2c Victory
All of us second graders sat in the auditorium waiting for something to happen, something was obviously afoot. There was about to transpire a thing so big it was outside our scope to even imagine it. As the teachers of the four second grade classes consulted with each other down front, we second graders restrained ourselves from loading clear plastic Bic pen shooters with gooey spit balls. This uncharacteristic line towing amongst the four classes was testament to the power of belief in a promised future goodness. That we were being duped did not even occur to most of us. We had been threatened by the most foreboding of the teachers and told to sit quietly, face forward, and keep our hands in our laps. On that day I for one had no greater promise from anyone, of an unknown reward, so did exactly as told. The feeling I derived from this bridling of self was one of both satisfaction and uneasiness. I did not know then that the duping went on throughout life, every day if you cared to look, and so tried, pretty successfully on that day, to be good and thus win a vaguely promised prize. After a wait that began to have all the earmarks of punishment, when there was throughout the auditorium the faint sound of ripping paper and a concealment of chewing, one of the teachers told us what the deal was. We were all going to return to our separate classrooms for a contest in which only two of us, one boy and one girl, would be chosen as winners. We were by class, 2a, b, c and d lined up single file and led back to our rooms. There was throughout this process so much wasting of valuable learning time that we all began to feel somewhat, already like winners. So we of grade 2c sat forward in our desks and waited nervously for the contest to begin. I was not then and am not now a classic winner. I was second in spelling contests and could add numbers together and write one page murder mysteries, if someone helped me spell knife. I had guilelessly outsmarted the Grim Reaper once, or maybe twice by then, but had no trophies to show for it. I was surviving the pummeling love of my older siblings but knew not what worth there was in that. The teacher said--we are going to have a smiling contest, and we all smiled. But she wasn't kidding and that's what we did, smiled our best smiles while she walked around the room and inspected us. In the end it was Greg Parker and Emily Rhimes who won, which I begrudgingly admitted to myself later on, as logical, seeing as how they had the exact same smile, and seemed to need no joke or promise of love or tickling of ribs to bring it on. They got to represent the second grade for the newly formed elementary school student council, minor figure heads really, as the seventh graders of course ruled the school. Since that day 40 years ago I am apt to see myself in every forced and awkward smile begging for a reason to be real. I did later in my youth win a trophy or two, for team sport participation, but one of them had my name misspelled.
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Snakes
There is a snake that sheds his skin in the shed every year. I don’t ever see the snake but I see his skin and think too late to follow the advice of a man who once banged on the door before entering so the snake in the shed would not drop from the rafters onto his head. Which is a very frightening thing to have happen to you. It happened to me once and I screamed and screamed while dancing awkwardly something vaguely ritualistic looking if we surmise that there is a dance to keep snakes from your head. As it turned out the snake was just an extension cord but it was too late to turn off the fright by the time I realized that. To this day I still think of it as the day the snake fell on top of my head. Yesterday I called a man whom I have for awhile been thinking was dead, but he’s not. He is 90. He calls me Louis. I wanted to discuss some business regarding a piece of land he sold me 25 years ago but he misunderstood and thought I was trying to shake him down for money. It did not seem to matter that I even suggested giving him some money. To change the subject I asked him about his son and he said the son had broken his neck a couple of years ago. The man said there may have been crack cocaine involved. When I moved back to the subject of business he said, you know Louis, just now when you were asking about my boy I could understand every word you said but this other thing—I don’t know what you are talking about. I can’t hear a word of it. I hung up shortly after that and am now suffering some regret that this misunderstood conversation will likely be the last one we ever have. His wife will ask, what did Louis want? And he will say, oh that little bastard was trying to get my retirement fund out of me. How can what people think not be true?
There is a snake that sheds his skin in the shed every year. I don’t ever see the snake but I see his skin and think too late to follow the advice of a man who once banged on the door before entering so the snake in the shed would not drop from the rafters onto his head. Which is a very frightening thing to have happen to you. It happened to me once and I screamed and screamed while dancing awkwardly something vaguely ritualistic looking if we surmise that there is a dance to keep snakes from your head. As it turned out the snake was just an extension cord but it was too late to turn off the fright by the time I realized that. To this day I still think of it as the day the snake fell on top of my head. Yesterday I called a man whom I have for awhile been thinking was dead, but he’s not. He is 90. He calls me Louis. I wanted to discuss some business regarding a piece of land he sold me 25 years ago but he misunderstood and thought I was trying to shake him down for money. It did not seem to matter that I even suggested giving him some money. To change the subject I asked him about his son and he said the son had broken his neck a couple of years ago. The man said there may have been crack cocaine involved. When I moved back to the subject of business he said, you know Louis, just now when you were asking about my boy I could understand every word you said but this other thing—I don’t know what you are talking about. I can’t hear a word of it. I hung up shortly after that and am now suffering some regret that this misunderstood conversation will likely be the last one we ever have. His wife will ask, what did Louis want? And he will say, oh that little bastard was trying to get my retirement fund out of me. How can what people think not be true?
The Weatherman
In NYC I saw cotton growing among the flowers in buckets on Ave A coming back from a poetry reading at a gay bookstore where my friend read his new book in its entirety so we wouldn't have to.
A day later I sat idling at a bus stop waiting to be told I couldn't which I eventually was but I wasn't on my way to drop off a cancer cat for his eternity injection, which I could have been.
Two truck drivers, the one while I waited said to the man in who's way he was, fuck you, and the other one high above as we approached the light outside the Holland Tunnel seeing me the recent passenger eating a puppy dog ear sandwich with a kitten on my shoulder gushed on and on about the little kitten, although at first I thought he was talking about the sandwich, until we moved forward without saying so much as so long.
Now back in the country no noise or evidence of life if life is the teeming masses. But the rain drops drip loudly so we're getting that and boy did we need it even if it is a day late. It will get cold on Sunday and if you want to discuss that with me I would love to, I would really love to.
In NYC I saw cotton growing among the flowers in buckets on Ave A coming back from a poetry reading at a gay bookstore where my friend read his new book in its entirety so we wouldn't have to.
A day later I sat idling at a bus stop waiting to be told I couldn't which I eventually was but I wasn't on my way to drop off a cancer cat for his eternity injection, which I could have been.
Two truck drivers, the one while I waited said to the man in who's way he was, fuck you, and the other one high above as we approached the light outside the Holland Tunnel seeing me the recent passenger eating a puppy dog ear sandwich with a kitten on my shoulder gushed on and on about the little kitten, although at first I thought he was talking about the sandwich, until we moved forward without saying so much as so long.
Now back in the country no noise or evidence of life if life is the teeming masses. But the rain drops drip loudly so we're getting that and boy did we need it even if it is a day late. It will get cold on Sunday and if you want to discuss that with me I would love to, I would really love to.
The Legend Of Bill Macy
Over stale beers at a Mexican cantina in Chinatown Bill Macy said, please, call me William.
Earlier, outside the doors of an abandoned meat market seven of us stood in line waiting to sign forms that would prevent us from future actions. Hector did not want to sign the form. He walked off without so much as a warm manly embrace and went looking for his truck. He would find the truck three blocks away and drive to Jersey.
Bill Macy chanted, art, art, art as he marched through the maze which would lead to the beach minus Charlton Heston and the Statue of Liberty.
So there were only six of us at the cantina sipping stale beers. At about that point in time when we could no longer take solace in the fact that at least the beers were cold, the waitress came. We ganged up on her with all the communicative acumen we could muster and sent her away confused. As the minutes passed we were forced to reconstruct just what it was we may have communicated to her and realized it was absolutely nothing. In the bottles before us were the dregs of stale, warm beer.
Bill Macy said, check, and we on our way.
To the best of my ability I translated Chinese signage while following behind Graham Bell, Bernadette, Bill Macy, and Jimson and Julia Creed. We ended up in front of a synagogue that was not serving beers. We looked at the synagogue and enjoyed it while people on the street wondered why we weren't taking pictures.
At a bar around the corner we experienced the fortune of not loathing each other, or being in any particular hurry, as our beers were poured one drop at a time. As entertainment, while we waited, I performed science experiments and proved without a doubt that a pint of liquid will fit easily into a half litre container. Bill Macy looked on, neither amused nor impressed. At times it was hard to read Bill Macy, as he wore dark glasses.
Bernadette learned over and said to me, Bill Macy is asleep. And I think it is true that he may have for a moment passed into that netherworld.
Bernadette and I ordered a duck confit appetizer to share and it seemed, at that point after a very long wait, when a deaf waiter placed before us a plate of Swedish meatballs, that we would never actually know if the duck was worth waiting for. Graham Bell while devouring a juicy cheeseburger tried to cheer us up by making duck jokes.
Over stale beers at a Mexican cantina in Chinatown Bill Macy said, please, call me William.
Earlier, outside the doors of an abandoned meat market seven of us stood in line waiting to sign forms that would prevent us from future actions. Hector did not want to sign the form. He walked off without so much as a warm manly embrace and went looking for his truck. He would find the truck three blocks away and drive to Jersey.
Bill Macy chanted, art, art, art as he marched through the maze which would lead to the beach minus Charlton Heston and the Statue of Liberty.
So there were only six of us at the cantina sipping stale beers. At about that point in time when we could no longer take solace in the fact that at least the beers were cold, the waitress came. We ganged up on her with all the communicative acumen we could muster and sent her away confused. As the minutes passed we were forced to reconstruct just what it was we may have communicated to her and realized it was absolutely nothing. In the bottles before us were the dregs of stale, warm beer.
Bill Macy said, check, and we on our way.
To the best of my ability I translated Chinese signage while following behind Graham Bell, Bernadette, Bill Macy, and Jimson and Julia Creed. We ended up in front of a synagogue that was not serving beers. We looked at the synagogue and enjoyed it while people on the street wondered why we weren't taking pictures.
At a bar around the corner we experienced the fortune of not loathing each other, or being in any particular hurry, as our beers were poured one drop at a time. As entertainment, while we waited, I performed science experiments and proved without a doubt that a pint of liquid will fit easily into a half litre container. Bill Macy looked on, neither amused nor impressed. At times it was hard to read Bill Macy, as he wore dark glasses.
Bernadette learned over and said to me, Bill Macy is asleep. And I think it is true that he may have for a moment passed into that netherworld.
Bernadette and I ordered a duck confit appetizer to share and it seemed, at that point after a very long wait, when a deaf waiter placed before us a plate of Swedish meatballs, that we would never actually know if the duck was worth waiting for. Graham Bell while devouring a juicy cheeseburger tried to cheer us up by making duck jokes.
The Rigor
This area is suffering from the greatest drought since the Oklahoma dust bowl days so there won't be much fall color this year. There has been some talk of canceling Halloween due to the absence of the color orange. One man was heard to exclaim--what's the use? Without a pot to piss in people will piss against a tree or in a public restroom, or a coke bottle, or a pork n' beans can, or onto a tire, or in a doorway.
Consider the word--fervently. Now vehemence.
Hate to judge a book by its cover but passing through a neighborhood recently I saw in someone's front yard, pasted onto plywood, a 4X6 foot glossy color photocopy of an aborted fetus and I thought--I bet those people are against abortion.
One of the candidates for sheriff stopped by today. He looked to be about16 years old but I expect he is some older than that.
This morning, after a lengthy respite from doing the dishes I did the dishes.
This area is suffering from the greatest drought since the Oklahoma dust bowl days so there won't be much fall color this year. There has been some talk of canceling Halloween due to the absence of the color orange. One man was heard to exclaim--what's the use? Without a pot to piss in people will piss against a tree or in a public restroom, or a coke bottle, or a pork n' beans can, or onto a tire, or in a doorway.
Consider the word--fervently. Now vehemence.
Hate to judge a book by its cover but passing through a neighborhood recently I saw in someone's front yard, pasted onto plywood, a 4X6 foot glossy color photocopy of an aborted fetus and I thought--I bet those people are against abortion.
One of the candidates for sheriff stopped by today. He looked to be about16 years old but I expect he is some older than that.
This morning, after a lengthy respite from doing the dishes I did the dishes.
Jumping Jiminy Cats
One Of The Five
First its too hot for October then its about right but relatively speaking colder than shit which makes no sense comparing weather to fecal matter. Then its windy hear the chimes do they sound any different than they did in Dallas. Once you had a cat then you didn't then you did then you didn't then you did now you do its over there looking on. A single chime implies some wind the barking dog I thought was dead. I heard a car go by there must be people its hard to tell when there are so few of them. Yeah there are crickets and mooing cows. I can remember this doing this years ago and here I am doing it again. There are only about five different ways to go about it.
First its too hot for October then its about right but relatively speaking colder than shit which makes no sense comparing weather to fecal matter. Then its windy hear the chimes do they sound any different than they did in Dallas. Once you had a cat then you didn't then you did then you didn't then you did now you do its over there looking on. A single chime implies some wind the barking dog I thought was dead. I heard a car go by there must be people its hard to tell when there are so few of them. Yeah there are crickets and mooing cows. I can remember this doing this years ago and here I am doing it again. There are only about five different ways to go about it.
Which One Next
North Front Street in Harrisburg does not suffer from its lack of snaking alongside the Susquehanna River. It runs straight and true with nary a pothole to dodge.
The caretaker was taking a break from the task of avoiding duty and although arguably benefited by the absence of his kitten, who on the previous trip had heaved up wet, soggy kibble into his lap, still felt the missing of some key ingredient to happiness. Was he suffering from more of the same wanderlust that as a toddler had him unlocking gates and crawling across six lane thoroughfares, as unlikely a hitchhiker as any passing motorist had ever seen? Was it congenital, this need to move away from the familiar? Should he surmise that his mother and father had felt the same needs, even as they carried out the functions of his upbringing? Perhaps there was some comfort in this notion.
The river to his right was wide but low and hard to imagine as a raging force that could on occasion rise up 12 to 15 feet and flood the lower lying finely built homes of historic Harrisburg.
The caretaker passed by all the neatly maintained stone and brick buildings and up a ramp onto I-83. After merging into traffic he exited immediately, onto 13th Street, took a right on Sycamore and drove until it dead ended into a parking lot for a driver training school. At the first available turnoff he pulled into what looked like another giant parking lot, and, in front of two people being taught proper driving skills, made an illegal U-turn and traversed back out the way he came.
Driving in this higher elevated part of town above the network of train tracks which cuts Harrisburg in two, the caretaker noticed the people in cars alongside him represented an ethnic diversity which he lately had been missing. And there was, like in another highly flood prone town in which he had once lived, a blending of poverty and wealth, one very near the other and each unpredictable in its breadth.
In a commercial district of fast food restaurants and used car lots and rent-to-own businesses, he turned corners where rising up before him were grandly designed structures from the last century, apparently abandoned.
The caretaker was in search of an historical perspective as represented by architecture. He had once subscribed wholly to the notion of the here and now, but was lately feeling limited by this concept. He wanted some of the then in his here and now. Trying to piece together some meaning from all the ideas floating around in his head he said out loud, Yesterday's now is today's past. Tomorrow's yesterday is now. There is no time like the present.
Not to be bridled by his disdain for the Harley's chain of fast food restaurants, he stopped into one so he could use the restroom and while there ordered a cheeseburger, which, when unwrapped, appeared every bit as appetizing as the wads of phlegm in the cigarette clogged urinal. He ate some of it anyway, until gagging on a bitter and rubbery pickle he decided his use of the restroom did not warrant this punishment by cheeseburger.
He had heard about a three story Victorian with an unattached three car garage on sale for $12,000, but he wasn't sure where it was and he hoped to just run into it by accident. The seller was motivated, which was more than he could say for himself. He imagined meeting the seller and saying, nice to meet you, I understand you are motivated, I am restless. But instead of finding the three story Victorian he kept driving by the same set of ramshackle row houses and began to feel intimidated by the casual glaring from teenage boys on porches.
It was hard for the caretaker to get a handle on just what motivated Harrisburg to keep on chugging. It was the state capital but beyond that he was uncertain about what made it tick. For almost 60 years it has been experiencing a negative population growth. There was an irony not lost on the caretaker that one of Harrisburg's more lively downtown restaurants was called The Quarter, as in French Quarter. The caretaker had left New Orleans a couple of years before the water had its way there. He was currently residing in a small Virginia town that appeared on track to preserve its tranquility by forcing out everyone but the richest of the rich. It was beginning to appear as if the caretaker was attracted to troubled communities, but as so many of them existed, it was hard to choose which one next.
North Front Street in Harrisburg does not suffer from its lack of snaking alongside the Susquehanna River. It runs straight and true with nary a pothole to dodge.
The caretaker was taking a break from the task of avoiding duty and although arguably benefited by the absence of his kitten, who on the previous trip had heaved up wet, soggy kibble into his lap, still felt the missing of some key ingredient to happiness. Was he suffering from more of the same wanderlust that as a toddler had him unlocking gates and crawling across six lane thoroughfares, as unlikely a hitchhiker as any passing motorist had ever seen? Was it congenital, this need to move away from the familiar? Should he surmise that his mother and father had felt the same needs, even as they carried out the functions of his upbringing? Perhaps there was some comfort in this notion.
The river to his right was wide but low and hard to imagine as a raging force that could on occasion rise up 12 to 15 feet and flood the lower lying finely built homes of historic Harrisburg.
The caretaker passed by all the neatly maintained stone and brick buildings and up a ramp onto I-83. After merging into traffic he exited immediately, onto 13th Street, took a right on Sycamore and drove until it dead ended into a parking lot for a driver training school. At the first available turnoff he pulled into what looked like another giant parking lot, and, in front of two people being taught proper driving skills, made an illegal U-turn and traversed back out the way he came.
Driving in this higher elevated part of town above the network of train tracks which cuts Harrisburg in two, the caretaker noticed the people in cars alongside him represented an ethnic diversity which he lately had been missing. And there was, like in another highly flood prone town in which he had once lived, a blending of poverty and wealth, one very near the other and each unpredictable in its breadth.
In a commercial district of fast food restaurants and used car lots and rent-to-own businesses, he turned corners where rising up before him were grandly designed structures from the last century, apparently abandoned.
The caretaker was in search of an historical perspective as represented by architecture. He had once subscribed wholly to the notion of the here and now, but was lately feeling limited by this concept. He wanted some of the then in his here and now. Trying to piece together some meaning from all the ideas floating around in his head he said out loud, Yesterday's now is today's past. Tomorrow's yesterday is now. There is no time like the present.
Not to be bridled by his disdain for the Harley's chain of fast food restaurants, he stopped into one so he could use the restroom and while there ordered a cheeseburger, which, when unwrapped, appeared every bit as appetizing as the wads of phlegm in the cigarette clogged urinal. He ate some of it anyway, until gagging on a bitter and rubbery pickle he decided his use of the restroom did not warrant this punishment by cheeseburger.
He had heard about a three story Victorian with an unattached three car garage on sale for $12,000, but he wasn't sure where it was and he hoped to just run into it by accident. The seller was motivated, which was more than he could say for himself. He imagined meeting the seller and saying, nice to meet you, I understand you are motivated, I am restless. But instead of finding the three story Victorian he kept driving by the same set of ramshackle row houses and began to feel intimidated by the casual glaring from teenage boys on porches.
It was hard for the caretaker to get a handle on just what motivated Harrisburg to keep on chugging. It was the state capital but beyond that he was uncertain about what made it tick. For almost 60 years it has been experiencing a negative population growth. There was an irony not lost on the caretaker that one of Harrisburg's more lively downtown restaurants was called The Quarter, as in French Quarter. The caretaker had left New Orleans a couple of years before the water had its way there. He was currently residing in a small Virginia town that appeared on track to preserve its tranquility by forcing out everyone but the richest of the rich. It was beginning to appear as if the caretaker was attracted to troubled communities, but as so many of them existed, it was hard to choose which one next.
