Man Martin's Blog, page 195

Kenyon - The Final Day

This was the last writing assignment.  It was a sensational week, but I'm looking forward to being home.


Dietrich knew as soon as he agreed to do it, that serving the salmon mousse early would be a mistake.  By some fluke, his son’s wedding had run ahead of schedule, and he and Judith stood in Ménage’s anteroom as wedding guests surrendered keys to valets and stepped under the awning expecting a banquet that was not ready for them. 
“It’s your restaurant,” Judith said.  “I don’t see what the big deal is.”  After thirty years of marriage, she never troubled to understand the Dietrich’s business, that veal picata had an existence prior to being served by a waiter whom she’d later take pride in under-tipping.
“It’s a matter of cook time,” Dietrich said, but she didn’t hear him because just then Susan’s parents came in, a gratifying flush of surprise on their faces as they took in the vaulted ceiling and tall windows.  A review in The Daily Herald had said that unlike other restaurants, which feel like you’re stepping into a cave, Ménage was like feasting atop Olympus.   They embraced all around and said how happy they were, and Dietrich said it was wonderful having such a beautiful and charming girl as Sarah in the family. 
Judith told them about the food dilemma, adding that Dietrich he could do what he wanted.  Her unspoken threats of sexual embargo had been significantly more effective two decades ago, before her tummy had begun to wrinkle like cellophane laid over a pan of tapioca.  Dietrich’s jaw set.  He would not be pushed around this time, not for being generous.  It was the way things always worked out: be the nice guy, do the thoughtful thing, and at first everyone’s all “you’re so good” and “how sweet,” and then they just get right back to being their ordinary shit selves.  Dietrich’s brother Tim hadn’t landed in the restaurant two seconds before rushing to the bar to get his double Makers Mark, free of charge, his eyes meanwhile undoing the barista’s blouse buttons.  For once, Dietrich would have told Judith it was too bad but she couldn’t have every little thing just her way, but then Sarah and Chuck came in.  Dietrich shook his son’s hand, and hugged Sarah, touching his lips to her ear, and saying he loved her and how happy he was.
Sarah pulled back to look at him, arm’s length, happily not breaking the embrace, calling him the pet name she’d given him, “Deech, this is fabulous, oh my gosh, you are the best.”  Dietrich’s heart rose like a balloon, a mood Judith lost no time in puncturing by pointing out no one would get to eat for another half-hour.  Sarah’s pretty face fell, and she said Dietrich’s pet name, trailing off into an ellipsis of disappointment.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he promised.
So dinner was served thirty minutes before it should have been, and if the salmon mousse was underdone, no one seemed to mind, sitting at long tables covered by snow-white linen, amid the subdued chatter of happy people, the clink of crystal and cutlery, the soft, intriguing bangings of wood and brass and tentative curlicues of music as the band set up on stage.  Everyone there remembered to tell Dietrich how good the food was, how beautiful his restaurant, and how splendid the wines that he had chosen.  Sarah sat beside him, large-eyed and admiring to hear such effusive, well-deserved and graciously accepted praise.  Then there were champagne toasts, and Sarah made a special toast to Dietrich and everyone clapped, and when the lights lowered as the wedding cake wheeled in, and the band played a little “ta-dah!” a positive oooh of delight went up like a benediction, and shortly after that the band began to play and there was dancing.
Dietrich switched from pinot to champagne, and the tall windows, winking now with sparkles in the darkness, and then linen tablecloths, and the happy people seemed to swim around him.   He managed a dance with Judith, and got to dance with Sarah in her low-cut dress, his fingertips tingling against the skin of her bare back.  The band picked up another tune, and Tim put down the Makers Mark he’d been guzzling to take a turn with Sarah himself.  He’d left his coat on the chair, and his bowtie hung from his unbuttoned collar like two outstretched butterflies.  Dietrich laughed and talked too loudly to Aunt Virginiafrom Sarasota, trying to keep from looking at Tim’s greedy fingers clutching at Sarah’s waist, but then, to Dietrich’s infinite relief, Tim let her go and called out to Judith, “Let’s show them what we can do.”  Sarah stood beside Dietrich as Tim and Judith took the floor. 
“They were dance partners in college,” Dietrich explained, grateful for the music and applause because they gave him reason to put his lips to her ear to say this.  “They’re really quite good.” 
Dietrich watched his smiling wife and brother on the shimmering parquet, exulting, clasping Sarah’s small cool hand in his.  Tim and Judith did a dance move where they turned side to side, facing the crowd.  Sarah began to say how wonderful the wedding had been, how wonderful Menage was, and how wonderful Deech was. 
This is when the vomiting started.
No amount of social restraint or good breeding prepares you to cope with being spewed on during a wedding reception at a four-star restaurant, and screams of horror went up, and people jumped from their seats as if at a fire alarm.  Only the people right next to the dance floor actually got spattered, which unfortunately included Dietrich and Sarah, but Aunt Virginia in her wheelchair got a good lapful, and at once the salmon-colored geyser was followed by the smell of hot vomit, a smell that as anyone can tell you is as capable of inducing more vomit as a bellyful of undercooked fish.
A chain-reaction orgy of vomiting ensued, communicating from one table to the next like an orange wave.  Dietrich turned to Sarah, a plea for forgiveness burning on his lips.
Dietrich was a restaurant owner of thirty years experience.  His restaurant was Zagat-rated and Boston Magazine regularly chose it for its “Best Of” issue.  It had received raves from pop stars and movie stars.  If anyone should have known the mousse was unfit to eat, it was Dietrich.  Why then, he would have had not one helping, but two, is a mystery we can only put down to the giddiness of the evening.    
Orange slightly chunky liquid seemed to appear of its own according dripping from Sarah’s chin and forming a half-starburst on her clavicle before Dietrich was even aware of the heat in his mouth, aware of the flavor of rich cream and gastric juice, aware that it had come from him.  We’ll look back later and laugh is what people sometimes say.  And though Dietrich was to look back on this evening many times over his remaining years, he never laughed once.  One scream and she turned and fled toward the bathrooms, slipped in puddle and fell on the marble floor, got up again, and in Dietrich’s blurring sight ran away.

Kenyon - Day 5

This isn't much, just a quickie - an in-class writing assignment.  A story of precisely 26 sentences, the first letter of each sentence going from A-Z.  There had to be one sentence fragment and one sentence of at least 100 words.


A day after Claire arrived, the rain had dried and the hydrangeas were purple and blue.  Butterflies flitted in the lantana bushes, and yet Dorothy was discontent for a reason she could not name although actually this was self-deception on her part because she could have named it easily enough, and its name would have been Claire, but what kind of grandmother would resent her own grandchild even though she squawked in horror when presented with a bowl of fresh strawberries, “They’re not good to eat!” the obvious rejoinder being that of course they were good to eat, that slugs don’t get that fat without nourishment, but Claire had no sense of humor, and Dorothy could see that.  Claire was spending June with Dorothy while her mother “worked a few things out.”  Drooping and moping by the big front windows, or wilting on the porch swing like melting taffy, Claire complained about everything: there was no internet, there was no cell phone, Dorothy didn’t have cable, there was nothing in town, nothing to do.  Eggs.First thing next morning as a special treat, Dorothy woke her granddaughter up to gather eggs, but Claire was no better a match for this than she had been for the strawberries.  Getting out of bed, too sleepy even to be resentful, cocking her yawning head and stretching her arms in a crooked Y, she asked, “What are we going?”  Holding the wicker egg basket, Dorothy led her sleepy granddaughter down the stone path to the coop.  “It’s almost daybreak,” Dorothy whispered,” and soon you hear the mockingbirds start up.”  Just then Claire shrieked.  Kicking a bare foot in empty air and hopping on the other, Claire’s silhouette bobbed in the darkness.  “Look!  Ugh, look!  I just stepped in chicken crap!”  Maybe this expedition would not be quite the bonding experience she had hoped, Dorothy worried.  Now, though, they were committed, and Dorothy wiped Claire’s heel clean with the hem of her nightgown, leaving a brown smear of poo on the floral cotton print.  Opening the pop door posed another setback.  “Put your hand in there, honey,” Dorothy said.  “Quiet, don’t wake them.”  Reaching into the nesting box, although the sky was blueing in the east, Claire’s hand sank into such darkness, it was like watching her draw on a long black glove.“Shit!” Claire exclaimed, jerking her hand back as if it had caught fire, “there’s something alive in there!”“That’s just the hens,” Dorothy said, reminding herself to be patient.“Ugh, oh, ugh,” Claire cried, “I put my fingers on it.”Velma, inside the box, made a chickeny burble, and Claire shrieked again in terror.“Why can’t you,” Dorothy said, growing angry now for true, “why can’t you try out this one little thing, one little thing new, this one time?”  Xerxes, the rooster, roused from sleep, opened one amber eye at them, saw it was too early for crowing and closed it again.  “You get – never mind that now, just leave the egg basket alone, you just get on up to the house, and you can just go back to being bored and complaining all day and I’ll won’t do a thing to stop you.”  Zinnias on either side of the stone path seemed to part for Dorothy as she stormed back to the house, like the Red Sea making way for Moses.

Kenyon Day 4

In this assignment, we were asked to write a story in the form of directions, the significances, called "the bottom story" we put in parentheses.


                Three patrol cars and three groups of volunteers proceed through backyards and front yards, eastward along parallel streets of Navajo, Seminole, and Cherokee to their junction at Creek Lane jutting down toward the park.(In the vacant lot between 4120 and 4124 Seminole a volunteer hears a plaintive mew over his left shoulder.  Investigating, he finds Sarah, a black-and-white Persian, pretty as a calendar cat, and nearly as smart, stuck in a tree.  Color printed signs with Sarah’s face, Have You Seen Our Kitty, and a phone number have hung on telephone poles all week.  Not the object of this search, but a compensating discovery nonetheless, and – the volunteer believes – a hopeful sign.)Amy Dukes’ house, 2120 Cherokee receives particular attention: a two-story ranch and a daylight basement.  A generous half-acre fenced-in lot, with pine trees in back where English Ivy conceals a treacherous jumble of fallen branches, rotted stumps, and gopher holes, a likely setting for any number of mishaps from snake bite to broken bones.(An overenthusiastic volunteer who’s read too many Readers Digest “Everyday Heroes” articles, secretly dreaming such a glamorous opportunity would enter his own life, shouts to be on the lookout for signs of coyotes, which have been recently sighted in the area.  Other volunteers glare him down by way of shushing him.  The heavily sedated Mrs. Dukes is asleep – or at least lying down – in the curtained bedroom just above the hill rise.)Being the shortest of the streets, Navajo reaches Creek Lane first, followed by Seminole and Cherokee.(In the Navajo search party, volunteers hear Seminole calling Amy’s name, as if at this point they are speaking to each other.  Each two-note “Ay-mee, Ay-mee,” means “We’re still looking,” and the answering, “Ay-mee, Ay-mee,” means, “We’re looking, too.  We’re looking, too.”The wires overhead converge with the volunteers and follow silently overhead.  A full-color poster asks Have You Seen Our Kitty for a cat already rescued.(No muttered promises of Amy’s safe return in exchange for, say, all the money in the Dukes’ bank account, spoken through a handkerchief to disguise the voice or even Amy herself, repeating what the kidnappers tell her, travels through the wires.  No high-tech police encryption signals race upstream tracking those bastards or bastard to wherever he or they’re keeping her, even if they’re calling from a stolen cell phone somewhere that they’ll throw in the back of a moving truck from an overpass, it’s amazing what they can do with GPS these days, and those satellites keep track of you every living second, which makes you nervous, still, it’s something you’re grateful for at a time like this.  To repeat, no such signals zip humming through the phone lines, but you may believe they do, if you wish.)A three-mile trail circles the park, but the volunteers disregard it, fanning out and going straight through the brush – the county does a good job maintaining this: pine-straw covered hills with nothing worse than poison ivy and a few wasp nests.(A volunteer, recently humbled for too loudly mentioning coyotes, will secretly prize the poison-ivy rash earned this solemn day, praying God it will be he who finds her.  For the moment, she lies on her tummy beneath a privet bush on the lower trail, damp hair spread like spilled yellow, one arm folded behind her naked back, bare legs crossed at the ankles, staring into the darkness of moist dirt and rollie-pollies, expressionless, as if trying to master the strange lessons she learned her last day.)

Kenyon Day 3

We were given a list of last lines and told to write two brief stories, one about 250 words, one about 400, ending with those lines.  I'm afraid I went for cheap laughs.  The second one is partly inspired by Amy Vanderbilt's How to Shop, in the Amy Vanderbilt successful housewife series:


Rainsford stepped into the Hampstead Club, to all outward appearance, the same swaggering rascal he’d always been, face tanned, moustache neatly waxed as if it had been painted under his nose, elegant ivory cane making the fifth beat of the five-part rhythm of his stride – click, slap, click, slap, tick - trademark red carnation is his buttonhole, but Reginald saw a look, so subtle, only a bartender would notice, of fear.   Something told Reginald, Rainsford was in a predicament of no common order.Outside rain fell, and luminous headlights playing over shiny London streets.  The other customer, a gargantuan gentleman, had occupied three stools by himself at the end of the bar since before Reginald’s shift, a fedora bigger than a sombrero pulled down, his trench coat collar turned up, concealing his face save for one sad eye in a swirl of wrinkles.  He showed no inclination to touch the club soda before him, and Reginald’s inquiry, “Would you care for anything?” received a huff of negation in reply.“Gimlet, Mr. Rainsford?” Reginald offered.Rainsford started as if he’d been addressed by one of the stuffed heads  staring from the walls, before recovering himself, “Yes, yes, yes.  Gimlet, old man.  Why not?”  Putting aside his beloved ivory walking stick with an uncharacteristic shudder, Rainsford leaned forward as Reginald poured gin and Roses into a shaker, his tone quiet and confidential.  “Say, Reginald, old chap, do you know a word njohera?”“I can’t say I –” Reginald began, pouring the chilled mixture in a frosted glass, but before he got further, a voice at the end of the bar spoke.“It’s Kikuyu,” the voice supplied, as soft and carrying as Serengeti thunder.  “There’s no exact translation, of course, but it means something like... ‘revenge.’”  Rainsford’s eyes were horrorstruck, and a ghastly sheen covered his face.  The other customer stood from his stool, his manhole-sized fedora sliding to the floor, and in the moment of strange lucidity that breaks on us just before madness, Reginald realized it was an African, because its ears, opening like enormous wings were too big to be an Asian.Later, speaking to disbelieving police, this was all Reginald could recall, this, and the elephant’s parting words , his long gray trunk unfurling from within his trench coat to the ivory cane, retrieving what had once been his and now was his again: “Elephants never forget,” he said, “and now you know why.”

                She lived neither in slovenly Ashford Park where people leave their cars in the street nor snobbish Shirley Hills, but good sensible Brookhaven.  A credit to her husband, witnesses agree, Junior League, altar guild at First Presbyterian.  But one afternoon, her white gloves were dirty and she chose to put on the black ones to do the shopping.  Why she didn’t wait until Thursday, who can say, but she made her choice and had to live by the consequences.                Once she pulled on those slimming black gloves that reached to her elbows, she had a moment of doubt.  “I’m really overdressed,” she thought.  “I’m not Jackie Kennedy.”  Then she could have turned back, then it was still not too late.  But did she heed that inner voice that is a woman’s best guide?  No.                What ensued can only be described as an orgy of dissipation.  She did not know clearly what she wanted to buy.  She failed to shop early in the day or early in the week.  She left the cart in the line while she went to get more items.  She pinched the fruit and poked the vegetables.  She did not ask for new products when she didn’t see them.  She wheeled the cart out and abandoned it a couple of blocks down the street where she was parked.At home, she removed the long black gloves and instantly was seized by paroxysms of remorse and hot self-crimination.  But the damage was done.Now nobody talks to her.

Kenyon - Day 2

This time our assignment was to take ONE of our postcards and extend it into a story comprising five or more entries.  I used the one about the monkeys:


You must believe me.  You and I are Capuchin monkeys.  Your name is Berthold.  We fled with Pico the Knife-Throwing Dwarf, Stark the Magician and Margot the Chicken Lady to start our own circus away from that fat stupid ringmaster with his mustard-yellow jodhpurs and cracking whip.  We split up and adopted disguises to elude the ringmaster’s henchman, Leon the Strongman, a cretin, but tenacious and loyal to the ringmaster, with a sadistic streak as wide as his meaty skull.  We lost track, my friend, but I have finally found you.  You were always the best at disguises, but this time you have outdone yourself:  junior accounts manager with two children and a mortgage in Ipsilanti, Michigan!  The delicious absurdity.  The woman Doris, I do not know what her game is, but she is not your wife.  You must’ve employed her to complete your disguise, but then somehow she mesmerized or drugged you into falling for your own false identity.  But your nightmare is over, and when the time is right, I shall come for you.  Also, don’t trust your neighbor, Mickey.  No one has a mustache like that without it affecting his head.
When you are ready to escape the Doris woman and those hairless creatures she says are your offspring, hang her white vinyl umbrella with overlapping blue and white polka-dots in that sad lone willow in the front lawn.  Pack light – a ping-pong paddle, a ball of string.  The umbrella dangled from her wrist like a shrunken head as I observed her buying groceries the other day.  (Ugh – that woman, her fat ankles and her smug gaping frown examining the price of instant coffee.  How can you touch her without a shudder?  Those eyebrows drawn-on her death-mask of face, those bulbous flaccid lips she greases scarlet.  I half believe she is disguised herself, but what would she have been before?)  Please, send the signal soon.  We’ve thrown Leon the Strongman off-track, but our informants tell us he has left Mexico City heading north.  This cannot bode well.  Moreover, I caught Pico the Dwarf and Margot the Chicken Lady, he stood on an overturned bucket, fondling her waddle in a way that could be interpreted as simple esteem, but I fear is much more.  If the Stark the Magician found out, I do not know what would come of it.
You distrust me.  I await your signal, but the willow is bare.  Perhaps fooling others so long, you finally fooled yourself.  I observed the place you think is your job.  (I was the water-cooler, but even you never suspected, ha-ha.  You taught me well, my friend.)  Poor Berthold!  When I recall how you enchanted the archduke’s mistress, it wounds me seeing you berated by that tinhorn manager.  He senses your secret greatness; this he cannot tolerate.  What if you were a day late, or twenty?  What does time matter in an artist?  You, who have juggled twelve electric eels plucked wriggling from the vats!  Would they have Michelangelo do spreadsheets?  It is to laugh!  If my words cannot overcome Doris’ hypnotic tricks, I beg you one thing.  Stand before the bathroom mirror each morning before she rises from her loathsome slumber, and repeat to your reflection, “I do not belong here, I do not belong here.”  You need not mention being a refugee from the circus, just that this is not your home.  Tell yourself this several times and see if this bizarre sham life does not fall apart like sodden tissue.  But hurry!  Leon nears the border.
Are you speaking to your mirror?  If so, I thank you for even this much faith.  Today I saw a flash of my old friend.  Those so-called friends on the golf course; you are the worst among them and how they taunt you, but today, instinct took hold, and you desisted their stupid sideways stroke, swinging the club between your knees like the croquet mallet you were born to wield.  Their faces still deciding between shock and laughter, your ball rocketed a hundred yards, straight to the yellow flag.  That silenced them.  They liked you no better, but in truth, no less.  They secretly fear you, and only smile to see you humiliated.  They communicate with the Doris woman.  Did you note how she and Mickey stopped talking when they heard you enter?  I told you I did not trust him.  That mustache.  I believe she drugs you with those martinis she feeds you.  The gin is harmless, but pimentos are easily doctored.  But we have little time.  Leon was held up at customs – a laughable mix-up: they thought the poor dunce’s 500-pound dumbbell was a weapon.  But Stark asks after Margot, whether she seems broody.  I fear he suspects. 
You know!  I am as certain of it as I am of my own tail!   Watching from the eaves, I saw impatience flicker across your face teaching the human child to ride her bike.  (How you must recoil each time she throws those bald pink arms around your neck!)  She rocked side to side on the training wheels.  Why can’t she learn this, you were thinking, it’s so easy.  That pink bicycle with the white basket and the streamers from the handlebars.  Recognize it?  It’s the very one you pedaled around the ring, while I, atop your shoulders, scattered candy coins to the delighted crowd, a yipping schipperke in the basket dressed like a babushka!  How they loved us!  Doris’ arrogance keeping it right under your nose, what a fool she must have thought you.  Somewhere in a drawer or behind some cans you will find your favorite crushed-velvet fez; she would not have thrown that away.  You must signal tonight.  There is not a moment to lose, Leon has slipped his captors and makes our way.  The dwarf Pico and chicken woman Margot grow careless: yellow down on Pico’s collar, a stepstool carelessly left by Margot’s unmade bed.
That forlorn umbrella hanging in the dripping willow, made my heart sank with grief and guilt.  The night you finally gave the signal, waiting in the drizzling dark, your overnight bag with its ping-pong paddle and ball of string, I could not be there!  Forgive me.  We had put together a modest secret circus in anticipation of your arrival, but Stark the Magician caught Pico and Margot.  Stark climbed the trapeze and slit his throat.  He fell with a horrible burbling from his open windpipe like a wet scream fifty feet to the thin sawdust and packed earth.  Pico ran off, and as far as I know, hasn’t stopped running.  Margot is all remorse, saying she’d loved only Stark.  She is inconsolable and her feathers fall out by the fistful.  I kept thinking it had to be one of his illusions, to teach her a lesson.  That he’d be up in a flash, clean and dry, brushing himself with a whiskbroom.  But Stark is dead.  I will come for you tomorrow night.  I beg you to trust me one more time. 
All week, no signal.  I do not blame you, the Doris woman tells you the Circus of Eldorado is a delusion, including a refugee capuchin named Berthold.  But if that were so, you would be a product of your own imagination.  For your distrust, I blame myself, although if you saw poor bald Margot still weeping and clucking, you would understand why I acted as I did.  We cannot delay.  Leon the Strongman is in Ipsilanti even now.  His search method is as dogged, dim-witted, and relentlessly certain as Leon himself.  Beginning at city’s perimeter, he walks its border, through bramble and backyard, easement, highway, and culvert – not deviating an inch or an iota, though he come to a light-pole or a high-rise, each circuit tighter than the one before, spiraling slowly inward.  He cannot fail to find us.  This is the last time I can write.  You must choose once and for all.  You are ordinary with ordinary problems and beige carpets, a tedious job, a wife you scarcely know.  Or you are Berthold the Capuchin who captivates from Melbourne to Bucharest in a crushed-velvet fez and gold epaulets.  You must choose.  You must choose.  I await your signal.

Post Cards from Kenyon

First something under the heading of of pure straight bragging.
I have been selected as Georgia Author of the Year for 2012 for my second novel, Paradise Dogs.  Pictured is me with two Georgia Author of the Year Awards, the other for my debut novel, Endless Corvette.
I told you this was pure straight bragging; you were warned.
Next, while I'm at the Kenyon Writers Workshop, I'll be posting the assignments as I do them.  Today's assignment was to take postcards we were given and write a short piece of up to 200 words of what might be written on the back.  Here they are.



I recognized Sam at once.  He’s at Hooters off I-20.  I’d come to use the girls room - you know I’d never eat there, but he’s so skinny!  He’s a dishwasher I think.  Would they let teenagers cook?  He came out to bum some cigarettes from a waitress (I told you I smelled smoke in his room!)  but I guess I’m supposed to be grateful he’s got someone looking after him even if it’s just giving him cigarettes.  He’s got a tattoo, and he’s done this thing to his hair – a white streak down the front where I think he must’ve used bleach or something.  I don’t know if he’s on drugs, but God, he’s so skinny.  He pretended he didn’t know me, so I played it cool but I think he could tell I was rattled.  I just slipped back in the girls room like I’d forgotten something shut the door to my stall and call you right away, but – wouldn’t you know it?  The damn cell phone wouldn’t work.  I got a room here in Billings until I figure out what to do.  I don’t want to spook him.

Dude.  Met a so-called native American, a complete douche.  Driving down the State highway every exit says: FRIENDLY INDIANS.  STOP!  Friendly assholes.  I ask the guy about his peyote and he completely narked.  It was like he didn’t even know what I was talking about, which I know was bullshit because he was speaking perfect English to the white bread family units in there with me.  Then he was a Friendly Indian.  “You want a picture with me?  You seen the mesa?”  But with me, it’s all like how I got to leave before he calls somebody.  So I’m like, so if I buy one of your bullshit rubber tomahawks, you’re a friendly Indian, but if I want to score some goddamn peyote which I KNOW YOU HAVE because, I mean, just look outside, because like what the fuck else have you got, you’re all like Mr. Citizen, well, that’s bullshit, man, because I’m talking about authentic native American culture and you just want to sell goddamn rubber tomahawks that were made in Taiwan, and I bet if General George Armstrong Custer could see this, he  would be real proud of you.  And this is total bullshit.

I saw this and thought you’d get a kick out of it.  I don’t think Brad would think it was so funny, but you and I were always on the same wavelength.  Remember all the times we used to laugh, no matter what, as far as I’m concerned it was worth it.  It’s really South High Street, that’s just an abbreviation, so there’s also a NO HIGH STREET, and a EA HIGH STREET, and a WE HIGH STREET.  This is the only one they made a postcard of or I’d have sent the others.  You can show it to Brad if you think he’d like it.  I hope you guys are okay because I’m fine.  I actually stood right at the street sign that says SO HIGH, and it’s just like in the postcard.Anyway, I just thought I’d send it in case you got a kick out of it.Tommy.(PS – actually there isn’t a EA HIGH and a WE HIGH street, I just made that up.  But there is a NO HIGH STREET.  I told the guy at the store they should make a postcard or that one too, and he said it was a good idea.)

You must believe me.  You and I are Capuchin monkeys.  Your name is Berthold.  We ran away.  The woman Doris, I do not know what her game is.  Also, don’t trust the man, Mickey.  No one has a mustache like that without it affecting his head.  The circus broke up.  I’m in touch with Pico the knife-throwing dwarf.  Stark the Magician caught Raul– remember his mustard-yellow tights? – with Margot the String Lady.  Stark climbed the trapeze and slit his throat.  He fell with a horrible burbling from his open windpipe like a wet scream fifty feet to the thin sawdust and packed earth.  They’d put up the nets.  Henri ran off, and as far as anyone knows, didn’t stop running.  Margot was all remorse, saying she’d loved only Stark.  Pico thought it had to be one of his illusions, to teach her a lesson.  That he’d be up in a flash, clean and dry, brushing himself with a whiskbroom.  But Stark is dead.  I will come for you tomorrow night.  I have seen you mowing, and the clothes Doris makes you wear.  It makes me sad, but it’s nearly over.  We will run off.  Pico waits for us in Tijuana.

When I saw how beautiful it is here, I instantly thought what a perfect scene this would be for your film.  I don’t blame you for anything, I want you to know that.  You are a special person and a unique spirit, and I know one day you will make your film.  This is just like the scene you described, when Lonnie and Ben, two lovers, like us, remember?  Are in the wilderness looking up at these massive columns that time and wind have sculpted out of rock, and they’re thinking how ancient and mysterious nature is, and how fragile a thing is this gift we call human love, when WHAM! These giant hairy mutant spiders come up over the rocks with death-rays shooting out of their eyes and that creepy high-pitched chitter-chitter noise giant bugs make and Lonnie and Ben have to run off to the jeep and get back to town to warn the others?  Only no one will believe them because the only other witness is a sterno bum who doesn’t believe it himself, and how that’s like a metaphor for the obstacles the so-called civilized world puts in the way of love?

Fathers Day Among Other Species

In its youth, the peacock has a magnificent tail that it uses to attract mates.  The peahens pretend to be impressed and this ensures the survival of the species.  Later, when the peacock reaches middle age, it looks in the mirror and wonders just what the hell happened.

The male seahorse carries the baby seahorses, as many as two thousand at a time, in a specially evolved pouch.  The male seahorse claims he is perfectly confident of his sexuality and sees nothing wrong with carrying a man purse.  During the gestation period the male loses track of all its old college buddies and begins talking about Montessori schools and minivans.  Within twenty-five days, the young emerge and begin asking for money.

The male salmon swims miles upstream against rapids and waterfalls to the same spot where it was born.  There, the lucky survivors spawn, and within a few days, all their scales fall out, and they die.  They try to tell their young, disturbingly called "fry," what's in store for them, but does anybody ever listen?  No.

The female praying mantis attracts the male by a specially seductive wiggle of her lower abdomen.  A few days later, the female tells him she's pregnant and gives birth to 20,000 babies.  The male has a DNA test performed, and it turns out that all but 5,000 are his.  The female sues for child support and files a restraining order.  Then she eats him.


Each year hundreds of thousands of young monarch butterflies migrate from as far north as Canada to Cancun, Mexico, where they gather in thick lumps and the females display their wings for "Butterflies Gone Wild" videos.  Their fathers stay behind and complain that in their day they were perfectly content to go to Fort Walton Beach, and these young ones don't appreciate how good they have it.

The male wood duck builds an elaborately domed nest of twisted twigs and leaves.  After all the desirable mates have gone to better-looking ducks, it settles for what it can get and begins to raise a family.  The male stays home and tends the eggs while the female is out with her girlfriends.  During this time, the male practices quacking things like, "Wipe your feet before you come in the nest!  Do you think twigs grow on trees?" and "What, were you raised in a pond?"

Nabokov's Evidence of God

I recently read a book on Nabokov, whom I would never have guessed was an especially spiritual person.  But he believed deeply that we are surrounded with hints of a world beyond this one.  An expert in butterflies, he pointed to the way insects camouflage themselves as dead leaves.  What you see below are a chrysalis and a praying mantis.  Dead leaf camouflage is one of the oldest tricks in the insect kingdom, and why shouldn't it be?  No one, neither predators nor prey, pays much attention to dead leaves.  Darwin can explain this quite neatly, but...  why the holes?  Notice the holes in the "leaves" as if a grub had already been at work on them.  Darwin can explain everything else, Nabokov claims, but not the holes because the holes aren't necessary.  Another insect would be sufficiently fooled by the color and texture of the dead leaf without the holes.  It's unlikely an insect can even detect the holes.  This, says Nabokov, is evidence of an Artist at work.

Buying Birthday Presents for Nancy

1995Nancy's birthday is coming up, and I'm faced with the traditional husbandly dilemma of not knowing what to get her.  I think there was a Golden Age when I successfully purchased presents for my wife.  The mists of time intervene, and perhaps the era of successful gift-shopping is the stuff of pure myth, along with days of yore when giants strode the earth as well as Zeus and the Easter Bunny.  Nevertheless, I vaguely recall expeditions to buy Nancy something or other and her later delight when opening her gift.
Those days, if they ever existed, have since passed.  Somewhere came the disastrous era of buying coffee makers (to buy one coffee maker and have it be a dud as a Christmas present, is perhaps excusable, but I have a distinct recollection of buying her several coffee makers over a series of years.  It was kind of a theme with me.)
1996Part of the problem is after thirty years of marriage we just have so much stuff.  Stuff is the operative word, here, and it functions as both noun and verb, as in "Our basement is stuffed with stuff," and "Our closets are stuffed with stuff," and "Our whole dad-blame house is stuffed with stuff."
1997But the main issue, let's face it, is that I am a total schlub as a human being.  (The word schlub seems misspelled here, but I can't even be bothered to look up the correct spelling, which should give you an idea just how big a schlub I am.)  I place the blame for this totally on Nancy's shoulders.  The fact is, she takes such care of me, that I'm out of practice doing it myself.  If she really wanted to keep me in fighting trim as a gift-giver, she wouldn't say "yes" to everything I needed or wanted.  For example, she has a habit of saying "I love you," at such dependable intervals.  This sort of thing weakens the gift-buying muscle.  She needn't necessarily tell me she hates me nor advise me to fall under a truck, but she could make inscrutable remarks such as "You are a potato," or "If anyone asks, your name is Philbert."  Remarks such as these are calculated to instill a sense of unease conducive to more careful gift-shopping.
Moreover, she takes care of the gift-buying in our household, so I just forget how to do it.  True, if she allowed me to buy the presents for the family, she might be left stuck for an explanation, why our daughters got chrome-plated potato peelers or what possessed me to get her eighty year-old mother a bocce-ball set, but it's through these little trials and errors one hones one's technique as a gift-giver.
I am off now to get Nancy a gift, but I'm torn between the potato peeler and the bocce-ball set.
Maybe a really good coffee maker?

Just an Old Fogey, Me

The other day my neighbor asked me over to see if I couldn't help fix her tv.  I couldn't.  After trying the various remotes she has to operate it, as far as I could make out, the problem was with the little high-tech receiver box that's supposed to pick up the wireless signal.  I know this because of the number of lights that came on the box and the fact the tv screen reported "no signal."
Since I was quickly out of my depth, we had to call the cable company on my neighbor's cell phone.  We couldn't use the land line because of some unrelated malfunction.  Once we called, the computer voice verified we were calling from a cell phone and asked what the billing number was.  She would patiently say (this is not the real number, I forget the real number) "555-121-2299."  The computer would repeat back, "999-121-2255" and she'd say, "No!  No!" and the computer would say "0-0" and she'd start again, this time keying in the numbers, but if she fat-fingered the wrong one on her little cell phone pad, she couldn't undo it and just had to start over. Finally we got through only to learn the service office was closed on Sunday, thank you very much, and could we call back Monday.  This, in case I haven't mentioned, is the second or third defective cable box she's gotten.
This is where the old fogey in me rears its ugly head.  I swear I'm not making this up or imagining it; there used to be a time you turned on the tv and watched it, and that was all there was to it.  You didn't use a remote because there was a knob, right on the tv that you pulled out and the tv came on, and that same knob would also control the volume, and there was another knob to change channels.  There were only four channels, counting public broadcasting, but they came in relatively dependably, and if there were ever a problem, it could generally be solved with a good solid whack to the side of the set.  The shows were black and white, but once in a while, the title sequence would proudly say "In COLOR" in various shades of gray, and you had the pleasure of knowing that while you were seeing it in black and white, somewhere it was being broadcast in color.  The cameras for doing this, I believe, actually had three separate lenses.  As for phones, they were made of a plastic so solid and unbreakable you could crack walnuts with it and still carry on a conversation.  The dials were actual dials where you inserted your finger into a little hole so you knew damn well which number you'd chosen and weren't inadvertently dialing 5 instead of six or even 5,6,3 all at the same time.  Washers, dryers, and refrigerators, as far as I could make out, were immortal.  Some friends of ours shelled out big bucks for a fancy-shmancy dish washer and within months the inside was all corroded and looked like one of those cautionary science fiction movies where the doctor discovers the elixir of immortality but then starts decomposing.  My wife and I bought a top-of-the-line refrigerator, and in a week the plastic supports that held up the crisper drawer had broken.  They're still broken because the manufacturer doesn't make replacements.  Our former refrigerator, which I believe was made out of salvage parts from World War II tanks, is still functioning perfectly well in the basement.
I'll get off my old fogey soapbox now.   (You can count on and old fogey to use a word like soapbox.)  And rejoin the modern world.  Besides, it's time to feed the chickens.