Fine Porcelain and Paper Plates

At my favorite cafe there is a shelf where people can leave unwanted books for others to pick up. A wooden case on the inside wall with four shelves, each to hold perhaps as many as twelve books,  two narrow ones for paperbacks, two wider ones for full size hardbacks, the shelf contents always changing with popular novels, non-fiction manifestos of years past, obscure economics treatises, no romances, thank you, this is a university town, but no Nabokov either. Last week I noticed an old paperback copy of Stendhal's The Red and the Black (it's still there), and one time I picked up a software instruction manual, which I immediately returned seeing that it referred to a computer program release a dozen years old.

Yesterday afternoon, weary of the intensity and relentless sameness of the novel I was reading there sipping my Earl Grey tea, sameness, understand,  not different from any sameness of any novel, long and short, that's just the nature of long books, and so, seeking a temporary change of mental images, I got up, walked up to the shelf, and picked up a hardback copy of what looked like a popular novel from the airport bookstore genre, its dust jacket giving away the category right off, with the name of the author in large, thick typeface at the bottom

Jonathan

Somebody

above it a cheesy picture of two silhouettes on a dim lit boulevard, and in much smaller letters the title in

Two Words

the famous author's reputation sells the book better than the title or anything.

I brought it back to my table and opened it at random on page 178, which by some cosmic coincidence just happened to be the same page number where I had stopped reading my top shelf literary novel, and I began to read.  The hero, named Darryl or Darrell,  I assumed the principal character of the novel, is thinking:  (recreated from memory)

I started out with a woman who loved cooking, prepared exquisite meals, served them with fine wines poured from crystal decanters, the food laid out elegantly on fine china, one hundred year old silverware, monogrammed napkins, candles and incense, she demanded that I wash my hands before siting down,  Haydn playing on the stereo, after dinner teas served in precious porcelain cups, sweet pastries, Italian liqueurs, the works.  

And how did I end up with a woman who hates the kitchen, uses paper plates and cups, yet somehow her sink is always full of dirty dishes, and when she does cook she burns the food because she goes to watch TV in the other room and forgets about it, then has to drive to town to get greasy take out, cheap no-brand beer, television still blasting in that other room, radio blabbering on in the kitchen, cats (three of them) meowing, neighbourhood dogs barking, next door neigbour revving up the engine of his Ford truck. 

Turns

As you wander through a labyrinth, with every turn that you take, you leave behind not only the path you chose not to take, but all the paths, surprises, choices and dead ends that the other path would have led you to. At least in a labyrinth, you can always back up and choose that other path,  still make those choices, as time and will permit.  It's only a game.

"Napoleon Bonaparte"

I  rid the house of the firearms - the Remington shotgun and the two pistols, one of them an antique Colt 45 that hadn't been fired in over 50 years, but I figured it could still be fired, so out it went.  Maybe that was a mistake, out here in the country where we have wild life - foxes, wild cats that we call pumas, and the folks I work with in the city call mountain lions, rats of course, some say wolves, but I'd sooner believe in werewolves than in the presence wolves around these parts.  One hundred years ago outlaws wandered these roads, today the only outlaws are people in nearby towns who build additions to their houses  unapproved by the county. Still, I haven't fired any of these weapons for thirty years except at the county shooting range in the hills, and I don't expect that I would have to fire them in the future.

But a house with a half crazy woman is better off without firearms tempting her overheated emotions during one of her periodic moods of explosive rage.  "Why don't you just divorce her and move out?" asked a neighbour, one of the handful of people aware of my domestic situation.  I would, but then I'd lose my job with the church in the city.  The church wants me married, what can I say.  They know nothing about what's been happening here, except that the children had grown and moved out, and our family never much associated socially with my bosses or co-workers, the distance from the city being one of the reasons.  So I'm sticking around.

"What are you scribbling this time?" she asked "Another story about guns for the slush pile at the New Yorker?"

"Yeah, another one about guns," I admitted, "Absent guns. For the collection".

She liked to tease me about the New Yorker, which printed one of my stories, and rejected six others.  Or was it seven? That single success opened a door  for me to the publishing world, and I was now completing another story for a collection to be printed next year, while I continued to struggle writing and re-writing  my Great novel.

She laughed.
"You always think about guns even absent ones."

"I don't always think about guns any more than Napoleon Bonaparte always thought about guns," I retorted.

"Do you know what Anton Chekhov said about guns?"

"No, what did he say?"  If anyone knew, she would with her degree in Russian literature, and her job at the University.

She said it in Russian, and translated into English "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it."

"Really?" I said, pretending I hadn't heard the quote or its variants before.

At that moment we heard a loud explosion outside, like cannon fire. It was the city garbage truck paying our apartment complex a Saturday morning visit.   The racket would last for another half hour as the truck proceeded to empty, load and compress the contents of all the garbage chutes of our  block.  I slipped on my sneakers, closed the door behind me, took the elevator down and walked to the cafe down the street.

The Wolf King

I found an old note among the stack of my papers.  The writing on it is obviously mine. Obviously, because it is unintelligible. Still, while I can, after some effort, discern what it says, short notes referring to jokes, four of them, I can not recall the jokes themselves. It's been a while.

I can however recall the occasion when I used this note, and will try to describe it below. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. As I said, it all happened many years ago.

I walked out of the cafe where I injected my daily dose of caffeine, and saw sitting at one of the handful of tables outside my good friend. I had prepared this note as a reminder of these four jokes for the next time we saw each other.  Our relationship at the time was mostly about relating to each other jokes we had heard and not much else.  I sat down next to him, he was sipping his espresso, reading the  novel  I had recommended a month or so earlier.   I remembered the four jokes without having to consult the note in the back pocket of my jeans and recited them one by one.

In exchange, he told me four jokes of his,  and as always we had ourselves a fun time. I told him then that I was out of jokes,  and was about to get up and go on my way, when a pedestrian approached our table asking if we could spare  a cigarette.

My friend pulled out a pack of Winstons, I my pack of Gitanes, and he took one of each, saying, "Thanks, why not!" stuck the Winston in his mouth and asked for a light.  I then reached for the gold lighter that I had found, some said stolen, the previous year while working at a downtown hotel, and I lit his fag.  He inhaled like he hadn't smoked for days, and then asked my friend, "What are you reading, mister?"  My friend flashed the cover of the book and said, "A book narrated by a dog."

"Ah," said the stranger, "I haven't read a book narrated by a dog since Jack London."

"'Call of the Wild' is not narrated by a dog," corrected my friend.

"Whatever," replied the stranger, "but I did spend time with wolves!"

"Oh," I said, disbelieving, "are you a foundling?"  I remembered stories, legends of children raised by wolves, was he one of them? I look at him more carefully now.  He reminded me of the photograph of John Phillips on the cover of his solo album The Wolfking of L.A., recorded after the breakup of the Mamas and the Papas quartet, the brilliant work hailed at the time by critics and completely ignored by listeners, a failure leading to the destruction of John's career.  The same pose, the same dangerous look.

He laughed, "No, I was a zoologist working on my Ph.D thesis up in Canada.  Befriended a pack, wrote about them, defended my thesis, got my degree and lost my job. I was too animal like, you might say. Or that's what they told me, anyhow."

He continued.

"I've been inside their holes, their caves, man. Once they're used to you, you become their buddy. But you have to earn their trust and never show weakness. Never.  Wolves will stay away from anything they don't know, so they have to first get used to you, and that takes time.   Once they approach you, sniff you, and get to know you, you have to go through a ritual with them.  Get on your knees, and let them lick your face, let them put their jaws around your head, put their tongues in your mouth, they are measuring you. Don't move, don't ever make sudden moves. After that, everything is copacetic."

"Like women?" said my friend, and we all had a good laugh. I let the stranger have the rest of my pack of Gitanes.

 

Dream Institute

Everybody's Writing

Everybody's Writing.  A conversation overheard.

--  Whatever it is that you need, love, money, time, it doesn't need you!  Remember that.

-- You oughta put this golden thought in your book!

-- Too late, it's already at the publisher's.

-- In your next masterpiece then.

Dreamtown

There are mountains and a sea where  I hang my worn hat.  The climate stays mild (in spite of all the apocalyptic hysteria out there.)   I wouldn't trade this geography for any other, though I'd trade it for a similar one somewhere else on the planet, if someone suddenly offered.  Fat chance.

There is a town in the foothills that I visited a long time ago, passed through on my way to the mountains or to the desert beyond, no sea and no views of the sea from up there, but it looked mighty attractive, so that I managed to remember the brief visit. Remember that it exists, but forgot its name and its exact location.  No memory for names. There was a pretty, hilly downtown there, Victorian architecture, greenery, a church, clean streets, friendly atmosphere (or so I thought at the time.)

More recently, when I was considering a move, I recalled my fond memories of this town and decided to try locating it online to check it out and see if reality would confirm the memory.  I didn't have much to go on, only the vague recollections described above, and I haven't succeeded in my search, I haven't moved (for some other, unrelated reasons.) Even with Internet's search engines, online maps, satellite and street level photos at my fingertips, I couldn't find this place.  Did I dream it?