You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
I awaken to a horrible surprise, the feminine face of death.
Well, at least in the dream.
I’VE BEEN DIGNOSED WITH a terminal illness. Suppose what or who was on my mind was the retirement or “brand-value” issues. Somehow Ohio was in this or related sequences as someone was trying to reconnect with me or seduce me … while I kept moving on to my own lover and eventual wife and projects.
I’ll label this part Disturbing.
Woman: “I’m pregnant.”
Man: “I’m leaving.”
I’ll even nominate it for best flash fiction.
Now, let’s contrast that to today, the Nativity narrative.
As well as all the merry, merry, plus gratitude.
I’m sticking around. How about you?
That is, PFAs, as we’re known among the locals.
I haven’t encountered the negative reaction some report, but feel myself among those warmly welcomed.
Part of it is, I believe, an openness to approach what’s here without wanting to totally “improve” it. I mean, if you can’t stand the smell of cow manure, you shouldn’t move into farm country. Or, for much of Maine, the stench of a paper mill.
That doesn’t mean we don’t have a lot to contribute, but we need to be respectful in acknowledging what’s attracted us as well as the dirty work that needs to be done. You know, the equivalent of washing dishes.
Or loving someone warts and all.
Touring a Roman Catholic church that’s known for its graves, the ones inside around the sanctuary and in chambers off to the side and, presumably, in the basement. The ceiling is relatively low and the dominant color a light yellow. Feels something like a Mount Auburn Cemetery and may have been surrounded by the like.
Noticing a man who’s obviously perplexed (he may have even been in clerical garb, I now sense), I approach and offer my help. He has a map that may simply have some directions, but he’s looking for such-and-such Avenue. Together we circle the inside of the building and come upon a stone wall that’s been painted black and both agree that’s where we should have found his destination. We’re both baffled.
We then join a small group in a chapel or, considering the slanted floor, lecture hall auditorium where a nun’s doing an end-of-tour kind of Q&A session. She keeps overlooking any questions hands up from either me or the man; I’m three rows back and in the center, he’s at the back about four rows behind me. Finally, I shout out my question about the black wall. “It’s the Williams family,” she answers, as if everyone should know they owned the property long before the church was erected.
We scatter to make way for some kind of ecumenical program in the sanctuary that evening.
Our Greek Orthodox priest is already there, sitting on the floor, his back to the wall, with his family.
To counter the effects of a boring conversation from the get-go, be the more interesting person by asking questions like:
By taking the initiative and making the conversation about the other person, this selfless act of shining the spotlight on someone else first gives you the edge – making you the more interesting person in the room.
Gee, I am wondering where I copped this.
Is the Queen going to move with the King or in some opposition to him?
Shuffle and deal again.
Just for comparison, there was the rich couple with the penthouse in Palm Beach, Florida, featuring reproductions of the master-name paintings hanging on the walls of their Chicago mansion.
IN SEATTLE, LATE AFTERNOON in a modernist house with a view of the twinkling bay. Think my ex- is in there somewhere, too. Or perhaps in a now-forgotten earlier sequence.
Then there’s a trailer of some sort, touting the movie along with a kind of genealogy that mentions me among others and “the books yet to be written.” I start screaming at the screen, “But the books are written! Nobody’s reading them!”
Scarface, up till now politely distant, begins taunting. I wind up overturning him in his curvy laminated wood folding chair, the kind we used to own.
A few words are exchanged, and we leave. That’s it.
MAYBE I WAS A REPORTER … or just working with one. Somehow, the Washington Post was involved. The subject we were following, though, was sentenced as an incorrigible offender – one of those three-strikes-you’re-out type felons – and placed in a large prison behind three big sets of gateways, each with a different password, and five smaller ones. The unspoken message was that if you failed to remember them, this person was lost in the maze – there would be no contact from you, on the outside.
ALL SET TO VISIT FRIENDS IN CUBA, I discover three days before departure I have forgotten to obtain my passport and visa. Had tickets and was already packed.
“He’s got negativity about things he doesn’t know shit about.”
And I’m fond of them both.
Yet I’m thinking the perspective could apply to many others in the public sphere.
FOR A POTLUCK, a coworker creates a big bowl of turtle soup. Curry-color in a big wide bowl. Just as she’s serving it, the auto racing columnist dashes toward me with his own milk-color version in a broad blue-and-white bowl. (Like my pasta bowl.) I wind up taking a spoonful first from his outdoorsy one and then from the marvelous one beside it.
PREPARING A LARGE FISH from a Korean market, I’m in the set-aside (set to one side?) modern kitchen of a motel restaurant and something being held for a private birthday party.
I have skills I was unaware of!
THE KID AND I ARE AT THE MEAT COUNTER, someplace like Janetos little downtown supermarket. We’re there for chops, but she suggests we get a chicken, too. The clerk returns from the cooler with an array of boxes, each containing a chicken. “Select one,” I tell my younger daughter.
Jnana's Red Barn 