, not what she intended me to do. She was hoping (I suspect) that I would share it with James who would spill it to his sister, and then it would take a path that Sylvia had planned for it. I failed. Women test men all the time, often realizing only afterwards that the little intrigue they had concocted was a test, especially when men, clueless as we often are, fail these exams. It's happened to me a number of times, with, as you well know, sometime tragic results for my career and private life.
In any event, I brought the envelope filled with cash home, threw it on the table, sparkling new $100 and $50 bills, and said to Marilyn, "Look baby, I'm unemployed and we're rich, let's go to Disneyworld!" Which is what we did.
It's a subject that has fascinated me since childhood. Literature and arts are full of explorations of it: The Count of Monte Cristo, Jekyll and Hyde, Michelangelo Antonioni's Passenger, examples off the top of my head, not even including the novels I've read this year, where in at least three of them this topic dominates or comes up in one way or another in countries such as 18th century France and 21st century North Korea. (Here allow me to recommend Jean Renoir's excellent adaptation of Stevenson's classic, titled Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier, with the great Jean-Louis Barrault.)
It was a marvelous opportunity. My friend James, whose sister married into the family that owned Desmond Industries, alerted me to it. The job was that of a public relations man for the family and for the privately held company. But it required someone from a higher social class than mine. I hadn't gone to the right schools with the right people, didn't speak French or German, only colloquial Puerto Rican Spanish that I had picked up while living in the islands, didn't have the proper manners, and my socks didn't reach my knees. "You can do it," assured me James, whose own sister had climbed the same steps becoming a refined New England princess in the process. It would be like the carefree and clumsy Bertie Wooster trying to become the fine Mr Jeeves, a prole more aristocratic in manner than himself.
And so I bought a navy blue suit, white shirt and red necktie, all for $15 at a Salvation Army store downtown, and I headed to the mansion in Connecticut for the interview with the family. I had prepared myself recalling from high school all the Latin sayings and cliches, and looking up some French proverbs, as well as a handful of Russian ones. "No, not the Russian!" warned me James, "That would be going downscale, peasantry and tsars!". After a lookover by a couple of stiff looking servants, I was led to the library and met there by Sylvia, the attractive thirtyish matriarch of the family and chairwoman of the company's board of directors, who I later learned was separated from her husband, an executive there, and her brother Laurent, whose middle initial on the business card he handed me was "D", making me wonder if it stood for Desmond, because their last names were not Desmond, and neither was the last name of the founder of the company one hundred years earlier, but I didn't dare asking.
They described the job and told me that it was being held by Jacques B. a French Canadian, who, after training me, would be leaving in three month's time for Canadian diplomatic service. They asked me a few questions about myself, and I managed to pepper my answers with a few of those Latin and French bon mots which they understood perfectly, before Laurent excused himself saying he had a polo game to attend with writer Jerzy Kosinski. After he left, Sylvia pulled her dress above her knees, and insisted that I join her in a drink of sherry and espresso coffee which were brought on a silver tray by one of the servants.(Yes, there was a button by her chair to ring up a servant.) She asked me if I had read Kosinski, and I had, in contrast to the popular New York writers, whose neurotic topical novels I disdained, and she offered before I said anything that she hated them too, preferring Borges, Cortazar and Cela, the only American I've ever met who read Camilo Jose Cela. I lied and told her that I intended to read Cela in the original Spanish. Then she asked my favorite Mozart symphony, and I said the Haffner, which happened to play on the radio as I was driving there, "Especially the second movement", and I hummed the melody for her. "Yes, the Haffner!" she exclaimed, and I figured she must have been listening to the same station.
I was hired for a month long trial period, which suggested to me that they would be testing two more candidates before Jacques' departure in three months. They gave me a cash advance to fill my wardrobe, I bought suits and shirts and neckties, returning the sales receipts as requested.
Jacques turned out to be a pleasant chap, and a character I figured I'd have to emulate to succeed at this job. I aped his relaxed manner, his half-smile and his light joke making, suppressing as well as I could my usual crude habits, backslapping and "a man walks into a bar with a crocodile" jokes, while we traveled to Washington where we met both Senators from the state, and to New York where we spoke with the mayor. No hard bargains were made with the politicians, just casual conversations about the weather and sports (I needed to catch up on baseball knowledge), but however obliquely they were discussed, there were deals, favors, and promised contributions to re-election campaigns. "Don't ever mention or even think the word 'bribe'!" told me Jacques after one visit, "We're not in Paraguay!" He had an office at the company headquarters, and a salary paid by the company, but he reported to Sylvia. He assured me that I wasn't to be overly concerned with the internal politics between the company and the family. "Easy does it," he advised.
I was acquiring a new identity. My girlfriend Marilyn confirmed it shortly before the month passed, telling me:
"You've changed!"
"Well, thank you very much, my dear lady," I replied.
"Not into what I like!", she retorted. She used those exact words, which I've retained in memory all those years, 'not into what I like!'
Her worries would soon be over, as after a month I was thanked, paid in cash, tax free, and asked to sign a secrecy agreement. I didn't get the job, and didn't get it two months later after they presumably tried two other candidates. Who got it, I didn't know, and didn't care to know. As to why, James told me, "It was Sylvia!", just as I had suspected. She expected me to make a pass at her, I was certain, and I hesitated, kept postponing, waiting for the right occasion that never arrived. Time was short, and I simply flopped. And then, it was the matter of a test. She tested me once, telling me in confidence that her husband's time at the company was coming to an end. It sounded like I was the only one to know about it. I can keep a secret, and kept it, which was, I figured later, not what she intended me to do. She was hoping (I suspect) that I would share it with James who would spill it to his sister, and then it would take a path that Sylvia had planned for it. I failed. Women test men all the time, often realizing only afterwards that the little intrigue they had concocted was a test, especially when men, clueless as we often are, fail these exams. It's happened to me a number of times, with, as you well know, sometime tragic results for my career and private life.
In any event, I brought the envelope filled with cash home, threw it on the table, sparkling new $100 and $50 bills, and said to Marilyn, "Look baby, I'm unemployed and we're rich, let's go to Disneyworld!" Which is what we did.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Suffering in the Sunshine
That's the lyric I heard in the infectious happy song I discovered online this past Christmas Day. Or thought I heard it. In fact, as I soon found out, because unfortunately for my piece of mind, the complete lyrics were published on another website, I had misheard it, not the first time to do so, not the only listener mishearing not the only popular song, there are entire websites dedicated to the comedy of misheard song lyrics, people misinterpret song lyrics all the time, which is occasionally the intention of performers, or at other times an unintended consequence of the machinations by the artists of the recording mix, and it seems that the only song lyrics that are always understandable are those that don't make sense, such as for example The Whiter Shade of Pale, or remain forever inscrutable such as the smash hit about (among other things) that cake that someone left out in the rain, for which the singer, we are informed, will never have that recipe again, OH, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...
My song was titled Everything's Fine, and its title was also the first and second line of the refrain, followed by the line that I misunderstood, and contradicting what I thought I heard, you might think, but on the other hand possibly revealing a deep existential insight, however in this case unintentional.
Be that as it may, the actual line reads "Surfing in the sunshine", and the English band's name, which you can also interpret as your heart desires is Phat Bollard.
I'm undecided, a bit misguided
In this rolling wave that's been provided
Which is up, which is down, going round and round
Searching for breath before I drown
Everything's fine
Everything's fine
Surfing in the sunshine
Makes everything fine
(Lyrics: Pat & Aaron)
http://phatbollard.bandcamp.com/track/everythings-fine
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Busking at the Station
Yes, the station was the best stage. And in some ways the worst. Best because of the money, of course. I calculated that if we played there five or six times a week, we could have all quit our day jobs and lived on the tax free donations that were overflowing the guitar case in front of us. My bandmates did not believe me, and we never were able to test this theory as we played the station only twice or thrice a week during my time with the band.
Anyway, it was a popular spot for bands and solo street musicians, jugglers and mimes, and you had to compete for the space. We chose to play the morning crowd, 7 to 9 or 10, when not many other guitar and mandolin wizards were willing to get up at 6 and drag their butts and gear downtown. We played our gig, packed up, and headed for our day jobs. This was the time when flex time was starting to get popular, and you weren't expected to arrive at the office at a certain hour but only before a certain hour. It fit us the working stiffs perfectly.
And the worst, as I said. It seemed that everyone who lived in the city and its suburbs passed through there at one time or another. Not only the passengers of trains arriving every few minutes, but passers-by coming from god only know where crisscrossing the sidewalk in all directions. And tourists during the season. I think I must have said "Hello!" while playing there to everyone I had ever known. Well, the problem was that if you were avoiding the law, bill collectors, ex-wives or your enemies, sooner or later they'd run into you there. And our bass player Bill's adventurous existence happened to include all of the categories I just mentioned.
Bill was a good sport and a clever man, who wasn't going to skip the train station busking because of the dangers he potentially faced there. He appeared wearing a false red beard, wig covered by a hat to make it look like natural hair (he was balding), a jacket with padded shoulders, and shoes on one inch heels with another inch added inside by orthopedic inserts. His new height changed his physical relationship to the bass fiddle, his posture and body movements, he was truly a new man. And it worked. People who knew us, knew his name (I don't know if they were his creditors or enemies), would approach the band between songs asking "Where is Bill?", and we'd make up some excuse saying that he had to babysit his kids, or something, but he was still with the band, and when we felt like pulling his leg, because he was right there listening to us, we'd say that he had a court appearance to attend, or was arrested last night at a 4th Street whorehouse.
In any case, we had an understanding with him that in face of danger, he'd casually and quickly put down the bass, run for his life, while we finished the set and took care of returning his instrument.
What is meant to happen will eventually happen, you can't cheat fate. A man looking like an undercover cop, you learn to read the types after a year or two on the street, stopped to see us one time in front of the station, and he started watching Bill, with just too much of interest for comfort. We finished a song, Bill put down the bass, whispered a word in my ear and walked inside the station. Through the glass door I saw that once inside he took off running. The cop, if that's what he was, hesitated for a spell, turning around to walk after Bill, then turning back to the original position, figuring I guessed that a musician wouldn't abandon his instrument. We kept on playing, and after a couple of songs the man approached me and asked "What happened to the bass player?" "Oh, he had to pee pee, went to the bathroom, will be right back," I told him. But Bill never came back, and the man got tired of waiting and walked away shaking his head.
"He'll be back," I told Bill the next day. What to do? It was Bill's idea. We hired Chuck, another bass player, to sub for Bill, dressed him in Bill's getup, sans the platform shoes, he was taller than Bill, and we set out for the station. Sure enough, the cop, or whoever he was, showed up. He waited patiently for us to finish a set, and then approached Chuck saying, "You are Bill D. and I have a court summons to serve you!"
Startled, Chuck said loudly: "What? I'm no Bill D., get away from me!"
"You are Bill D., I recognize your bass!"
That was a lie or bluff as Chuck was playing his own instrument. For some reason the man hasn't yet pulled out his summons document.
"You're insane, go away!", demanded Chuck.
There was a uniformed cop standing nearby, there is always one in those places, and I waved him over, told him that "This gentleman is harassing our bass player."
The cop, as we were hoping, and as if he were an actor in on the act, asked both of them to produce identification, and of course Chuck pulled out his driver's license, which the policeman read out loud. He told the summons server to get lost and warned him that if he sees him here again he'll have to arrest him.
Anyway, it was a popular spot for bands and solo street musicians, jugglers and mimes, and you had to compete for the space. We chose to play the morning crowd, 7 to 9 or 10, when not many other guitar and mandolin wizards were willing to get up at 6 and drag their butts and gear downtown. We played our gig, packed up, and headed for our day jobs. This was the time when flex time was starting to get popular, and you weren't expected to arrive at the office at a certain hour but only before a certain hour. It fit us the working stiffs perfectly.
And the worst, as I said. It seemed that everyone who lived in the city and its suburbs passed through there at one time or another. Not only the passengers of trains arriving every few minutes, but passers-by coming from god only know where crisscrossing the sidewalk in all directions. And tourists during the season. I think I must have said "Hello!" while playing there to everyone I had ever known. Well, the problem was that if you were avoiding the law, bill collectors, ex-wives or your enemies, sooner or later they'd run into you there. And our bass player Bill's adventurous existence happened to include all of the categories I just mentioned.
Bill was a good sport and a clever man, who wasn't going to skip the train station busking because of the dangers he potentially faced there. He appeared wearing a false red beard, wig covered by a hat to make it look like natural hair (he was balding), a jacket with padded shoulders, and shoes on one inch heels with another inch added inside by orthopedic inserts. His new height changed his physical relationship to the bass fiddle, his posture and body movements, he was truly a new man. And it worked. People who knew us, knew his name (I don't know if they were his creditors or enemies), would approach the band between songs asking "Where is Bill?", and we'd make up some excuse saying that he had to babysit his kids, or something, but he was still with the band, and when we felt like pulling his leg, because he was right there listening to us, we'd say that he had a court appearance to attend, or was arrested last night at a 4th Street whorehouse.
In any case, we had an understanding with him that in face of danger, he'd casually and quickly put down the bass, run for his life, while we finished the set and took care of returning his instrument.
What is meant to happen will eventually happen, you can't cheat fate. A man looking like an undercover cop, you learn to read the types after a year or two on the street, stopped to see us one time in front of the station, and he started watching Bill, with just too much of interest for comfort. We finished a song, Bill put down the bass, whispered a word in my ear and walked inside the station. Through the glass door I saw that once inside he took off running. The cop, if that's what he was, hesitated for a spell, turning around to walk after Bill, then turning back to the original position, figuring I guessed that a musician wouldn't abandon his instrument. We kept on playing, and after a couple of songs the man approached me and asked "What happened to the bass player?" "Oh, he had to pee pee, went to the bathroom, will be right back," I told him. But Bill never came back, and the man got tired of waiting and walked away shaking his head.
"He'll be back," I told Bill the next day. What to do? It was Bill's idea. We hired Chuck, another bass player, to sub for Bill, dressed him in Bill's getup, sans the platform shoes, he was taller than Bill, and we set out for the station. Sure enough, the cop, or whoever he was, showed up. He waited patiently for us to finish a set, and then approached Chuck saying, "You are Bill D. and I have a court summons to serve you!"
Startled, Chuck said loudly: "What? I'm no Bill D., get away from me!"
"You are Bill D., I recognize your bass!"
That was a lie or bluff as Chuck was playing his own instrument. For some reason the man hasn't yet pulled out his summons document.
"You're insane, go away!", demanded Chuck.
There was a uniformed cop standing nearby, there is always one in those places, and I waved him over, told him that "This gentleman is harassing our bass player."
The cop, as we were hoping, and as if he were an actor in on the act, asked both of them to produce identification, and of course Chuck pulled out his driver's license, which the policeman read out loud. He told the summons server to get lost and warned him that if he sees him here again he'll have to arrest him.
Friday, December 27, 2013
River Flow
It was Henry's idea. "I'll get you two back together yet!" he threatened, the eternal optimist. He managed to obtain printed invitations to the premiere of the latest film directed by S., her favorite filmmaker, a film that received an award at the Berlin Film Festival, Silver Bear or something, and on the back of the folded card he wrote inviting her to come see it with us who'll wait for her at the Bertolli's Cafe by the riverside, promising that S. himself will attend the premiere, "us" only implying my presence, he stuck a stamp on the envelope and dropped it in the mailbox. The film, like all foreign films nowadays, wouldn't last a week at a theater. The 60s are over, Americans won't or can't read English subtitles any more
We arrived early at Bertolli's, ordered cappuccinos and waited. 15, 20 minutes, after the appointed time, half hour, she doesn't show up.
"Maybe she's spending the Holidays with her son's family in Berlin," I suggested. Her son, who, as she once informed me, wished mommy would get back together with his father whom she had divorced, was a young brain virtuoso on a semi-permanent diplomatic or CIA connected mission in Germany.
"Holidays are a month away," answered Henry.
It was late afternoon and we still had plenty of time before the movie show. "Let's walk over to her apartment", said Henry. She lived in an apartment on Riverside Drive, not half a mile from Bertolli's. We walked at a fast clip.
"The river flows against us," I observed as if I had just stumbled onto a deep philosophical truth.
"Yeah," replied Henry, "but when we return with her, it'll run with us!"
I rang the doorbell, rang it again, an old man, unshaven, wearing pajamas opened the door. Night worker?
"What?" he said.
Was it her notorious philandering, wandering father? I guess not.
"No, she doesn't live here any more, moved out nine months ago, I don't know where to. Her mail? The post office forwards it, they know the address."
We stepped back on the street and rushed back to Henry's parked Jeep, running faster than the lazy river beside us. S. didn't show at the premiere, only the producer and one of the actors, who, strangely enough, lisped a little, whereas his diction in the film was perfect.
"If she's in Germany," offered Henry, "she'll watch it with German subtitles."
"Or dubbed into German which she doesn't speak!", I added. "That'll teach her!"
"That'll learn 'er!", corrected me Henry in his best Yosemite Sam voice.
We arrived early at Bertolli's, ordered cappuccinos and waited. 15, 20 minutes, after the appointed time, half hour, she doesn't show up.
"Maybe she's spending the Holidays with her son's family in Berlin," I suggested. Her son, who, as she once informed me, wished mommy would get back together with his father whom she had divorced, was a young brain virtuoso on a semi-permanent diplomatic or CIA connected mission in Germany.
"Holidays are a month away," answered Henry.
It was late afternoon and we still had plenty of time before the movie show. "Let's walk over to her apartment", said Henry. She lived in an apartment on Riverside Drive, not half a mile from Bertolli's. We walked at a fast clip.
"The river flows against us," I observed as if I had just stumbled onto a deep philosophical truth.
"Yeah," replied Henry, "but when we return with her, it'll run with us!"
I rang the doorbell, rang it again, an old man, unshaven, wearing pajamas opened the door. Night worker?
"What?" he said.
Was it her notorious philandering, wandering father? I guess not.
"No, she doesn't live here any more, moved out nine months ago, I don't know where to. Her mail? The post office forwards it, they know the address."
We stepped back on the street and rushed back to Henry's parked Jeep, running faster than the lazy river beside us. S. didn't show at the premiere, only the producer and one of the actors, who, strangely enough, lisped a little, whereas his diction in the film was perfect.
"If she's in Germany," offered Henry, "she'll watch it with German subtitles."
"Or dubbed into German which she doesn't speak!", I added. "That'll teach her!"
"That'll learn 'er!", corrected me Henry in his best Yosemite Sam voice.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
The Mansion of Dovetown
On Christmas Eve afternoon, never mind of what year, I prepared myself a glass of eggnog with a dash of Wild Turkey 101, drank it, prepared another one, emptied it as well, and by five in the afternoon, unused to drinking hard liquor, too dizzy to stand up, I had to lie down and take a fast nap.
I dreamt about an old adventure in which I found myself drunk, lost and confused in a city 75 miles from home, wandering its dark streets, unsure how I ever got there. I don't have a car, did I take a bus, train here, and for what purpose? I searched my pockets for a ticket or some other evidence of a journey undertaken. I looked through my little address book for names and telephone numbers of people who lived here. Nothing.
It was a dark and stormy night and I kept walking. Lost. I have never been in this city before. Aha, I suddenly remembered, I arrived here with a pair of friends and another woman, who wasn't keen on me, as I wasn't keen on her, the four of us in the friends' Volkswagen, visiting their friends house, where we drank, listened to music and smoked, when I stepped out to go to a store with instructions on how to find it, and to buy munchies, chips and crackers or pretzels, and somehow I became lost. I passed a few people on the street, but I forgot to note the street of the hosts' house, so what directions and to where could I ask anyone?
I must have been walking in circles - the streets and houses all looked the same, uninterrupted rows of two story tenements that must have been build at the end of the 19th century if not earlier, narrow streets, no cars parked or driving. Are cars forbidden here or are the residents too poor to own them, I asked myself. Anyway, a parked car would have blocked three quarters of the street. A handful of low powered or very old motorbikes stood next to the houses on the sidewalks. If a truck roared through this place, these wooden houses would all crash down. A few small stores were all closed, signs in their windows in foreign languages. And bars. Open and on almost every corner.
There were bars on every corner of the intersection where I finally stopped, and where I thought I had been before a few minutes earlier and a few minutes before that. I decided to go to one of them and get a drink. But which one? I spotted an empty Coca Cola bottle standing up smack in the middle of the intersection. I approached it, leaned down and spun it. It stopped pointing to one of the streets, I spun it again and got the same result. A motorbike passed me, the rider cursing me in Russian. I spun the bottle for the third time, and when it stopped, I set the bottle standing where I had found it and walked into the bar on the corner to which it pointed me.
It was crowded, Friday night, the faces of people told me what I already knew that this was a working class neighbourhood, they were boisterous, friendly, singing in what I thought I recognized as Lithuanian language. Someone handed me a beer can, and I joined in the singing, not understanding a single word. I was reminded of those people you sometimes read in the newspaper about who wake up from a coma speaking perfect French or some other language they never studied or had known.
Someone told me that the bar on the opposite corner outside was Ukrainian, the bar to the left Polish, and the bar to right some other ethnic group, I forget which now. Another watery beer or two and I forgot that I was lost and joined in the revelries like a native Lithuanian.Or Latvian, because to this day I'm not sure the nationality of these revelers. Definitely not Estonian.
The next morning I woke up in the room above the bar, in a wide bed next to some woman. I don't think we had had sex. She served me breakfast, coffee, I thanked her and went out heading straight and without any directions to the bus terminal where I boarded a Trailways bus home. I checked my wallet, my watch on my wrist, no one had robbed me.
I didn't see my friends until Monday afternoon and they weren't angry or concerned about my disappearance, and only casually asked me what had happened. I told them that I ran into a couple of high school friends and followed them to their mansion located in the wealthy section of the city, that somehow or another I knew was called Dovetown. They believed me, or pretended to believe me, better than I pretended to believe my own story myself.
A month or two later, I ran into the woman who had not been keen on me, she was keen on me now, and told me that she had heard the story I told Tim and Kate, our mutual friends, and didn't believe a word of it. I then told her the story I have just told you.
I dreamt about an old adventure in which I found myself drunk, lost and confused in a city 75 miles from home, wandering its dark streets, unsure how I ever got there. I don't have a car, did I take a bus, train here, and for what purpose? I searched my pockets for a ticket or some other evidence of a journey undertaken. I looked through my little address book for names and telephone numbers of people who lived here. Nothing.
It was a dark and stormy night and I kept walking. Lost. I have never been in this city before. Aha, I suddenly remembered, I arrived here with a pair of friends and another woman, who wasn't keen on me, as I wasn't keen on her, the four of us in the friends' Volkswagen, visiting their friends house, where we drank, listened to music and smoked, when I stepped out to go to a store with instructions on how to find it, and to buy munchies, chips and crackers or pretzels, and somehow I became lost. I passed a few people on the street, but I forgot to note the street of the hosts' house, so what directions and to where could I ask anyone?
I must have been walking in circles - the streets and houses all looked the same, uninterrupted rows of two story tenements that must have been build at the end of the 19th century if not earlier, narrow streets, no cars parked or driving. Are cars forbidden here or are the residents too poor to own them, I asked myself. Anyway, a parked car would have blocked three quarters of the street. A handful of low powered or very old motorbikes stood next to the houses on the sidewalks. If a truck roared through this place, these wooden houses would all crash down. A few small stores were all closed, signs in their windows in foreign languages. And bars. Open and on almost every corner.
There were bars on every corner of the intersection where I finally stopped, and where I thought I had been before a few minutes earlier and a few minutes before that. I decided to go to one of them and get a drink. But which one? I spotted an empty Coca Cola bottle standing up smack in the middle of the intersection. I approached it, leaned down and spun it. It stopped pointing to one of the streets, I spun it again and got the same result. A motorbike passed me, the rider cursing me in Russian. I spun the bottle for the third time, and when it stopped, I set the bottle standing where I had found it and walked into the bar on the corner to which it pointed me.
It was crowded, Friday night, the faces of people told me what I already knew that this was a working class neighbourhood, they were boisterous, friendly, singing in what I thought I recognized as Lithuanian language. Someone handed me a beer can, and I joined in the singing, not understanding a single word. I was reminded of those people you sometimes read in the newspaper about who wake up from a coma speaking perfect French or some other language they never studied or had known.
Someone told me that the bar on the opposite corner outside was Ukrainian, the bar to the left Polish, and the bar to right some other ethnic group, I forget which now. Another watery beer or two and I forgot that I was lost and joined in the revelries like a native Lithuanian.Or Latvian, because to this day I'm not sure the nationality of these revelers. Definitely not Estonian.
The next morning I woke up in the room above the bar, in a wide bed next to some woman. I don't think we had had sex. She served me breakfast, coffee, I thanked her and went out heading straight and without any directions to the bus terminal where I boarded a Trailways bus home. I checked my wallet, my watch on my wrist, no one had robbed me.
I didn't see my friends until Monday afternoon and they weren't angry or concerned about my disappearance, and only casually asked me what had happened. I told them that I ran into a couple of high school friends and followed them to their mansion located in the wealthy section of the city, that somehow or another I knew was called Dovetown. They believed me, or pretended to believe me, better than I pretended to believe my own story myself.
A month or two later, I ran into the woman who had not been keen on me, she was keen on me now, and told me that she had heard the story I told Tim and Kate, our mutual friends, and didn't believe a word of it. I then told her the story I have just told you.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Resemblances
The young woman walking towards me on the downtown sidewalk was tall, pretty ('the kind of girl I'd like to meet', as the song says), attractively dressed. Our eyes met when we were still a dozen yards from each other, and I thought I noticed a sign of recognition in hers. Strange, I don't know her. She stopped when we got close, I stopped too, what else could I do, she pulled out a notebook, a pen, and asked if she could have my autograph.
Caught off guard I stammered "Who am I, what name should I sign?" I have been told before more than once or twice that I look like this or that or another famous person, none of them looking like any one of the others, these resemblances residing in the minds of the beholders more than in one's own appearance, so who does she think I look like, and whose name should I sign, Bruce Welch's? I doubt she's heard of Bruce Welch, I doubt many people today have heard of him.
I remembered the time when I was sitting at the bar in the same neighbourhood where we were now, the place was busy, when two men walked in, sat down at a table near the door, the only one available, and one of them, I thought, looked like one of the Righteous Brothers, the tall one, his brother the short one had just died. He and his companion were definitely outoftowners, dressed casually like everyone else around, but unlike the rest of the clientele of workers, bums and students, expensively, Hollywood style. I shared my observation with Bob the bartender, and he immediately ran upstairs to the office to check the Righteous Brothers picture (this was before the iPhone and the iPad were invented for such emergencies), came back after a minute without a solid verdict. "Maybe," he said. An hour or so later, someone, maybe it was Bob, built up the courage to approach the man and ask. "No, I'm not," the Righteous Brother replied and the questioner reported, "But I've been told I look like him."
A defense mechanism used by celebrities to protect their privacy. Maybe that's what I should tell her, I thought. She wasn't much help though. She answered, "Your own, you're the artist!" I signed my own name in her notebook, not any more legibly than I sign it on credit card receipts rushing to leave a grocery store, and I noticed on the page of it handwritten questions about ancient Rome, which just happened to have been the subject of my studies.
"So you are studying Rome?" I asked. She was, and I informed her as humbly as I could that this was my area of expertise.
You meet a girl and before you part, you dare to ask for her telephone number. That's how it usually works, doesn't it. This time, I met a girl, or rather she met me, and before we said 'Goodbye', she asked my telephone number. It's not a fantasy, it happened.
Caught off guard I stammered "Who am I, what name should I sign?" I have been told before more than once or twice that I look like this or that or another famous person, none of them looking like any one of the others, these resemblances residing in the minds of the beholders more than in one's own appearance, so who does she think I look like, and whose name should I sign, Bruce Welch's? I doubt she's heard of Bruce Welch, I doubt many people today have heard of him.
I remembered the time when I was sitting at the bar in the same neighbourhood where we were now, the place was busy, when two men walked in, sat down at a table near the door, the only one available, and one of them, I thought, looked like one of the Righteous Brothers, the tall one, his brother the short one had just died. He and his companion were definitely outoftowners, dressed casually like everyone else around, but unlike the rest of the clientele of workers, bums and students, expensively, Hollywood style. I shared my observation with Bob the bartender, and he immediately ran upstairs to the office to check the Righteous Brothers picture (this was before the iPhone and the iPad were invented for such emergencies), came back after a minute without a solid verdict. "Maybe," he said. An hour or so later, someone, maybe it was Bob, built up the courage to approach the man and ask. "No, I'm not," the Righteous Brother replied and the questioner reported, "But I've been told I look like him."
A defense mechanism used by celebrities to protect their privacy. Maybe that's what I should tell her, I thought. She wasn't much help though. She answered, "Your own, you're the artist!" I signed my own name in her notebook, not any more legibly than I sign it on credit card receipts rushing to leave a grocery store, and I noticed on the page of it handwritten questions about ancient Rome, which just happened to have been the subject of my studies.
"So you are studying Rome?" I asked. She was, and I informed her as humbly as I could that this was my area of expertise.
You meet a girl and before you part, you dare to ask for her telephone number. That's how it usually works, doesn't it. This time, I met a girl, or rather she met me, and before we said 'Goodbye', she asked my telephone number. It's not a fantasy, it happened.
Sunday, December 22, 2013
P.S.
And so, I opened my mouth and said too much (in the previous post.) My cousin read it and wrote me that anything I write now will be suspect.
Imagination Running Away
It was just my imagination,
Running away with me
The Temptations
I continued to make up outlandish stories, and recount them to friends and strangers, more as jokes than ambitious literary exercises. Some of them got away from me (the stories, not the friends and strangers!) and ended up as widely spread rumours and urban legends, which wasn't my intention, most of the time anyway. Imagine when a rumour you yourself started gets back to you in a large metropolis. It's happened.
More recently, with the Internet, and amusing things happening in the world every day, I've been in my element like a fish in the water, inventing tales and passing them on to newer friends and strangers.
I've found that inventing and including one's cousins in such stories helps to increase and assure their credibility. The more detail about this cousin the better for the rest of the story however unbelievable the core of it sounds. During some presidential scandal, for example, I invented a cousin working in the Presidential Executive Office, the building which stands next to the White House, who I said was feeding me juicy information, saying that the President was considering resigning from office. The fish, my audience, swallowed the bait and the story caught on.
Since then, I have acquired cousins on Wall Street, among the Oscar Selection Committee and in other places of power. In reality, my immediate family (parents) has been particularly poor on cousins, effects of war and the global movement of peoples, and the only cousins I do have are distant, ordinary, boring even, except for one woman who's been a source of intrigue, poisonous rumours, all of it motivated by envy or greed, I'm not really sure, and much of it unfortunately quite effective. But that's a story for another evening. My own children anyway are much luckier with numerous cousins from their mother's side.
Did I give away (reveal) too much?
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Dang Me!
"Roger Muller," he would say introducing himself, "As in Roger Miller!" Actually, on his birth certificate he was 'Rodger', his German speaking parents trying perhaps to Americanize 'Rudger'. Still, he signed himself 'Roger'. At the time the singer Roger Miller was still alive, appearing on television, even if the prime time when his songs ruled the charts had passed. And Muller identified himself with Miller, even looked a bit like him and shared some of Roger Miller's talents for word play and rhyme. That's how we became friends, as fans of Roger Miller, and immediately after the introduction, he proceeded to tell me the legend of Roger Miller, which I am going to repeat now before getting to the core of my story about Rodger.
In the late 1950s Roger Miller was hired by a Nashville music publisher as a staff songwriter. That was a common practice in those days (remember the Brill Building?) songwriters in publishers' offices churning out tunes which the latter would pitch to performers. It was an orderly system, the songwriters could concentrate on songwriting, while the publishers took care of the sales, and the performers could count on quality, and sometimes received merchandise (songs) custom made for them. In today's chaotic environment (are there still staff songwriters?) songwriters are on their own to peddle their products, and performers are often bombarded by materials from too many unfiltered sources.
Anyway, young Roger (Miller) was composing songs that went nowhere, unoriginal moon-June-spoon stuff, while at the same time walking around the office and singing to himself silly kindergarten rhymes. Then one day, the publisher suggested to Roger to write songs out of these nonsensical ditties, and that is how Roger got started as one of the prime songwriters and performers in Nashville. And that's how we got this:
Roses are red and violets are purple
Sugar is sweet and so is maple syrple.
I'm the seventh out of seven sons
My pappy was a pistol
I'm a son of a gun.
CHORUS:
Dang me, dang me
They oughta take a rope and hang me
High from the highest tree
Woman would you weep for me.
And this:
My uncle used to love but she died
A chicken ain't chicken 'til it's licken good and fried
Keep on the sunny side
My uncle used to love me but she died
Roger Muller shared Roger Miller's talent for punning and inventive rhyming. And that's how he and I began to amuse ourselves and our mates with puns and rhymes, writing together limericks and short ditties on the subjects at hand, that is whatever crossed our path on a given day, from the radio, television news, or newspapers. We didn't discriminate, and we didn't avoid any topics, and our sometime hangman's humour got us in hot water on occasion when we mocked some politician's or celebrity's demise.
Then there was an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the President of the United States. I came up with the seed, the first line, and Roger filled in the rest of the limerick which ended with a vague suggestion that the next attempt might meet with success.
Someone who heard our creation apparently did not appreciate its sophisticate irony, and soon thereafter Roger, or since this was an official occasion, Rodger, was made to entertain a visit from two dour faced, suited gentlemen of the Secret Service. He managed to weasel out of the situation, and later reported to me that he hadn't realized that the Secret Service worked so far from Washington, and that he saved my butt, as he put it. And it's a good thing too, since I already had a file with the FBI.
Unless Roger, wherever he is now, wrote down and stored our work somewhere, it is all lost to the history of fine literature.
In the late 1950s Roger Miller was hired by a Nashville music publisher as a staff songwriter. That was a common practice in those days (remember the Brill Building?) songwriters in publishers' offices churning out tunes which the latter would pitch to performers. It was an orderly system, the songwriters could concentrate on songwriting, while the publishers took care of the sales, and the performers could count on quality, and sometimes received merchandise (songs) custom made for them. In today's chaotic environment (are there still staff songwriters?) songwriters are on their own to peddle their products, and performers are often bombarded by materials from too many unfiltered sources.
Anyway, young Roger (Miller) was composing songs that went nowhere, unoriginal moon-June-spoon stuff, while at the same time walking around the office and singing to himself silly kindergarten rhymes. Then one day, the publisher suggested to Roger to write songs out of these nonsensical ditties, and that is how Roger got started as one of the prime songwriters and performers in Nashville. And that's how we got this:
Roses are red and violets are purple
Sugar is sweet and so is maple syrple.
I'm the seventh out of seven sons
My pappy was a pistol
I'm a son of a gun.
CHORUS:
Dang me, dang me
They oughta take a rope and hang me
High from the highest tree
Woman would you weep for me.
And this:
My uncle used to love but she died
A chicken ain't chicken 'til it's licken good and fried
Keep on the sunny side
My uncle used to love me but she died
Roger Muller shared Roger Miller's talent for punning and inventive rhyming. And that's how he and I began to amuse ourselves and our mates with puns and rhymes, writing together limericks and short ditties on the subjects at hand, that is whatever crossed our path on a given day, from the radio, television news, or newspapers. We didn't discriminate, and we didn't avoid any topics, and our sometime hangman's humour got us in hot water on occasion when we mocked some politician's or celebrity's demise.
Then there was an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the President of the United States. I came up with the seed, the first line, and Roger filled in the rest of the limerick which ended with a vague suggestion that the next attempt might meet with success.
Someone who heard our creation apparently did not appreciate its sophisticate irony, and soon thereafter Roger, or since this was an official occasion, Rodger, was made to entertain a visit from two dour faced, suited gentlemen of the Secret Service. He managed to weasel out of the situation, and later reported to me that he hadn't realized that the Secret Service worked so far from Washington, and that he saved my butt, as he put it. And it's a good thing too, since I already had a file with the FBI.
Unless Roger, wherever he is now, wrote down and stored our work somewhere, it is all lost to the history of fine literature.
Friday, December 20, 2013
Hands and Shoes
It wouldn't be correct to say that the reason John and I became friends was our shoe problem. It was something we shared, yes, like we shared our love for the records of Captain Beefheart and for Anchor Steam beer before it became known across the country. At the time we both worked for a company which had its headquarters at the heart of the city's financial district, even though it wasn't a financial concern but an agricultural. We worked in the department called Data Processing, a name sounding archaic today, and since changed in most American corporations at least twice, first to MIS - Management Information Systems , and then to IT - Information Technology.
The company had a strict dress code - white or light colored shirts, neckties, pressed slacks, no jeans or khaki trousers, jackets (which could be taken off while in the office) or suits, and shiny leather shoes. This was before Wall Street invented so-called Casual Dress Fridays. Our, John and mine, shoe problem was with the leather shoes. Due to perhaps the shape of our feet, I still don't know the reason, we could never break in a pair of those hard leather shoes that businessmen and lawyers wear. They scraped, hurt our feet, and we suffered having to wear them long before we met and started working for the company.
To cope with the problem and still keep our jobs we first began storing in our desks a second pair of shoes, comfortable sneakers, which we would put on before going out of the office during lunch hour. Then, Reebok and other sports shoes companies introduced black walking shoes, soft leather tops, rubber soles, and we started wearing them at all times, and getting away with it. Walking the street in the financial district, the stockbrokers and other suited stiffs passing us gave us contemptuous looks. We didn't care.
As I said, we got away with it at the office, but John did not fare as well at home. His fiancee and roommate was a tall Ukrainian beauty named Eva, who once won a Miss title of her state which was Iowa, Kansas or some other agribusiness state, I no longer remember which, where she grew up on her parents farm. Eva did not approve of John's sneakers. Her father, she told us, always dressed up to the nines, on Sundays when the family went to church, or whenever he traveled to town to meet with lawyers, government officials or business people. He taught her that you can tell everything you need to know about a man by looking at his shoes.
She forced John to wear his wingtips whenever they went out to restaurants, theater or the symphony hall. I often accompanied them, alone or with a date, and I remember one time when we had to stop at a drugstore on the way to town to buy a package of wide Band Aids for John's bleeding feet. He walked wearing those shoes like a man who had been crippled by some childhood disease. I would on such occasions wear a jacket, colorful patterned shirt, fresh unfaded blue jeans, and white tennis sneakers. During the intermission at the symphony hall Eva pretended that "we don't know this guy". John tried explaining to her that I was "bohemian", but I don't think she understood the word.
She worked as a model, mostly hands model as a matter of fact, owing to the beautiful and photogenic pair of hands with long fingers and no skin blemishes. This was the time when mountain biking was becoming popular, and John bought two bicycles and spent sunny weekends biking the trails in the hills with Eva. One time she wiped out and badly hurt her left hand. Stitches, healing time, scars, her modeling career on hold, Eva blamed John for the mishap, and John blamed himself. She eventually broke off the engagement, and moved back to Iowa, Kansas, or whatever state she was from. John was brokenhearted, and I could do little to cheer him up.
Eventually he recovered, and two or so years later he showed me an ad in a running magazine showing a pair female hands handling expensive running shoes. He said, "Look, those are Eva's hands, she's back in business!"
Eva's shoe rules and the drama surrounding them seemed amusing to me for a long time, until I experienced something similar many years later when a lady friend told me that "real men" wear socks that reach their knees, and I just didn't measure up with my half calf assortment of socks. And to this day, seeing advertisements picturing female hands I wonder every time if they are Eva's.
The company had a strict dress code - white or light colored shirts, neckties, pressed slacks, no jeans or khaki trousers, jackets (which could be taken off while in the office) or suits, and shiny leather shoes. This was before Wall Street invented so-called Casual Dress Fridays. Our, John and mine, shoe problem was with the leather shoes. Due to perhaps the shape of our feet, I still don't know the reason, we could never break in a pair of those hard leather shoes that businessmen and lawyers wear. They scraped, hurt our feet, and we suffered having to wear them long before we met and started working for the company.
To cope with the problem and still keep our jobs we first began storing in our desks a second pair of shoes, comfortable sneakers, which we would put on before going out of the office during lunch hour. Then, Reebok and other sports shoes companies introduced black walking shoes, soft leather tops, rubber soles, and we started wearing them at all times, and getting away with it. Walking the street in the financial district, the stockbrokers and other suited stiffs passing us gave us contemptuous looks. We didn't care.
As I said, we got away with it at the office, but John did not fare as well at home. His fiancee and roommate was a tall Ukrainian beauty named Eva, who once won a Miss title of her state which was Iowa, Kansas or some other agribusiness state, I no longer remember which, where she grew up on her parents farm. Eva did not approve of John's sneakers. Her father, she told us, always dressed up to the nines, on Sundays when the family went to church, or whenever he traveled to town to meet with lawyers, government officials or business people. He taught her that you can tell everything you need to know about a man by looking at his shoes.
She forced John to wear his wingtips whenever they went out to restaurants, theater or the symphony hall. I often accompanied them, alone or with a date, and I remember one time when we had to stop at a drugstore on the way to town to buy a package of wide Band Aids for John's bleeding feet. He walked wearing those shoes like a man who had been crippled by some childhood disease. I would on such occasions wear a jacket, colorful patterned shirt, fresh unfaded blue jeans, and white tennis sneakers. During the intermission at the symphony hall Eva pretended that "we don't know this guy". John tried explaining to her that I was "bohemian", but I don't think she understood the word.
She worked as a model, mostly hands model as a matter of fact, owing to the beautiful and photogenic pair of hands with long fingers and no skin blemishes. This was the time when mountain biking was becoming popular, and John bought two bicycles and spent sunny weekends biking the trails in the hills with Eva. One time she wiped out and badly hurt her left hand. Stitches, healing time, scars, her modeling career on hold, Eva blamed John for the mishap, and John blamed himself. She eventually broke off the engagement, and moved back to Iowa, Kansas, or whatever state she was from. John was brokenhearted, and I could do little to cheer him up.
Eventually he recovered, and two or so years later he showed me an ad in a running magazine showing a pair female hands handling expensive running shoes. He said, "Look, those are Eva's hands, she's back in business!"
Eva's shoe rules and the drama surrounding them seemed amusing to me for a long time, until I experienced something similar many years later when a lady friend told me that "real men" wear socks that reach their knees, and I just didn't measure up with my half calf assortment of socks. And to this day, seeing advertisements picturing female hands I wonder every time if they are Eva's.
Thursday, December 19, 2013
On Main Street
You never know what you might encounter walking down Main Street. Some years ago during a noontime lunch break I was walking down Main Street toward a popular three story bookstore that was a local landmark at the time (it no longer exists), when I encountered a group of happy, singing and joking young Brazilians. You knew they were Brazilians by their yellow football jerseys, their national team was in town playing our national team in World Cup eliminations, a game which they won, though not as easily as expected.
They were friendly, talkative, were walking in the same direction, and I joined them conversing with those nearest me, soon passing the bookstore I was going to visit. They were football fans plus a couple of players from the team, I learned, though I didn't recognize any stars among them. Gilberto was one who spoke excellent English, and we got to talk about our lives.
The subject of our respective families came up when one of the other Brazilians approached Gilberto, saying something to him in Portuguese, pulling out a Leica camera and snapping a picture of the two of us. "He said we look like brothers," explained Gilberto, "he's a substitute goalie." While I was older, there was perhaps some resemblance to be found between us.
As we talked, to my everlasting surprise, Gilberto turned out to be a grandson of my father's long lost half-brother, an adventurer and multilingual rake, who produced children on three continents, before dying at the age of 32 in a duel in Japan. Gilberto never knew him, and neither did I, but in his version of the story, the grandfather did not die, but faked death to change identities and serve the Emperor of Japan as a spy. (It happened prior to World War II.)
I had to get back to my office, and Gilberto continued exploring the city with his colleagues. We were to meet later at the game, he gave me the name of his hotel, but somehow or another we never caught up with each other, and I was left with the story you've just read, while Gilberto returned to Brasil with the story of my father that I told him. I never saw the substitute goalie's Leica photo.
They were friendly, talkative, were walking in the same direction, and I joined them conversing with those nearest me, soon passing the bookstore I was going to visit. They were football fans plus a couple of players from the team, I learned, though I didn't recognize any stars among them. Gilberto was one who spoke excellent English, and we got to talk about our lives.
The subject of our respective families came up when one of the other Brazilians approached Gilberto, saying something to him in Portuguese, pulling out a Leica camera and snapping a picture of the two of us. "He said we look like brothers," explained Gilberto, "he's a substitute goalie." While I was older, there was perhaps some resemblance to be found between us.
As we talked, to my everlasting surprise, Gilberto turned out to be a grandson of my father's long lost half-brother, an adventurer and multilingual rake, who produced children on three continents, before dying at the age of 32 in a duel in Japan. Gilberto never knew him, and neither did I, but in his version of the story, the grandfather did not die, but faked death to change identities and serve the Emperor of Japan as a spy. (It happened prior to World War II.)
I had to get back to my office, and Gilberto continued exploring the city with his colleagues. We were to meet later at the game, he gave me the name of his hotel, but somehow or another we never caught up with each other, and I was left with the story you've just read, while Gilberto returned to Brasil with the story of my father that I told him. I never saw the substitute goalie's Leica photo.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Dead Character
I have known R. for a good while now. He is the author of fantasy novels aimed at older teenagers and young adults, although he has readers and fans of all ages. Whenever we meet, which hasn't been often lately, both of us aware that I don't read this genre and know next to nothing about it (not even Tolkien, and definitely not J.K. Rowling!), whenever conversation turns to writing, we discuss everything, publishing, grammar, etc, but never plots or contents. R. is a forgiving soul and tolerates my off-beat literary tastes.
He recently published the third volume of a series (niche literary genres are especially rich in series), and did a tour of local bookstores reading and signing his books. (As he must still maintain a day job to support his family, R. is unable to embark on promotional tours to faraway places, except occasionally on long weekends and holidays.) He described to me an incident which happened in November a during a reading at a bookstore in our town we both know.
"A character dies in this new volume. He is a man in his twenties, and I describe him as being tall, blue eyed, prematurely balding. Anyway, I finished the reading, and I noticed in the audience a woman that I dated 15 years ago, who broke up with me over my relationship with her son, then a teenager. He didn't care for me. I sit down at a table, and the readers line up with books for me to sign. She's one of the first in line. She hands me the book, and I see that it's been read already, she must have brought it in with her, it's easy to tell with soft cover books - I haven't yet graduated to the hardback edition copies - and she says "You killed my son here!" I say, "I did?" "That's my son who dies in this book!" she says. I don't know how to react, so I say, "Perhaps we can discuss this afterwards?!" She replies "Yes, I would very much like to!" in a decisive tone. I sign her book, she walks away.
I noticed that the woman standing behind her, and this crowd was mostly female, it's always like that at this bookstore, I'm not sure why, the women's college in the neighbourhood, or what, I noticed that this woman was very interested in that exchange. She now hands me her book, saying, "You killed this woman's son in the story?" I answer, "People who know writers, come to believe that they and others the writer knows appear as characters in his books, but that's seldom if ever true." She doesn't seem satisfied with the answer, but says nothing and walks away with her signed book.
Fortunately, none of the others in line picked up on this theme, but I notice with a side glance that the woman has approached my ex-girfriend standing in the back corner of the room and they are conversing. I turn to my daughter behind my chair and ask her to fetch Joe the owner of the bookstore. She does that, Joe walks up, lowers his ear and I whisper to him describing what happened, and ask him that perhaps he can gently separate these two ladies. This is because, I explain, I noticed Leslie C., the POST''s celebrity gossip and trivia columnist in the crowd, who's always on the lookout for spicy material, and the kind of publicity based on that bizarre exchange I'd rather avoid. Joe goes away, I apologize for the second time in 5 minutes to the waiting readers, saying that too many things always pop up at once during a book's premiere, which isn't quite true.
Afterwards, I spoke briefly to my ex-girlfriend, telling her that I haven't seen her son in many years, which isn't quite true either, as I've seen him around town without as much as a 'Hello', but what's true is that I didn't base this dying character's appearance on the appearance of her son. What else was I to say?!
Two days later, a note in Leslie C.'s daily column in the POST. "One reader, Joanne K. at a recent reading of local writer R's. new novel informs us that Mr R. uses the plots his novels to settle scores with relatives and former friends. At press time, Mr R. has not responded to our enquiries."
Indeed, Leslie sent me an e-mail to which decided not to reply. I don't know who this Joanne K. is, perhaps the woman who listened in on the conversation with my ex-girlfriend."
"So, how is the book selling?" I asked R.
"Oh, it's selling quite well."
I couldn't resist the temptation, and I said, "Perhaps such killings will help you graduate to the hardback editions!"
He recently published the third volume of a series (niche literary genres are especially rich in series), and did a tour of local bookstores reading and signing his books. (As he must still maintain a day job to support his family, R. is unable to embark on promotional tours to faraway places, except occasionally on long weekends and holidays.) He described to me an incident which happened in November a during a reading at a bookstore in our town we both know.
"A character dies in this new volume. He is a man in his twenties, and I describe him as being tall, blue eyed, prematurely balding. Anyway, I finished the reading, and I noticed in the audience a woman that I dated 15 years ago, who broke up with me over my relationship with her son, then a teenager. He didn't care for me. I sit down at a table, and the readers line up with books for me to sign. She's one of the first in line. She hands me the book, and I see that it's been read already, she must have brought it in with her, it's easy to tell with soft cover books - I haven't yet graduated to the hardback edition copies - and she says "You killed my son here!" I say, "I did?" "That's my son who dies in this book!" she says. I don't know how to react, so I say, "Perhaps we can discuss this afterwards?!" She replies "Yes, I would very much like to!" in a decisive tone. I sign her book, she walks away.
I noticed that the woman standing behind her, and this crowd was mostly female, it's always like that at this bookstore, I'm not sure why, the women's college in the neighbourhood, or what, I noticed that this woman was very interested in that exchange. She now hands me her book, saying, "You killed this woman's son in the story?" I answer, "People who know writers, come to believe that they and others the writer knows appear as characters in his books, but that's seldom if ever true." She doesn't seem satisfied with the answer, but says nothing and walks away with her signed book.
Fortunately, none of the others in line picked up on this theme, but I notice with a side glance that the woman has approached my ex-girfriend standing in the back corner of the room and they are conversing. I turn to my daughter behind my chair and ask her to fetch Joe the owner of the bookstore. She does that, Joe walks up, lowers his ear and I whisper to him describing what happened, and ask him that perhaps he can gently separate these two ladies. This is because, I explain, I noticed Leslie C., the POST''s celebrity gossip and trivia columnist in the crowd, who's always on the lookout for spicy material, and the kind of publicity based on that bizarre exchange I'd rather avoid. Joe goes away, I apologize for the second time in 5 minutes to the waiting readers, saying that too many things always pop up at once during a book's premiere, which isn't quite true.
Afterwards, I spoke briefly to my ex-girlfriend, telling her that I haven't seen her son in many years, which isn't quite true either, as I've seen him around town without as much as a 'Hello', but what's true is that I didn't base this dying character's appearance on the appearance of her son. What else was I to say?!
Two days later, a note in Leslie C.'s daily column in the POST. "One reader, Joanne K. at a recent reading of local writer R's. new novel informs us that Mr R. uses the plots his novels to settle scores with relatives and former friends. At press time, Mr R. has not responded to our enquiries."
Indeed, Leslie sent me an e-mail to which decided not to reply. I don't know who this Joanne K. is, perhaps the woman who listened in on the conversation with my ex-girlfriend."
"So, how is the book selling?" I asked R.
"Oh, it's selling quite well."
I couldn't resist the temptation, and I said, "Perhaps such killings will help you graduate to the hardback editions!"
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Curse
There is a curse on my family. A curse, or, I don't know, something. A curse that's affected the last three generations (I know nothing about earlier family history.) If you believe in the existence of such things as curses, then a curse is one possible explanation for much of my family's history in the past 100 years. It struck again the other day. Unfairly, unjustly and absurdly. But let us start from the beginning.
I usually avoid writing about personal matters, or else I invent a tale and shape it to sound like a personal confession, or a description of a lived-through experience, as the first person narrative requires. This is different.
On the last day of World War I, my maternal grandfather stood in the garden of his house, dressed in a military uniform - he had just been discharged from the army - smoking a cigarette, when a sniper's bullet befell him. My mother was less than four years old. His wife, my grandmother, spent the next thirty some years as a widow, raising her two girls and later living with the older sister's family. As a small boy, I was terrified of her black clad dour presence. Fortunately, we didn't visit her often, they lived in a provincial town 100 miles away, which in those days was a considerable distance. These days whenever I see American women dressed head to toe black, sunshades, rain or shine, outside or in the subway tunnel, a fashion that refuses to pass, I am reminded of my grim widow grandmother.
My father's mother died giving him birth (I am not certain of that, she might have passed shortly thereafter.) His father remarried and my father was raised by a stepmother who, as far as I know, did not favor him much. He had no siblings. His father, my grandfather, was a doctor, a pioneer in the radiology field , who died a slow death of radioactive poisoning when my father was 15 years old.
Twelve years later, the orphan and the half-orphan meet, marry and start a family, which produces myself and my two younger sisters. Both of my sisters were childless. My youngest sister died of an incurable disease in her forties.
My mother's older sister, a domineering personality, was still alive a couple of years ago, she'd be over 100 today.
Beside her and her family of two girls and a boy, with whom, as I mentioned, my family had only sporadic contacts, at least until I left home and lost contact with every one, around the time when 100 miles was fast becoming a shorter distance, I had two aunts, one on each side of the family, who were distant relatives, their relationship to us is not clear to me today, but both were very close to my family. All other people whom we called "aunt" and "uncle" were merely parents' long time friends. All my father's other relatives, I assume, perished in the Nazi (German) Holocaust, while all my mother's relatives perished in the Soviet (Russian) gulag.
How this "curse" has affected me and my family, up to as I indicated very recent times, I am not ready to confess just yet, but thank you for holding your breath. We'll get to that bridge when we cross it. Or something like that.
I usually avoid writing about personal matters, or else I invent a tale and shape it to sound like a personal confession, or a description of a lived-through experience, as the first person narrative requires. This is different.
On the last day of World War I, my maternal grandfather stood in the garden of his house, dressed in a military uniform - he had just been discharged from the army - smoking a cigarette, when a sniper's bullet befell him. My mother was less than four years old. His wife, my grandmother, spent the next thirty some years as a widow, raising her two girls and later living with the older sister's family. As a small boy, I was terrified of her black clad dour presence. Fortunately, we didn't visit her often, they lived in a provincial town 100 miles away, which in those days was a considerable distance. These days whenever I see American women dressed head to toe black, sunshades, rain or shine, outside or in the subway tunnel, a fashion that refuses to pass, I am reminded of my grim widow grandmother.
My father's mother died giving him birth (I am not certain of that, she might have passed shortly thereafter.) His father remarried and my father was raised by a stepmother who, as far as I know, did not favor him much. He had no siblings. His father, my grandfather, was a doctor, a pioneer in the radiology field , who died a slow death of radioactive poisoning when my father was 15 years old.
Twelve years later, the orphan and the half-orphan meet, marry and start a family, which produces myself and my two younger sisters. Both of my sisters were childless. My youngest sister died of an incurable disease in her forties.
My mother's older sister, a domineering personality, was still alive a couple of years ago, she'd be over 100 today.
Beside her and her family of two girls and a boy, with whom, as I mentioned, my family had only sporadic contacts, at least until I left home and lost contact with every one, around the time when 100 miles was fast becoming a shorter distance, I had two aunts, one on each side of the family, who were distant relatives, their relationship to us is not clear to me today, but both were very close to my family. All other people whom we called "aunt" and "uncle" were merely parents' long time friends. All my father's other relatives, I assume, perished in the Nazi (German) Holocaust, while all my mother's relatives perished in the Soviet (Russian) gulag.
How this "curse" has affected me and my family, up to as I indicated very recent times, I am not ready to confess just yet, but thank you for holding your breath. We'll get to that bridge when we cross it. Or something like that.
Saturday, November 9, 2013
You don't know me...
I was passing a downtown corner cafe one late afternoon on my way to a supermarket to fetch dinner fixings, I stopped waiting for green light (I was walking), when a familiar voice behind me called my name. I turned around and there emerging from the cafe was a friend who noticed me passing. "Hey," he said, "I've got a joke for you!". I apologized for not having one to tell him, as I almost always did when we met, even though I did have one, but it was about a marriage, he was unhappily divorced, and I didn't want to upset him.
He proceeded to tell me the joke. A day later, I don't remember any of it. He turned to go back inside the cafe, and I called after him, "Wait, I do have one!", and I told him my joke. He found it funnier than I had when I first heard it a few days earlier.
"Where are you headed?" he asked, and I told him, before we said goodbye.
He knows me for the jokes that I almost always have when we meet, and I know him for vast knowledge of the local lore and personalities, public and private.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-5LwRinkJ0
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Through Stained Glass Darkly
The other day I spotted an Andre Perkins somewhere on Internet and for a brief moment I thought I had found my long lost boyhood friend from the neighbourhood and the first three grades of school. I realize that Perkins is a fairly common last name, but the French sounding Andre instead of Andrew, is not quite so popular. In the end, this Andre turned out to be a young man, too young to be my Andre's son, and too old, I decided, to be his grandson.
It occurred to me then that those from our long, long distant past of childhood and early youth, if they are still living, have probably forgotten us, while those from the near past are trying hard to forget us. Which leaves the acquaintances from the not too distant, or distant but not yet forsaken past. I had a proof of this theory last month when my land line telephone rang and the male voice introduced himself as the brother of my old girlfriend Susan. I didn't know that Susan had a brother, or I did and had forgotten about it; I knew her sister Lisa, whom I had called Mona Lisa, who looked so much like Susan that you could mistake them for twin sisters, and whose beauty was the same subtle kind that eludes most men and all Hollywood agents.
I didn't ask Susan's brother how he had found me because I am not difficult to locate - there is no other person on this continent with my first and last names, though I've been told that I have a twin in Australia or New Zealand (which one of us is the evil twin I couldn't say), and I'm listed in the telephone directory, if you know which city's directory to look up; I'm also like most people on the Internet, in much more gory detail than I would prefer to be.
After the customary greetings and inconsequential small talk, he asked me if I minded if Susan herself contacted me. How many years has it been, 25, 27? I asked why she didn't call herself, and he said she thought I'd still be mad at her, not wanting to speak to her ever again. I didn't ask him the obvious follow-up question if she had asked him to call me or if it was his own idea after something she said, knowing that it is one of those questions that whatever the answer we'll never believe it's the truth.
He said that Susan was now a widow, her husband died following a fist fight with Chip, a painter, and stained glass artist (as his name suggests, in one of those unavoidable coincidences), whom I introduced to Susan back then, and who did some work for her church and also for her husband. The fight was over Chip's assignment, they were both hot heads, Susan's husband fell, hit his head on a curb, dying a few days later in hospital. There were no criminal charges, and Chip himself died six months later of a blood disease.
I told him that I was never mad at her, and that I was mad at my bad luck and rotten fate. You see, when Susan and I were going together, she was already engaged, to a fellow she knew from childhood and who was at the time studying in England. It seemed to her like an arranged marriage, and she had second thoughts about it, which I did nothing to encourage or discourage, and when he returned, she left me, a penniless bum just out of college, and married him, a man on the rise. I was crushed and I packed my things, got into the car and drove for 24 hours straight, finally stopping at some cheap motel three states away. I haven't been back since.
And so, I told Susan's brother that no, I didn't mind if Susan contacted me and I hung up, immediately realizing that I didn't get his number or Susan's address or number, so if I decided to contact her, I'd be out of luck as I didn't even remember her last name, married or maiden, and Chip who did know them was dead.
A week later a letter arrived from Susan, not an e-mail, an actual physical letter in a cream colored envelope, with a stamp of bluesman Robert Johnson on it, whom Susan knew I appreciated. It was handwritten, and while I admired her beautiful handwriting, so unusual these days (she must have studied calligraphy), I was reminded of the failure of my own recent letters to advance my case in other, unrelated matters, some of those letters returned unopened, and all of them computer generated.
Susan provided a few more details of her current situation. Or recent situation, because the events described by her brother took place several years ago. She and her husband were already living separately, still married, about to divorce, kids in college, he was building a mansion for himself and his next wife, and hired Chip to do some stained glass work. Chip, according to Susan, never completely forgave her for leaving me, his best friend at the time. She knew from Chip that I had never returned, and is wondering if I ever (implying now) thought of returning.
I haven't answered Susan's letter yet. I haven't decided what to say, haven't decided if I want to see what time has done to Susan't face and body. Some things have to wait.
It occurred to me then that those from our long, long distant past of childhood and early youth, if they are still living, have probably forgotten us, while those from the near past are trying hard to forget us. Which leaves the acquaintances from the not too distant, or distant but not yet forsaken past. I had a proof of this theory last month when my land line telephone rang and the male voice introduced himself as the brother of my old girlfriend Susan. I didn't know that Susan had a brother, or I did and had forgotten about it; I knew her sister Lisa, whom I had called Mona Lisa, who looked so much like Susan that you could mistake them for twin sisters, and whose beauty was the same subtle kind that eludes most men and all Hollywood agents.
I didn't ask Susan's brother how he had found me because I am not difficult to locate - there is no other person on this continent with my first and last names, though I've been told that I have a twin in Australia or New Zealand (which one of us is the evil twin I couldn't say), and I'm listed in the telephone directory, if you know which city's directory to look up; I'm also like most people on the Internet, in much more gory detail than I would prefer to be.
After the customary greetings and inconsequential small talk, he asked me if I minded if Susan herself contacted me. How many years has it been, 25, 27? I asked why she didn't call herself, and he said she thought I'd still be mad at her, not wanting to speak to her ever again. I didn't ask him the obvious follow-up question if she had asked him to call me or if it was his own idea after something she said, knowing that it is one of those questions that whatever the answer we'll never believe it's the truth.
He said that Susan was now a widow, her husband died following a fist fight with Chip, a painter, and stained glass artist (as his name suggests, in one of those unavoidable coincidences), whom I introduced to Susan back then, and who did some work for her church and also for her husband. The fight was over Chip's assignment, they were both hot heads, Susan's husband fell, hit his head on a curb, dying a few days later in hospital. There were no criminal charges, and Chip himself died six months later of a blood disease.
I told him that I was never mad at her, and that I was mad at my bad luck and rotten fate. You see, when Susan and I were going together, she was already engaged, to a fellow she knew from childhood and who was at the time studying in England. It seemed to her like an arranged marriage, and she had second thoughts about it, which I did nothing to encourage or discourage, and when he returned, she left me, a penniless bum just out of college, and married him, a man on the rise. I was crushed and I packed my things, got into the car and drove for 24 hours straight, finally stopping at some cheap motel three states away. I haven't been back since.
And so, I told Susan's brother that no, I didn't mind if Susan contacted me and I hung up, immediately realizing that I didn't get his number or Susan's address or number, so if I decided to contact her, I'd be out of luck as I didn't even remember her last name, married or maiden, and Chip who did know them was dead.
A week later a letter arrived from Susan, not an e-mail, an actual physical letter in a cream colored envelope, with a stamp of bluesman Robert Johnson on it, whom Susan knew I appreciated. It was handwritten, and while I admired her beautiful handwriting, so unusual these days (she must have studied calligraphy), I was reminded of the failure of my own recent letters to advance my case in other, unrelated matters, some of those letters returned unopened, and all of them computer generated.
Susan provided a few more details of her current situation. Or recent situation, because the events described by her brother took place several years ago. She and her husband were already living separately, still married, about to divorce, kids in college, he was building a mansion for himself and his next wife, and hired Chip to do some stained glass work. Chip, according to Susan, never completely forgave her for leaving me, his best friend at the time. She knew from Chip that I had never returned, and is wondering if I ever (implying now) thought of returning.
I haven't answered Susan's letter yet. I haven't decided what to say, haven't decided if I want to see what time has done to Susan't face and body. Some things have to wait.
Friday, November 1, 2013
Curtains, pal!
We stepped out of a movie theater inside a shopping mall when she suggested that we visit a department store located there. She needed to buy fabric for new living room curtains. And so, instead of talking about the movie we just saw like most people do emerging from cinemas, we were about to discuss home furnishings. And to show you how our memories work, I remember much from this long ago episode, but not the name of the film we saw.
We found our way to the section of the department store where long sheets of fabric were hanging from movable overhead rails. She pushed the rails back and forth trying to decide. I made one unsolicited suggestion on a light colored fabric, and she immediately shot it down. She had to have something that went with her antique dark oak furniture. While there were over two dozen fabric samples available, most were intended for purposes other than window curtains. I suggested that we move on and come back another day or visit another store, but she insisted on selecting something there and then. There was a single chair near the display, probably intended for frustrated husbands and boyfriends, I figured, and I sat down in it, while she looked through catalogs, carried on a discussion with the saleslady. She finally decided on some fabric and made arrangements to have it delivered to the shop of her installers near the apartment house where she lived, a young couple I had met briefly, who I thought didn't inspire much confidence. But it was all her business.
After several delays, missed appointments, the installer couple replaced her light colored living room curtains which to my taste were adequate, with the new set, dark brown, matching the color of her two antique furniture pieces, new curtains that, in her own words, brought "doom and gloom" to her living room which didn't get much direct sunlight in the first place facing as it were West where another apartment block was rising a hundred yards away. She was unhappy with the installers, unhappy with the effect of the curtains on her living space. Apparently, she wasn't happy with me either, because shortly thereafter she broke up the relationship. "It's curtains, pal!" I told myself, like I imagined Jack Nicholson would say, not altogether brokenhearted, for reasons other than living room curtains.
I told my friend Frank about what happened; I called him "my attorney", but he was more of a psychologist and mind reader. "Women test men all the time," he said, "even, as apparently in this case, deciding ex post facto that some event had been a test. She didn't need your advice at the time of selection, but afterwards she blamed you for letting her choose the nightmare she ended up choosing."
My lesson from the affair? Avoid cinemas attached to shopping malls!
We found our way to the section of the department store where long sheets of fabric were hanging from movable overhead rails. She pushed the rails back and forth trying to decide. I made one unsolicited suggestion on a light colored fabric, and she immediately shot it down. She had to have something that went with her antique dark oak furniture. While there were over two dozen fabric samples available, most were intended for purposes other than window curtains. I suggested that we move on and come back another day or visit another store, but she insisted on selecting something there and then. There was a single chair near the display, probably intended for frustrated husbands and boyfriends, I figured, and I sat down in it, while she looked through catalogs, carried on a discussion with the saleslady. She finally decided on some fabric and made arrangements to have it delivered to the shop of her installers near the apartment house where she lived, a young couple I had met briefly, who I thought didn't inspire much confidence. But it was all her business.
After several delays, missed appointments, the installer couple replaced her light colored living room curtains which to my taste were adequate, with the new set, dark brown, matching the color of her two antique furniture pieces, new curtains that, in her own words, brought "doom and gloom" to her living room which didn't get much direct sunlight in the first place facing as it were West where another apartment block was rising a hundred yards away. She was unhappy with the installers, unhappy with the effect of the curtains on her living space. Apparently, she wasn't happy with me either, because shortly thereafter she broke up the relationship. "It's curtains, pal!" I told myself, like I imagined Jack Nicholson would say, not altogether brokenhearted, for reasons other than living room curtains.
I told my friend Frank about what happened; I called him "my attorney", but he was more of a psychologist and mind reader. "Women test men all the time," he said, "even, as apparently in this case, deciding ex post facto that some event had been a test. She didn't need your advice at the time of selection, but afterwards she blamed you for letting her choose the nightmare she ended up choosing."
My lesson from the affair? Avoid cinemas attached to shopping malls!
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Only Life's Illusions
By strange coincidence two hours after posting early afternoon today (read it first!) I stumbled upon this passage in the novel I am currently reading:
I suppose it's a good time to hear the Joe Diffie song Ships That Don't Come In. (Written by Dave Gibson.)
The living also believe that what has never happened can still happen, they believe in the most dramatic and most unlikely reversals of fortune, the sort of thing that happens in history and in stories, they believe that a traitor or beggar or murderer can become a king and the head of the emperor fall beneath the blade, that a great beauty can love a monster, or that the man who killed her beloved and brought about her ruin can succeed in seducing her, they believe that lost battles can be won, that the dead never leave but watch over us or appear to us as ghosts who can influence events, that the youngest of three sisters could one day be the eldest: perhaps for example.
Javier Marias -- "Tomorrow In The Battle Think On Me", pg 150.
I suppose it's a good time to hear the Joe Diffie song Ships That Don't Come In. (Written by Dave Gibson.)
One Mulligan
I lost a friend today. He packed up his things, sublet the apartment, got in the car and drove away. Not far from here, but far enough so we won't be seeing each other much. "Will e-mail," were his last words when we said Goodbye, as if that didn't go without saying nowadays. Heck, we e-mailed each other when he was here, and I regularly exchange e-mails with people on three continents.
Let's roll the film back a month. "She called me, wants to get back together," he told me as we were sipping our usual cappuccinos in a downtown cafe. "After two years?" I said. "A year and nine months," he replied, and I thought that like some people he counted the number of weeks or even hours since the event. Still, a few months ago, it must have been in July, he told me he had finally gotten over her, and now this.
"And what did you say?" I asked.
"I told her I'd think about it. Has anything like it ever happened to you, a girlfriend coming back?"
"Once when I was nineteen," I said.
"And since then, didn't you always think or hope that it would, could, should happen again?"
"Yes, and it never did. Fate gives us just one mulligan per lifetime."
Then, he decided. He didn't ask my advice and I didn't offer unsolicited words of wisdom. What was I to say? Let him enjoy his mulligan while it lasts.
Let's roll the film back a month. "She called me, wants to get back together," he told me as we were sipping our usual cappuccinos in a downtown cafe. "After two years?" I said. "A year and nine months," he replied, and I thought that like some people he counted the number of weeks or even hours since the event. Still, a few months ago, it must have been in July, he told me he had finally gotten over her, and now this.
"And what did you say?" I asked.
"I told her I'd think about it. Has anything like it ever happened to you, a girlfriend coming back?"
"Once when I was nineteen," I said.
"And since then, didn't you always think or hope that it would, could, should happen again?"
"Yes, and it never did. Fate gives us just one mulligan per lifetime."
Then, he decided. He didn't ask my advice and I didn't offer unsolicited words of wisdom. What was I to say? Let him enjoy his mulligan while it lasts.
Monday, October 14, 2013
One Word, One Thing
I watched an interview with a woman writer (no, not Alice Munro), who said that that the ideas for her novels start with a single word. That's how she started writing her previous book, from a word that she made up, a neologism, and while she was writing it, a couple of words jumped out at her, she jotted them down, thus getting a start on her next novel.
Then, there was a photographer, who said in a recent interview that he photographs just one thing at a time. That's all I caught from a page of a newspaper or magazine, promising myself to come back to it, and as happens so often, lost the source and the memory of where I had seen it.
I on the other hand photograph three things at a time, believing that a photograph must contain three elements of interest, such as the photograph I snapped yesterday afternoon at a street fair. It's not very good, but it should illustrate the point.
All this leads me via some twisted path to the short piece below which had its source in a single sentence I overheard somewhere in passing, just it and nothing else.
* * *
"I don't spend time considering hypothetical situations!", I said, trying best to hide annoyance. It's not going to happen, so why waste your brain bandwidth. That river has long ago flowed to the sea. And I'm not standing on the bridge no more. What if, what if, what if! We'll deal with it when it comes about. Except that it won't. But if it did, I think that I would say, no, thank you. Damn, it turns out I'm considering a hypothetical situation anyway. "Let's go for ice cream at the new Italian place around the corner," I said getting up.
Monday, October 7, 2013
Without a Word
"I spoke three words all day yesterday," said my friend Walker, "Beer and thank you."
"You're a regular chatterbox," I said, sipping my pint of IPA. "On Sunday I spoke to no one, not even the cat, and on Monday, I spoke one word to anyone, and it was 'No!'"
"Well, who did you treat to such a rude refusal?" asked Walker.
"A young woman," I replied pausing for a couple of seconds to wait for his reaction. "I was picking up a prescription that my doctor sent down to the pharmacy in the morning, after a blood test revealed I needed a stronger dose, 10% stronger, to make me 10% crazier, I suppose, and isn't it wonderful how such transactions can be completed without a visit to doctor's office, without a word spoken, electronically, and as she was handing me the medication, along with the required sheets of paper describing its effects, after-effects and side effects, the sheets that no one ever reads, the pharmacist asked 'Would you like additional information ?"
"You're a regular chatterbox," I said, sipping my pint of IPA. "On Sunday I spoke to no one, not even the cat, and on Monday, I spoke one word to anyone, and it was 'No!'"
"Well, who did you treat to such a rude refusal?" asked Walker.
"A young woman," I replied pausing for a couple of seconds to wait for his reaction. "I was picking up a prescription that my doctor sent down to the pharmacy in the morning, after a blood test revealed I needed a stronger dose, 10% stronger, to make me 10% crazier, I suppose, and isn't it wonderful how such transactions can be completed without a visit to doctor's office, without a word spoken, electronically, and as she was handing me the medication, along with the required sheets of paper describing its effects, after-effects and side effects, the sheets that no one ever reads, the pharmacist asked 'Would you like additional information ?"
Thursday, September 26, 2013
A Few Dutch Words
A young couple sat down at the table next to mine where I sat sipping Earl Grey tea and reading the mystery novel which arrived in the mail yesterday evening. Trying to read from then on, because the man spoke in one of those radio announcer voices that even at normal volume carry across a large room. And so, while reading the same three sentences on page 23 over and over, and understanding not a word except 'and' and 'the', I began to eavesdrop.
I didn't help. The context of what they were talking about was as mysterious as those three sentences. Until they changed the subject and the man said: "And after all those rejections, by the family, university, work , women, he rejected himself!" What? His companion then asked him the question I wanted to ask: "Rejected himself? What do you mean?" "He moved to Russia, changed his name, his habits, his way of thinking."
That's all I heard. They changed the subject again, or did they? They spoke of family matters, and I don't know why but got the impression that the man who "rejected himself" was a family member or a friend. But maybe he was talking about a movie or a novel.
I couldn't hold it any longer, got up and went to the bathroom in the corner of the cafe. When I returned, the couple was conversing in one of the languages that I fluently don't speak. I recognized it as Dutch. Were they Dutch? Their English was free of a foreign accent. I took a look at their clothes and shoes seeking signs that their foreign make was different from the foreign make of the clothes and shoes we wear in America, but I didn't notice any indications.
But I heard, or thought I heard, in their conversation a few Dutch words that I had managed one way or another to acquire over the years, 'geweer', 'moord', 'vijand', that translate to 'gun', 'murder', 'enemy', respectively.
They finished their cappuccinos, got up, carried their empty cups to the bus tray by the counter, which told me that they knew the routine and had been here before, and stepped out, crossing the street eastward toward the university. I looked around me checking if I was in a dream world, or on some other planet, not believing what I had just witnessed. The table to my right was empty and clean, were these people here a moment ago, did I read it in my mystery novel, or did I make it all up?
I didn't help. The context of what they were talking about was as mysterious as those three sentences. Until they changed the subject and the man said: "And after all those rejections, by the family, university, work , women, he rejected himself!" What? His companion then asked him the question I wanted to ask: "Rejected himself? What do you mean?" "He moved to Russia, changed his name, his habits, his way of thinking."
That's all I heard. They changed the subject again, or did they? They spoke of family matters, and I don't know why but got the impression that the man who "rejected himself" was a family member or a friend. But maybe he was talking about a movie or a novel.
I couldn't hold it any longer, got up and went to the bathroom in the corner of the cafe. When I returned, the couple was conversing in one of the languages that I fluently don't speak. I recognized it as Dutch. Were they Dutch? Their English was free of a foreign accent. I took a look at their clothes and shoes seeking signs that their foreign make was different from the foreign make of the clothes and shoes we wear in America, but I didn't notice any indications.
But I heard, or thought I heard, in their conversation a few Dutch words that I had managed one way or another to acquire over the years, 'geweer', 'moord', 'vijand', that translate to 'gun', 'murder', 'enemy', respectively.
They finished their cappuccinos, got up, carried their empty cups to the bus tray by the counter, which told me that they knew the routine and had been here before, and stepped out, crossing the street eastward toward the university. I looked around me checking if I was in a dream world, or on some other planet, not believing what I had just witnessed. The table to my right was empty and clean, were these people here a moment ago, did I read it in my mystery novel, or did I make it all up?
Monday, September 23, 2013
Theme of a Dream
Where do these themes come from?
A bus goes to the airport every 30 minutes. Unreliably. Sometimes it doesn't show up. There is only one evening flight to London from here (well, at least that's true), that is often booked up. I'm waiting at the bus stop near a young Indian fellow. We miss the streetcar (yes, a streetcar not a bus!) we were supposed to board, while I was explaining the situation to him. We walk to an office to buy airline tickets, but the flight may be overbooked anyway, and we won't know until we arrive at the airport terminal. I'm going to visit a friend of a friend who just moved there (that's true, too). But how is he going to host me if he himself is being hosted by friends of friends? We walk back to the bus stop, when I remember that it'll be cool in London this time of year. I turn to go home to fetch my leather jacket. Will I make it on time?
A bus goes to the airport every 30 minutes. Unreliably. Sometimes it doesn't show up. There is only one evening flight to London from here (well, at least that's true), that is often booked up. I'm waiting at the bus stop near a young Indian fellow. We miss the streetcar (yes, a streetcar not a bus!) we were supposed to board, while I was explaining the situation to him. We walk to an office to buy airline tickets, but the flight may be overbooked anyway, and we won't know until we arrive at the airport terminal. I'm going to visit a friend of a friend who just moved there (that's true, too). But how is he going to host me if he himself is being hosted by friends of friends? We walk back to the bus stop, when I remember that it'll be cool in London this time of year. I turn to go home to fetch my leather jacket. Will I make it on time?
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Displacement
We were talking about Jhumpa Lahiri who has a new novel out ("The Lowland"). As is often the case, I haven't read the works of the writer, but have read plenty about her. She was born in England, grew up in the United States, her parents traditional Bengali, who spoke their native language at home, she never "lived fully within" America, as she says, married a non-Bengali against the wishes of her parents, and now moved her family to Rome, Italy, 'giving her children a taste of the same "loss of place"' (quote from the Wall Stree Journal.)
Her novels are about dislocation, and that is what we spoke about. He told me a story of a Filipino man living in the United States, who traveled to Manila, shot two people to death there, then boarded a plane to Los Angeles returning to his quiet life as a respectable member of the community. A classic hitman scenario is where the hired killer visits a city, kills a stranger, and quickly returns home. But this wasn't it, our man knew his victims, it was some kind of a family feud, betrayal, revenge.
The story provoked my imagination, but there was too little detail to look it up on Internet. And if the man got away with it, how did his story get out and reached my interlocutor? In any event, it's a seed of a story about displacement and ties to the past that somehow, some way cannot be broken.
Her novels are about dislocation, and that is what we spoke about. He told me a story of a Filipino man living in the United States, who traveled to Manila, shot two people to death there, then boarded a plane to Los Angeles returning to his quiet life as a respectable member of the community. A classic hitman scenario is where the hired killer visits a city, kills a stranger, and quickly returns home. But this wasn't it, our man knew his victims, it was some kind of a family feud, betrayal, revenge.
The story provoked my imagination, but there was too little detail to look it up on Internet. And if the man got away with it, how did his story get out and reached my interlocutor? In any event, it's a seed of a story about displacement and ties to the past that somehow, some way cannot be broken.
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Scholarship
- You're a comedian.
- I am?
- At this rate you'll grow up a sad clown!
- Deep down all clowns are sad.
- You'll be nothing but a sad clown.
- What are you?
- I'm a Shakespearean scholar.
- See this stack of money?
- What about it?
- Get me a bottle of tequila in 5 minutes and it's yours!
- I can run to the store in 5, back in 5, how about 15 minutes?
- No, 5 minutes or no deal.
- Gimme an empty bottle and I'll fill it right away for you!
- Excuse me, where does bus number 52 stop around here?
- I'm sorry, I don't take buses, but where are you going?
- To the Village.
- Keep going this way and there at the corner you'll see a bus stop.
- Have you ever seen a situation where there are two families, and due to some outside circumstances, one family's loss is the other's gain, and for one reason or another they must get along with each other.
- That's weird, I don't think I have, give me an example.
- I'll tell you next time we speak. Ponder it in the meantime.
- I am?
- At this rate you'll grow up a sad clown!
- Deep down all clowns are sad.
- You'll be nothing but a sad clown.
- What are you?
- I'm a Shakespearean scholar.
- See this stack of money?
- What about it?
- Get me a bottle of tequila in 5 minutes and it's yours!
- I can run to the store in 5, back in 5, how about 15 minutes?
- No, 5 minutes or no deal.
- Gimme an empty bottle and I'll fill it right away for you!
- Excuse me, where does bus number 52 stop around here?
- I'm sorry, I don't take buses, but where are you going?
- To the Village.
- Keep going this way and there at the corner you'll see a bus stop.
- Have you ever seen a situation where there are two families, and due to some outside circumstances, one family's loss is the other's gain, and for one reason or another they must get along with each other.
- That's weird, I don't think I have, give me an example.
- I'll tell you next time we speak. Ponder it in the meantime.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
The Name Game
Everybody knows that Tony Curtis was born as Bernie Schwartz, Judy Garland as Frances Ethel Gumm, and Elvis Costello as Declan Patrick MacManus, Ringo Starr as Richard Starkey. Benjamin Black is the nom de plume of literary writer John Banville when he stoops down to writing criminal mysteries. Prince is the artist's actual first name, as is Madonna. Keith Richards was at the beginning of his career Keith Richard. Something to do with a dispute with his father. Keith Moon's birth name was Keith Moon. Did those who did change their names change their names legally? Kirk Douglas, who had two previous names, probably did, because his son is also named Douglas (Michael). Bob Dylan's son is Jacob Dylan, not Jacob Zimmerman.
Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows
(Leonard Cohen - birth name Leonard Cohen.)
What interests me today are minor changes to family names. There was a televangelist (TV evangelist) named Jim Baker who conducted his televised sermons and (primarily) money appeals with his wife Tammy Faye Baker, who had been born as Tamara Faye LaValley, and died as Tamara Faye Messner, after divorcing Jim and remarrying, which all happened following a scandal, collapse of their 'ministry', and criminal conviction and jailing of Jim on mail fraud charges. But wait, Jim's family name was 'Baker' but he changed it by adding a second 'k' (before or after the first 'k', that is the question?), and so, both he and Tammy Faye were appearing on TV's religious PTL Club ('Praise The Lord') channel as the Bakkers! What's up with that?
I once knew a rock musician who added a second 's' in the middle of his last name, then years or decades later dropped it, and having discovered his roots changed his first name to an ethnic sounding version of it, so that he was no longer a Jerry.
There have been instances of artists' names being inadvertently misspelled by their agents, managers or publishers, and they stayed that way. (I can't recall the examples when I need to cite them.)
Look up "The Name Game" novelty pop record by Shirley Ellis on YouTube. It went to number 3 on the Billboard Top 100 in 1964.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Unavoidable Staircase of Memory
I'm a slowpoke, slow on the trigger, what are the other clichés for slow reaction time? Oh, yes, Diderot's staircase, L'esprit de l'escalier. But that's not quite that.
I read about an intriguing idea, it catches my attention, and when I finally realize its depth some days or weeks later, I've already lost the source of my read and forgotten all the thoughts behind the idea. Like the idea expressed by a musician, or music historian or ?, in an interview published by a San Francisco newspaper once (but when?), that a musical composition should be heard only once. Or, more recently, a book review in the Wall Street Journal (what book?) where the author, or the reviewer (which?) refers to music as an "unavoidable art". Here at least I happen to remember the reasoning behind it, but as always there was more. All irretrievably lost.
You tell me that Google knows everything? Well, let it locate the source of these two ideas!
I read about an intriguing idea, it catches my attention, and when I finally realize its depth some days or weeks later, I've already lost the source of my read and forgotten all the thoughts behind the idea. Like the idea expressed by a musician, or music historian or ?, in an interview published by a San Francisco newspaper once (but when?), that a musical composition should be heard only once. Or, more recently, a book review in the Wall Street Journal (what book?) where the author, or the reviewer (which?) refers to music as an "unavoidable art". Here at least I happen to remember the reasoning behind it, but as always there was more. All irretrievably lost.
You tell me that Google knows everything? Well, let it locate the source of these two ideas!
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Pancakes
You think you have crazy dreams? Well, listen to this (and interpret, if you must.)
We woke up in a hotel and walked to the room next door still wearing our pajamas. There, we showed something on the computer screen to Vladimir Putin. (Yes, he's been in the news lately, and this week on the cover of TIME magazine's three international editions, but not the US edition - don't want to embarrass main sewer media's domestic hero.) Then we all walk out onto the mall outside following Vladimir. I note to my My companion notes that he is a small man, and I reply that he is strong, and trained in martial arts. Putin goes his own way, we go ours. "Where are we going?" I ask her (don't ask me who she is, I don't know), and she answers "To the Museum of Modern Art, there is something there I want you to see." We are still wearing our nighties.
Next, we return to the hotel. People in Putin's room are looking for him. Russians, Americans, a small crowd. We tell them that he went out, all by himself, and without bodyguards; unlike most others of his stature, he's not afraid to do that. More conversations.
We are hungry and walk toward the counter serving breakfast. Pancakes. The menu hanging above is not clear, prices are not displayed. Other customers are ordering. I ask her, "What do you want?" She, now dressed in an elegant dress, is walking up the stairs, speaks to me, but doesn't answer my question, OK, I'll order for myself, once I talk to the woman behind the counter, and figure out what's what.
We woke up in a hotel and walked to the room next door still wearing our pajamas. There, we showed something on the computer screen to Vladimir Putin. (Yes, he's been in the news lately, and this week on the cover of TIME magazine's three international editions, but not the US edition - don't want to embarrass main sewer media's domestic hero.) Then we all walk out onto the mall outside following Vladimir. I note to my My companion notes that he is a small man, and I reply that he is strong, and trained in martial arts. Putin goes his own way, we go ours. "Where are we going?" I ask her (don't ask me who she is, I don't know), and she answers "To the Museum of Modern Art, there is something there I want you to see." We are still wearing our nighties.
Next, we return to the hotel. People in Putin's room are looking for him. Russians, Americans, a small crowd. We tell them that he went out, all by himself, and without bodyguards; unlike most others of his stature, he's not afraid to do that. More conversations.
We are hungry and walk toward the counter serving breakfast. Pancakes. The menu hanging above is not clear, prices are not displayed. Other customers are ordering. I ask her, "What do you want?" She, now dressed in an elegant dress, is walking up the stairs, speaks to me, but doesn't answer my question, OK, I'll order for myself, once I talk to the woman behind the counter, and figure out what's what.
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Screwtop
I haven't tasted the wine I ended up buying, but later I bought another bottle of Zinfandel with a screwtop, which I am sipping now. This one does taste cheap.
Friday, September 13, 2013
DODGE
The man then standing right next to me behind this magnificent machine pressed a remote control in his hand and the car engine started. "See?" he said. Just like that. Next year, self-driving cars.
Oh, and finally the remote wouldn't open the driver door at first. "That's because I'm standing right next to you," he said, before asking me if I'll be watching a boxing championship match tomorrow in Las Vegas between Floyd Mayweather (44-0, 26 KOs) and Canelo Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KOs).
"Happy Friday the 13th," he said before driving off.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Passage of Time
I was sitting in a corner cafe this afternoon, talking with my friend about literature and about conversations, among other things, telling him a couple of jokes that I had caught in the morning, which has lately become a sure signal that I would later run into him and have an opportunity to repeat them, when I looked out the window and saw a group of 8 or maybe 10 young women in shorts and T-shirts waiting for a traffic light change. The cafe is located smack in between the university campus and the surrounding dormitories and student housing, a long block to the East, and the start of a popular jogging trail, a short block to the West, and these girls were obviously running together, or if you prefer, jogging.
"Look," I said to my friend, "the academic year must have started, the freshmen are running!"
A few minutes later another group passed outside the window. In a month, these groups of excited new students, new friends, will whittle down to twos and threes, as their school work increases, new friends become old friends, and enthusiasm for running wanes. But this annual sight is one way we measure passage of time in this town
"Look," I said to my friend, "the academic year must have started, the freshmen are running!"
A few minutes later another group passed outside the window. In a month, these groups of excited new students, new friends, will whittle down to twos and threes, as their school work increases, new friends become old friends, and enthusiasm for running wanes. But this annual sight is one way we measure passage of time in this town
Monday, September 9, 2013
Voodoo
This story has been hibernating in my notebook for several years, waiting for an ending, a resolution of some kind, all in vain. But some things don't resolve, or resolve themselves away from our eyes and ears.
I ran into Terry at the city library. He told me he was researching the practices of the occult. We hadn't seen each other for 27 years, since graduating from college. He grew up in this town where I was living, and he moved away soon after graduation, while I stayed behind. He returned only sporadically for short visits with his family. Some people escape from places onto which others eagerly descend.
We went for a coffee and Terry told me this story. Several years earlier, he was living in New Orleans. There he ran into his high school sweetheart. She was divorced, as was he, and they started seeing each other. One thing led to another and they became engaged, planning a wedding and a move to New York City, where both of her brothers lived. They made a short trip to Manhattan, to orient themselves and to look for an apartment, and then, immediately after returning to Louisiana, unexpectedly, she broke off the engagement, refusing to give him an explanation.
"Welcome to the club!" I told Terry when he told me this, I having experienced similar unexplained breakups myself. .
He wrote her several letters to which she never replied. He was upset, heartbroken, and decided to deal with his emotional turmoil by travelling abroad. He got a job with an international development agency, and traveled to Haiti where he stayed for 18 months. Terry spoke fluent French, which proved marginally useful communicating with native Haitians, he told me.
After Haiti, the agency sent him to Africa, the country of Senegal, if I'm not mistaken (my notes aren't clear), a former French colony, where he spent another year working before returning to the States.
Now, that is shortly before the time when we met each other, his former fiancee sent him a letter. In it she explains that it was her brother, whom he had met when they were visiting Manhattan, who had advised her to break off the engagement. Terry suspected it from the beginning, but she of course denied it at the time.
Her brother, a stockbroker on Wall Street, met with some financial misfortunes, and ended up a drug addict and alcoholic on skid row. She had been trying to help him without success. She then went seeking help to some kind of psychic or fortune teller or gypsy, or all three of them in one person, and the woman (these magicians are always women, aren't they?) persuaded her that there is a curse, evil spell, jinx or voodoo on her brother, and she identified its source as Haiti, where, as Terry's ex-fiancee somehow knew, Terry had spent some time. And so, assuming that the hex was Terry's doing (!), she begs him in the letter to reverse, to cancel this evil spell.
"She's a regular churchgoer, a devout Christian," Terry told me, "and still, she plays with Tarot cards, visits these fortune tellers. What am I to do?"
I ran into Terry at the city library. He told me he was researching the practices of the occult. We hadn't seen each other for 27 years, since graduating from college. He grew up in this town where I was living, and he moved away soon after graduation, while I stayed behind. He returned only sporadically for short visits with his family. Some people escape from places onto which others eagerly descend.
We went for a coffee and Terry told me this story. Several years earlier, he was living in New Orleans. There he ran into his high school sweetheart. She was divorced, as was he, and they started seeing each other. One thing led to another and they became engaged, planning a wedding and a move to New York City, where both of her brothers lived. They made a short trip to Manhattan, to orient themselves and to look for an apartment, and then, immediately after returning to Louisiana, unexpectedly, she broke off the engagement, refusing to give him an explanation.
"Welcome to the club!" I told Terry when he told me this, I having experienced similar unexplained breakups myself. .
He wrote her several letters to which she never replied. He was upset, heartbroken, and decided to deal with his emotional turmoil by travelling abroad. He got a job with an international development agency, and traveled to Haiti where he stayed for 18 months. Terry spoke fluent French, which proved marginally useful communicating with native Haitians, he told me.
After Haiti, the agency sent him to Africa, the country of Senegal, if I'm not mistaken (my notes aren't clear), a former French colony, where he spent another year working before returning to the States.
Now, that is shortly before the time when we met each other, his former fiancee sent him a letter. In it she explains that it was her brother, whom he had met when they were visiting Manhattan, who had advised her to break off the engagement. Terry suspected it from the beginning, but she of course denied it at the time.
Her brother, a stockbroker on Wall Street, met with some financial misfortunes, and ended up a drug addict and alcoholic on skid row. She had been trying to help him without success. She then went seeking help to some kind of psychic or fortune teller or gypsy, or all three of them in one person, and the woman (these magicians are always women, aren't they?) persuaded her that there is a curse, evil spell, jinx or voodoo on her brother, and she identified its source as Haiti, where, as Terry's ex-fiancee somehow knew, Terry had spent some time. And so, assuming that the hex was Terry's doing (!), she begs him in the letter to reverse, to cancel this evil spell.
"She's a regular churchgoer, a devout Christian," Terry told me, "and still, she plays with Tarot cards, visits these fortune tellers. What am I to do?"
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Dogs and Language
An interesting tidbit I ran into today:
We're all somewhat familiar with the body language dogs display when they greet each other. The dominant alpha male approaches directly, asserting his authority, while the beta male genuflects, crouches, tucks his tail, and may even end up on his back, exposing his neck in acquiescence, making sure the alpha male knows he has no intention of challenging him. With his "we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist" opening to the world's dictators, the President is exhibiting classic beta male behavior, in essence rolling over on his back and exposing his throat to them to make sure they know he has no intention of challenging their authority.
Friday, August 30, 2013
On Reading
Some books, I'm talking about novels now, knock you off your feet in their own way. I'm reading one of them, title unimportant, I want to come back to this post 6 months, a year from now, not knowing what book it was. How does he do that, I am asking, about the author's knack for constructing the narrative, so that it keeps the reader wanting more, always unsatisfied, always hungry. And I'm not sure how to describe it.
More than anything, I am wondering at the make up of the narrative where the author announces some action, hints of it, and then leaves without explaining what happened next until much later. That is the mystery to me of how he does it and gets away with it. Not many writers do it, know how to do it (I reckon).
From reading Amazon one star reviews I see that many readers hate this kind of narrative, are frustrated by it, demanding straightforward stories which proceed from A to Z, with little if any ambiguity. I'm not talking about the mystery genre either, which to me is still a straight through narrative most of the time, with a few easy to see though and digest tricks.
It's one of those things when you cannot say, oh, I see what he's doing here, and cannot think that you can do as well or better. Although it sometimes looks easy, or gives the impression that the author was careless or forgetful, I suspect that it took a lot of intricate effort to construct such complex stories.
More than anything, I am wondering at the make up of the narrative where the author announces some action, hints of it, and then leaves without explaining what happened next until much later. That is the mystery to me of how he does it and gets away with it. Not many writers do it, know how to do it (I reckon).
From reading Amazon one star reviews I see that many readers hate this kind of narrative, are frustrated by it, demanding straightforward stories which proceed from A to Z, with little if any ambiguity. I'm not talking about the mystery genre either, which to me is still a straight through narrative most of the time, with a few easy to see though and digest tricks.
It's one of those things when you cannot say, oh, I see what he's doing here, and cannot think that you can do as well or better. Although it sometimes looks easy, or gives the impression that the author was careless or forgetful, I suspect that it took a lot of intricate effort to construct such complex stories.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Tattoos and Telephones
I was with a friend, a woman of 60, and four others, 60 to 75 years old, sitting under a parasol at a long rectangular table, chomping on hot dogs, sipping Coca-Cola and warm beer, talking about nothing in particular, when I made the mistake of offering a remark about sailors and tattoos vaguely apropos something somebody said. Immediately, the conversation topic derailed onto the old track of how awful these young people are nowadays. Tattoos, cellphones and obnoxious music! Heaven help us! We were heard by other patrons sitting nearby in this outdoor cafe, and I felt so embarrassed for myself and the group, that I discreetly scooted over to the edge of the bench in a vain attempt to show the accidental witnesses around us that I'm not with these people, I don't know them, I just happened to be sitting here.
At last, my friend rescued me, quite unexpectedly so, unexpectedly because I had known her to pick up another old folks talk theme in her conversations, that of exchanging complaints about one's aches and pains, and offering the names of pharmacological remedies, and so she rescued us this time by ordering in a commanding voice of a high school teacher, "Stop you all kvetching like a bunch of old people!" After a brief silence, conversation returned to the safe topic of nothing, and all was well again.
I was thinking about this incident the other day as I read Joseph Epstein's essay in the Weekly Standard "Toting the Dumb Phone". Yes, Epstein, a noted critic and writer, is old, and yes, he kvetches about young people and their smartphone cellphone mania, but doesn't he make a few interesting points?
I own a cellphone that Mr Epstein would have described as a dumb homeless model, the number of which I don't remember, known to only a handful of people, a cellphone that never rings, except as on two recent occasions when I'm in the company of someone whom I've just told that no, my cellphone never rings.
I sometimes bet myself five dollars walking down a busy street that for the next two blocks I won't see a young woman who's not talking or typing on her smartphone, and I often win and have to transfer a five dollar bill from my left to the right jeans pocket. But thinking some more about it, it occurred to me, that this new phenomenon of people, mostly women, on the phone in public places is perhaps not due to women's well known tendency to chat and talk endlessly, but it is a fashion statement and a status symbol to be demonstrated to everyone around like a new hairdo or a pair of earrings. Look, I can afford a smartphone, I have friends to talk to.
At last, my friend rescued me, quite unexpectedly so, unexpectedly because I had known her to pick up another old folks talk theme in her conversations, that of exchanging complaints about one's aches and pains, and offering the names of pharmacological remedies, and so she rescued us this time by ordering in a commanding voice of a high school teacher, "Stop you all kvetching like a bunch of old people!" After a brief silence, conversation returned to the safe topic of nothing, and all was well again.
I was thinking about this incident the other day as I read Joseph Epstein's essay in the Weekly Standard "Toting the Dumb Phone". Yes, Epstein, a noted critic and writer, is old, and yes, he kvetches about young people and their smartphone cellphone mania, but doesn't he make a few interesting points?
I own a cellphone that Mr Epstein would have described as a dumb homeless model, the number of which I don't remember, known to only a handful of people, a cellphone that never rings, except as on two recent occasions when I'm in the company of someone whom I've just told that no, my cellphone never rings.
I sometimes bet myself five dollars walking down a busy street that for the next two blocks I won't see a young woman who's not talking or typing on her smartphone, and I often win and have to transfer a five dollar bill from my left to the right jeans pocket. But thinking some more about it, it occurred to me, that this new phenomenon of people, mostly women, on the phone in public places is perhaps not due to women's well known tendency to chat and talk endlessly, but it is a fashion statement and a status symbol to be demonstrated to everyone around like a new hairdo or a pair of earrings. Look, I can afford a smartphone, I have friends to talk to.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Monday, August 26, 2013
The Last Hand
I hang around in the space between the low art of popular music, not even what is considered the high art of the low art, such as Broadway or Cabaret song, but country, folk and Americana, commercial stuff, and the high art of top shelf literature. It's been always this way and I won't change it.
And so, I'm looking forward to the new/old album of Bob Dylan's Another Self Portrait, heretofore unreleased recordings from 1969-71. This release tells me that Dylan, who unlike many artists, retains complete control over his catalog, must be going through another period of writer's block, and has no new material to show us (his last album Spirit was a collaboration with the Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter.)
A writer I've read before is having a novel published in two weeks, its title "The Last Hand", as in a card game, you won't see it on a bestseller list, so stop looking, and he has some interesting things to say in a recent interview.
He argues that there is no present and no future, that only past exists for us, or at least for him. He writes in pencil, and erases, doesn't cross out, because by crossing out a sentence, he says, he couldn't write the sentence any better. Why does he writes so little? Because, he says, after he finishes a novel, he has to throw its weight off, has to stop liking it, to avoid repeating himself. And when he starts thinking of a new novel, he has to think of it as a beginner who doesn't know how to write. Because being convinced that one knows how to write, he tells the interviewer, is the first step toward defeat.
And so, I'm looking forward to the new/old album of Bob Dylan's Another Self Portrait, heretofore unreleased recordings from 1969-71. This release tells me that Dylan, who unlike many artists, retains complete control over his catalog, must be going through another period of writer's block, and has no new material to show us (his last album Spirit was a collaboration with the Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter.)
A writer I've read before is having a novel published in two weeks, its title "The Last Hand", as in a card game, you won't see it on a bestseller list, so stop looking, and he has some interesting things to say in a recent interview.
He argues that there is no present and no future, that only past exists for us, or at least for him. He writes in pencil, and erases, doesn't cross out, because by crossing out a sentence, he says, he couldn't write the sentence any better. Why does he writes so little? Because, he says, after he finishes a novel, he has to throw its weight off, has to stop liking it, to avoid repeating himself. And when he starts thinking of a new novel, he has to think of it as a beginner who doesn't know how to write. Because being convinced that one knows how to write, he tells the interviewer, is the first step toward defeat.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
A Ghost in This House
Every couple of weeks or so during a weekend I meet some friends, or better said, acquaintances, in a park for two or three hours. The children play, adults talk, I take photographs of the group. Later at home I upload the photos to my computer, and e-mail the best ones in batches of five. Two weeks ago I took 65 shots, yesterday, while thinking that I was taking fewer, I ended up pressing the shutter 85 times. Well, three pics were of shadows on a wall and not of these friends/acquaintances.
You're never in those pictures, I was told. Indeed, the photographer is never in the picture, and in the roughly 15,000 I have taken in recent years, I'm in only a handful. A ghost. I am a ghost in this house, as the minor hit song by a long forgotten country band Shenandoah said, a song that gained its well deserved reputation, when diva Alison Krauss loaned it her weight and with her band which includes the great Jerry Douglas recorded it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKXhIMgTsrE
And there, in the background of one of the photographs I snapped yesterday, is a young mother I noticed in the park, pushing her son, one year old, I estimate, on a baby swing. I was standing above our group's blanket with a baby and a mom on it, looking in the direction of that swing, and noticing the graceful movements of this mother 30 feet away from us. She must be a dancer, I thought, or had trained as a dancer. She was unself-conscious, unaffected, even after she apparently noticed (or not) my rude gaze. I didn't get a chance to speak to her, she was later joined by an older couple, her parents probably, and they soon walked away, while I tried to verify or discredit my above observation by watching other young mothers there. And in doing it I remembered what I had already known, that most of us move about gracelessly, as if we were carrying the weight of all our troubles and tragedies on our shoulders.
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