Fallen Angel

The angel plummeted, not in slow motion trailing flames toward hell, her former beauty twisting into ugliness.  She toppled from the mantle so quickly I couldn’t follow her descent to the hearth where she broke a china wing and tiny hand.  I was rearranging greens, clumsily it seems, and the pretty thing was maimed.

But not smashed.  I put her back, her broken parts toward the wall and carefully tucked the pine and holly around her so she could kneel in her imperfection just as she has done for so many years.  We are not idolaters.  Things are things and pass away, but our hearts belie our reason, and the child in me imagines her persevering in a state of reduced capacity, just like me.  

Christmas Deer

Days are short now;

four o’clock is twilight time.

I’ve been reading poems

(Christina Rossetti, if you want to know.)

Rising, I look out the bedroom window.

A creature is on the lawn –

a deer – no, two deer – does – and there’s a third!

They nibble and browse in the growing dark.

Across the road,

my brother-in-law’s

Christmas lights

glow brightly.

Greed Deficiency

Christmas is coming, and the New Yorker is getting fat.  So are Martha Stewart Magazine and a whole lot of others that are crammed with ads for things to buy as gifts.  Unlike some people, I don’t get depressed when I look at pictures of merchandise I can’t afford.  I’d feel silly in a diamond-studded wristwatch, and I don’t think I could pull off the swagger one needs to step out of a Ferrari. When I’m watching TV, I find I get used to the size of the screen and concentrate on the ball game, the movie, or the news. 

I was looking at a picture of a 9 ½ inch tin-lined copper sauté pan that can be mine for $329 and will last forever so long as I keep sending it back to be re-tinned.  They say it gives you great control over your cooking. It heats evenly and quickly and cools promptly when you take it off the flame. 

I’m pretty good at sautéing, but with this tool I could be better. Usually, if I’m paying attention, I get good doneness.  But apparently it could be better doneness – maybe perfect doneness.  I try to imagine the ecstasy of eating food that is perfectly done, and it doesn’t come to mind.  Marilyn Monroe complained that the men she made love to were disappointed when she turned out to be just a woman, and not the sex goddess they expected her to be.  I think it might be the same for the perfectly sautéed flounder filet – nice, but still fish.

It seems to me that some of these electronic devices people are buying are mostly for showing off.  They always want to demonstrate what the bright little things can do.  During intermission at the opera someone offered to make on-line dinner reservations.  Of course it was nearing evening on a Saturday, and none of the restaurants the gizmo selected as being nearby had available tables, but it performed excellently other than that. 

Somehow I don’t feel left out when I pass signs in stores or look at ads in magazines that have those coded targets you can read with your pocket phone.  I suspect what the electronic marvel would show me would be more advertising, and I get enough of that.  If I were offered something that would shield me from ads, I might be interested. 

It’s not that I hate expensive things.  I like to drive down Washington Street in Duxbury and look at all those big sea captains’ homes with their lovely gardens and lawns.  I’m glad I can admire them, but I don’t want to live in one.  I’d rattle around in all that space. If I had the home, I’d need the money to pay for lawn care and appropriate furniture, and I’m able to imagine having that.  What I can’t envision is being any happier. Even maid service has to be managed. 

I’m afraid I have that condition dreaded all up and down Madison Avenue – contentment.  It’s something that can’t be bought.  If you get the enormous house, someone, somewhere is liable to have a bigger one.  There would be smarter devices, more glittery watches, and faster cars.  Only the calm satisfaction that the stuff you have will somehow do eases you into happiness.

Perhaps that’s a subversive thought at Christmas time when the economy needs a boost, and I do like nice things up to a point.  But what I get from the fat magazines is a comfy feeling that there are a lot of possessions I can get along without. 

Paradise Sustained

Paradise is unchanging.  Adam and Eve lived on fruit and worked on their tans.  Nothing

much happened until the serpent showed up.  Here in the world things change, and when they do, we’re pretty sure we’re not going to like it. We have a deep-seated fear that life never gets better.  Oh sure, some people are sitting in their living room and the Prize Mobile pulls up with video cameras and a gigantic check.  It just never happens to you and me. 

I started noticing the downhill flow of life somewhere around the second grade. A bunch of us were hanging around the back yard reminiscing about the past.  “Little kids are lucky,” we said.  “They can play all day long and never have to go to school.”    

There we were, seven years old, and we’d figured it out; Eden is the place you’ve been kicked out of.  In former times we were carefree, and now we had to sit in rows and listen to Miss Cassidy go on about subtraction. 

You never know you’re in a Golden Age until it’s over.  When it came to Christmas, we were still there.  We knew there was a Santa the same way we knew, if you went swimming less than an hour after you ate, you’d get a cramp and drown.  It was like being a Christian in the middle ages; if there were any skeptics around, they were keeping their mouths shut. 

There came a time, different for each of us, when the clues surrounding Santa added up to the awful truth. Of course we kept it to ourselves.  The loot was good, and besides a world without magic wasn’t any fun.  But we couldn’t sustain the pretence for long.  The Age of Faith had been supplanted by the Age of Reason, and it was a little like subtraction instead of play. 

From then on Christmas changed.  We became providers, not consumers.  We shopped, we baked, we decorated, we stuffed stockings.  Our children grew up, but they came back for the holiday meal. 

At our house we cooked the turkey in the Italian manner with chestnuts and sausage in the stuffing and wine in the basting liquid.  We had Virginia ham we bought through the mail, soaked in the pantry, simmered in a big pot, and then baked it in the oven..  It was salty, dense, and delicious and kept ’till almost Easter.  There were six or seven kinds of cookies, three or four kinds of pie.  There was pudding. 

Now we can’t sustain the effort and have passed it on to the younger generation.  We help, of course, and bring what we can, but a little of the magic faded away like the faint tinkle of sleigh bells when you’re trying to get to sleep on Christmas Eve. 

We get lists of wanted presents complete with cyber-links.  We sent our daughter a webpage with a shirt we thought might be good for our son-in-law.  We got approval and the suggestion of a color. It’s the easy way, but it’s not like being a hunter-gather at Filene’s and Jordan Marsh.

At home we decorate a tree and make sure we invite people in to see it.  We watch some of our collection of Christmas videos.  Then we set off in the car for the ceremonial hanging and the opening of our grandchildren’s stockings. 

Christmas didn’t diminish: it was we who changed, and as we did, we experienced different aspects of the blessed time.  As we aged, we lost and gained, and the trick was to forget the losses and embrace the gains. Christmas is still there and always will be. Scrooge was a fogy after all, and he learned to keep Christmas better than anyone.  

The Fashion Page

Adults who survived the depression and the World War II saw in post-war prosperity the decline of American civilization.  The fashions were alarming.  Jeans were work pants, and the idea of middle-class teenagers wearing them around town was objectionable.  The Ed Sullivan Show was family television, and when Elvis Presley appeared, his sideburns, long hair, and tight pants frightened the fogies.   When I began this blog, I resolved never to forecast the decay of everything for which our forefathers fought and died.  Therefore I merely report what I’ve seen; I don’t interpret. 

One morning a couple of weeks ago I observed a young woman walking down my street wearing a bathrobe over night clothes.  We have in our neighborhood a halfway house for young women who require assistance living their lives, and I thought she might be one of those. A little later, however, I saw her on the front porch of a regular dwelling with three or four companions similarly attired. 

Later that same day I happened to be at the CVS, where I saw a couple shopping in slippers and pajamas.  I reserved judgment.  Today I was driving on South Street, and I observed a woman walking along in pajama bottoms.  She had on a jacket, so I don’t know about the top. 

Once is happenstance, twice coincidence, but three times is a trend.  Will western civilization sink into dissipation like ancient Rome?   We survived jeans in the suburbs and lanky locks heavy with Brylcreem, not to mention rock and roll. What this fashion development may signify about the moral fiber of American youth, I leave to your imagination.  I plan to remain calm.

Black Friday

A while ago I wrote a blog entry commenting that the beautiful thing about Thanksgiving is corporate America never really found a way to commercialize it.  They had to come up with Black Friday. 

Fine, we’ve eaten our turkey and cranberry sauce, and now if we want to hit the stores it’s legit.  The Christmas season is upon us so let the madness begin.  Of course they’ve tried to expand Black Friday into Black Friday Week, and while we were peeling the turnip and butternut squash, we were enticed to drop the paring knife and go shopping.  Most of us were too busy.

In my fogy wisdom I say, if you like the excitement of lining up at 12:01 a.m. and stampeding for Black Friday discounts, go for it.  Personally I add up the dollars to be saved and weigh them against the work of fighting the crowds.  Then I stay home. 

I have my own tradition for the day after Thanksgiving.  I put Handel’s Messiah on the stereo. Then I get two slices of hardy bread, load them with turkey, a dab of cranberry sauce, a hunk of stuffing, and a little mayonnaise.  “For unto us a Child is born. Unto us a Son is given,” the chorus sings.  For me the new season begins. 

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has to wait until later. 

To Boldly Go…

Aging spaceman

Joseph “J.J.” Jenkins

departs the dimness

of an air-conditioned bar

into the blinding dazzle

of the planet’s star.

The humid atmosphere

is semi-breathable,

though oily with bus fumes.

He reels a bit, swayed by

the searing, gritty breeze

and alien gravity – he assumes.

An indigenous female

approaches – oxblood lips

and hair, nose stud, tattoo,

black nails, fluid hips.

Her otherworldly eyes

distain him as no prize.

He dutifully

passes by

dully, without fear,

but longing for

the burn of rye

and cool, cool beer. 

Enchantment

A poem is like a magic trick.

The coin is in the conjurer’s hand.

But it’s not.

You stare at his empty palm.

Then he pulls the money from your ear.

The explanation is not the trick.

The wonder and the wondering are the trick.

Hooters on the Prairie

Once upon a time under the grassy plain of Alberta, Canada, hundreds of prairie dogs built and maintained a maze of burrows and tunnels. If they were happy, they didn’t know it. This was simply life as it had always been, but not as it would always be. 

Nearby, strangers built the cow town of Calgary, which grew into a city. Eventually the prairie dog community was replaced by an airport surrounded by motels, restaurants and all manner of retail businesses and small manufacturing. The prairie dogs were gone with the exception of one, who lived in a hole in the foundation of the local Hooters. 

Mr. and Mrs. Talbot were not in the habit of dining at Hooters. They were a couple in their sixties who lived in a faraway place called Massachusetts and were staying at the Day’s Inn.  They choose Hooters for its propinquity and thought they might find adequate sustenance before an early bedtime and an even earlier departure the next morning.

They asked for a table on the outdoor terrace to get away from the loud music that filled the interior of the restaurant. The table was right beside the hole. The prairie dog felt no need of a name, but when he emerged, Mr. Talbot began to think of him as Gus. Pretty soon Gus squeezed under the glass windscreen that protected the patio and began running around.  Mr. Talbot took a liking to him, but Mrs. Talbot considered him a rodent and objected when he ran over her feet.  He wasn’t the only wild animal about.  Nibbling on the lawn was a lanky jackrabbit Mr. Talbot though of as Jack.

Diners at the Calgary Hooters are served by young women who differ from the employees of the surrounding commercial wasteland primarily by the scantiness of their attire.  They are known as Hooters girls.  The one assigned to the patio shall be called Tanya. She had never learned the technique of keeping her back straight and bending from the knees the way more experienced waitresses do, and when she leaned over to put down the food, she afforded Mr. Talbot an excellent view of her pretty bosom. Mrs. Talbot saw things from the opposite perspective. She found herself in close proximity to Tanya’s partially-covered behind. Mrs. Talbot found it objectionable.

When Mr. Talbot mentioned the presence of Gus to Tanya, she said, “Oh, the gopher.”  She wasn’t afraid, but she regarded him with boredom, which seemed to be her reaction to just about everything in the world.

Being by nature a storyteller, Mr. Talbot began imagining a tale about Gus and Jack.  In real life they were pretty indifferent to one another, but in the story they were pals. Jack was a colorful western character. He dodged semis, Winnebagos, and Subarus with casual agility and, of course, was a smooth operator with the opposite sex. Gus was a master of the quick scamper and didn’t like to get too far from his hole.  

In his ramblings Jack would discover a prairie dog town on a distant patch of land.  He’d return to tell Gus, and together they’d set off on a trek. Gus would be brave and terrified, but would finally be welcomed by hundreds of new friends.  He’d live happily ever after, or at least for the normal prairie dog lifespan. Mr. Talbot knew nothing like this would really happen.

He didn’t predict a happy future for Tanya either. The beauty of Hooters girls is touted.  On the menu, there was a picture of one who had been judged the loveliest in all Canada.  If you wished, you could purchase a calendar that featured a glamorous waitress for every month.  In this atmosphere Mr. Talbot felt justified in sizing Tanya up.

Due to her bend-from-the-waist serving technique, he could see that her breasts were everything a young woman’s ought to be, and her objectionable buttocks were tanned and firm, but she had a plainness about her eyes that shadow and mascara couldn’t hide.  Mr. and Mrs. Talbot were not the type of customers she probably envisioned when first she donned the daring uniform so perhaps she was merely bored. 

She filled the orders correctly, but Mr. Talbot feared that the emptiness behind her eyes was in fact an alarming void where her brain ought to be. Someday her flesh would wrinkle and sag and her provocative tattoo would become absurd. She’d have little to sustain her in the later phases of life, and this fact was apparent to any man who could manage to lift his eyes to meet hers.

But Mr. Talbot was only an amateur at the judgment of feminine pulchritude. He was a semi-retired food critic.  He ordered Hooters signature chicken wings and a Molson Canadian beer. Mrs. Talbot got a quesadilla.  She didn’t like any of the food, but he found the skin of the wings crisp and the flesh succulent. The quesadilla was crunchy and the side of guacamole tasty. None of this was the best he ever had, but for a meal near a Day’s Inn, he considered it OK. 

He found the cutest creature at the Calgary Hooters to be Gus.  He thought of offering the prairie dog a bite of celery from his plate of wings, but Mrs. Talbot was maintaining a cheerful disposition that he didn’t want to strain.

Hosta

The Power of a Dollar

I used to teach high school economics, and there was a point in the course where I’d take a dollar out of my wallet and hold it up.  It was a moment when everyone in the class paid attention.  There was unnatural quiet. The girl over by the windows who was penning a billet-doux to her boyfriend lifted her head.  The boy in the back row awakened, and the kid who was trying to finish math homework due next period lost his train of thought.  Everyone looked at the money. 

My point was the dollar was only a piece of paper, a medium of exchange that facilitated the flow of goods and services in the economy, but the reaction gave that theory the lie. Cash has mystical properties.  Handling money can actually ease pain.  I have this fact from that noted fogy source, AARP Magazine.  Asleep, we dream of finding money; awake we work for it, gamble for it, and sometimes steal it.  Misers hoard it, and everyone likes a healthy bank balance. 

A dollar bill like the one I was holding has utility, but that’s an economic aspect, not a magical one. It’s a device, a tool, a convenience, something to avoid the cumbersomeness of barter. It shouldn’t be more. Saint Paul tells us, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” (1^st Timothy 6:10)

Recently I was reading a comparison between small and large businesses.  Having owned a small business, I confess my prejudice.  The article noted that large businesses have stronger buying power and can offer goods for a lower price.  The writer concluded that this settled the matter; big businesses are better than small.

The economics of scale was something I taught my high school students, but the value we get from a purchase may be more than the ownership of the thing.  When I go into Charley’s Hardware in North Plymouth, I say hello to the owner, not a hired greeter.  I deal with intelligent adults who know who I am. If I ask for something, it’s brought to the counter, so I don’t have to walk a mile to look for it.  I can pat the dog and discuss town politics or the weather.  I have continuity with the past.  To me that’s worth quite a bit. I’m sure the Apostle wasn’t instructing me to waste my dollars.  He just meant I should keep my priorities in order.  

November Afternoon

Slanting sun

shines onto a carpet

a Turkish woman wove.

There are elephants on the drapes,

pictures of dogs on the wall,

medicines on the bureau top.

Seventeen Syllables

A well-made poem

is meant to be read slowly

over and over.

Thanksgiving

Someone smashed my granddaughter’s pumpkin.  It was hard to get a five-year-old to wrap her mind around such atrocity, but it was my job to buy her a new pumpkin, and on the day before Halloween there was none to be found.  A farm stand and two garden centers had closed for the season.  The display of pumpkins in front of Shaw’s was gone, and Wal-Mart was sold out.

Had I wanted Christmas decorations, they were available.  I hope to eventually be possessed by the Christmas spirit, but not yet.  I love Christmas, but I can’t sustain it for two months.  I remarked to Annette that it wouldn’t be long before radio stations would be playing carols twenty-four/ seven. 

Nothing could make me hate “Away in a Manger” and “Silent Night” except constant repetition.  One year the building that housed my office had an outdoor speaker near the window that broadcast a short tape of music that featured “It’s a Holly-Jolly Christmas.”  I hate the song to this day.  I like Burl Ives just fine, and the song has a cheerful lilt that I wouldn’t find objectionable if I hadn’t been driven crazy by it when I was trying to get some work done. 

I make it a point to avoid listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving.  If I can’t get away from it I employ a technique perfected by eastern holy men for spiritual peace amid the clamor of the world, which involves slow breathing from the diaphragm and the holy syllable ooom.

Besides wanting to appreciate Christmas when the time arrives, I want to anticipate Thanksgiving.  It’s a holiday that has much to recommend it.  For one thing, it cannot be over-commercialized. 

Oh they try.  Supermarkets have specials on turkeys, and it’s a big season for Ocean Spray and One-Pie canned pumpkin.  Turnips, which never top the charts, make a brave showing, and for reasons that escape me, stores  sell a lot of canned fried onions to go on top of green beans.  There are Thanksgiving cards, but not everybody sends them.

Thanksgiving music is the kind you sing in church.  If “Come Ye Thankful People, Come” has been recorded, I don’t know by whom. I do get out my Godspell CD and listen to “I Really Wanna Thank You, Lord,” which I guess is the Thanksgiving equivalent of “It’s a Holly-Jolly Christmas,” but I don’t play it more than twice. 

Restaurants do a big business, but Thanksgiving dinner is still very much a homemade meal.  People who seldom cook consult the Turkey Hotline to find out what to do if they left the giblet bag in the bird.  Guests bring their specialties, and many recipes have been passed down.  There’s no great spending orgy, which I suppose is why the media tries to get you to move on to Christmas before the trick-or-treat candy is gone. 

Christmas tells the story of the birth of Christ, but it’s also a celebration of winter. It’s a time for Santa Claus ritual and lore, a season of partying that exceeds the home-cooked family meal, and of course there’s the retail consumption that fuels our economy for the entire year.     

Thanksgiving has a more unified theme.  We count our blessings, feast on plenty, and give thanks.  We look to our past.  “All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin,” we sing in church.  We’re no longer a rural, agrarian society but we think of our roots even as we sprinkle Kraft mini-marshmallows on our yams.  And we honor those great mythical figures, the Pilgrims.  Don’t confuse us with history; they stand for our origins and tell us who we are, or at least who we’d like to be. 

I won’t give this up.  Thankfulness – an attitude of gratitude – saves us from bitterness in a world of trouble. Being mindful of our blessings cleanses avarice, envy, and anger from our hearts. Entering a home filled with the steamy fragrance of the cooking of a holiday meal is an experience we must never lose.  Believing there are heroes in our past gives us direction for the future. I turn my head from Christmas until all this has been accomplished. 

Actually Not Bad Virgin Mary

Ingredients:

1 cup low sodium V8

¼  lime

1 tablespoon spicy seasoning mix (I use Penzy’s Southwest Seasoning)

two or three dashes Tabasco

1 small stick celery

Rub the lime wedge around the rim of an old fashioned glass.  Pour the seasoning into a shallow dish.  It will be more than you need, but you can save what you don’t use for another time.  Dip the rim of the glass into the mix to coat.  Squeeze the quarter lime into the glass and pour in V8 allowing room for ice.  Add Tabasco to taste. 

Stir and fill the glass with ice. Garnish with the celery stick. 

The spiciness of this drink makes up for the lack of salt. It also makes you sip it more slowly as you would a cocktail.  The lime juice adds a little zing the V8 lacks.  The celery gives the feeling that you’re having something special

Of course if you want to add a little vodka when no one’s looking, that’s between you and your conscience. 

Makes 1 drink.

Pasture

The Rewards of Conversion

No one is more liable to bore you than a convert.  Enlightenment sits uneasily on the throne of his conviction, and his unconscious is troubled with doubt.  Only universal acceptance of his world view can set his mind at ease. Every infidel must be brought into the light, and he may be plotting to begin with you. 

Watch out; my road to Damascus was a corridor in the Boston Medical Center, and I stand before you a man who has been born again.  In the past I scorned nutrition as a bogus science based on inaccurate research and given to frequent change.  Back at Mt. Pleasant School, Miss Sweat the nurse would ask us what we had for breakfast.  “Two fried eggs,” I’d tell her smugly, “two strips of bacon, buttered toast, and milk.”  It might or might not have been the truth, but I knew what she wanted to hear.   Now the nutritionist at cardiac rehab visibly shudders when I mention butter. 

Ah but I don’t have to hark back to my childhood for examples of the wickedness from which I am reformed.  I was the kind of guy you could go out with for a double bacon cheeseburger and a beer.  Now I’m apt to order a green salad with the dressing on the side and maybe a glass of tap water. If you dine with a person who eats like me she’d better look like a supermodel.  I’d be too polite to mention what’s probably happening to your arteries, but you’d suspect my thoughts. 

I admit my meal doesn’t taste vary good, but oh the delicious sensation of virtue!  Goodness is all the more pleasurable when it’s compared with the sins of the unconverted.  If someone’s belly overhangs his belt, the sanctified tend to notice.

Like St. Augustine, I’m a man with a past.  I contemplated a cache of frozen goose fat with the satisfaction of a miser fondling his hoard.  Augustine’s stolen apples were nothing compared with my fried Buffalo wings doused in equal parts Frank’s Hot Sauce and melted butter.  If I were to write my confessions, your mouth would water. 

Unlike the saint, I can boast about my sins and even be glad I didn’t miss out on foie gras. The god of heart attacks cares nothing for repentance. If you’re good, you go into the statistical category where the odds are better.  You can still be a loser; the numbers work for populations not for individuals.  Sinners can win. 

But the smugness of the heart-healthy eater is immediate.  For lunch today, I had spinach ravioli under a salt-free sauce enriched with tofu.  Dessert was fresh raspberries along with chunks of kiwi and apple.  What did you have?

The Lamppost Drunk

The other day I drove past a lawn ornamented with a miniature lamppost.  It was plainly visible from the road, being maybe four feet tall. Embracing it was a drunk.  You’ve seen these.  The fellow is happy in his inebriation and wears a smile.  His top hat is tilted rakishly.  His arm encircles the post and holds him up.  There’s a bottle in his other hand.

This lovable sot is intended to make you smile.  There may be those who would say drunkenness isn’t funny.  Since he’s hanging onto a lamppost, he’s in a public place, and he’s plainly too impaired to walk.  There’s a definite substance abuse problem there.

On the other hand he’s not a poor laborer whose family will starve because he squandered his wages on drink.  Only the wealthy go out in top hats and evening clothes.  Or at least they did; this fellow harks to an earlier time.  It may be a middle class send-up of the rich.  Seldom do the estates of the affluent boast such decoration. 

But you aren’t supposed to be annoyed with the boozer; he’s too jolly.  He comes from a time when drunkenness was portrayed as funny.  I think of the character Vera Charles in “Auntie Mame.” Her alcoholism was the topic of countless jokes.  Nick Charles in the Thin Man series was a heavy drinker, and his fondness for cocktails supplied much levity.  Funny drinkers are almost always happy, and their habit never seems to cause lasting misery to themselves or those around them.  Even their hangovers get a laugh.

The trouble with humorous lawn decorations is the joke goes quickly stale.  Once there was a first time you saw a jigsaw cutout of a fat woman shown from behind as she bends to pull a weed.  These became ubiquitous, and the gag became so tired their numbers have at last decreased. 

Possibly the drunk-and-lamppost totems are set out as a response to sober-sided critics who disapprove of drinking.  The fellow is defiantly upright, and smirks in the face of anyone who might frown.  I suspect the choice of an image to set outside a house to be seen by passers-by has to do with the self image of those who dwell therein. 

There’s material for a thesis here.  How did the image evolve through time, and why does it have elements of class distinction?  Scientific inquiry is needed. When the lamppost drunkard question is put to rest, researchers could go on to the Nordic gnome or the Sicilian donkey cart.  Eventually they could delve into the alarming pathology of families who display both.

Do-over

Lets for a few moments believe in reincarnation.  You’re about to be reborn and are required to drink from Lethe, the river of forgetfulness.  No one is looking, so you spit the water out and reenter the world knowing everything you knew when you left. 

The important thing about fantasy is to control it and not let it control you.  Of course, if you came into the world with adult consciousness, you’d go mad from boredom the first year. You’d get A’s in grade school, but that would drive you nuts too. 

Since I’m in charge of the fantasy, I’ll fast forward to the seventh grade.  I want to smack that bully.  I may have to take some lumps, but I know now I can endure them, and I’ll go after him every time he starts in on me.  He’ll get tired of it and torment someone else.  I’ll develop a reputation for going a little crazy when provoked. 

That dragon of a principal even has some of the teachers scared of her, but what can she really do?  If she gives me a month of detention, I’ll finally get started on War and Peace.

I know I’ve learned a lot of things that will come in handy in my new life, but there’s a danger that when I avoid my old mistakes, I’ll make new ones.  Acting like a seventy-year-old when I'm twenty-one may not endear me to young women.  I’ll talk less about myself, and be more interested in their lives, but I may end up seeming like a great uncle to whom they’ll be nice until he decides he wants to kiss them.    

My wisdom is the wisdom of the old. I’ve seen a lot of bad things happen in my life, and it has taught me to be careful – maybe too careful.  There’s no one more boring than a stuffy twenty-something.

It seems the fantasy is getting out of hand again.  The pretty girl, for whom I brought flowers and listened to her hopes and dreams, just went off with some narcissistic moron on a motorcycle.  I’m beginning to think life isn’t meant to be relived knowing what you know now.  It may just be better to swallow the waters of forgetfulness and muddle through. 

Gravenstein

Procedure

The off-white ceiling and fixtures

Of the catheterization lab

Seem like an abstract painting,

And I contemplate them

Flat on my back,

Listening to the conversation

Of doctors

As they jig a wire

Inside the arteries

Around my heart. 

Eat Food

James Beard was one of the first food celebrities I followed.  He was a giant in more ways than one, but he was finally told if he wanted to live he must diet.  He said it was a sensual experience, but I never believed him.  His body shrunk faster than his skin, which hung from him like the hide of the Saggy Baggy Elephant.  I of course only saw him on television, but he looked unhappy.  Then he died anyway. I resolved never to be cowed by the food police and to hold fast to the good life.  Now I have accepted the eater’s manifesto of Michael Pollan, who famously said, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” 

From the time I came home from the hospital, Annette has worked hard creating tasty heart-healthy food.   Tonight we supped on slices of fresh tomato (red and yellow) lightly salted, with fresh mozzarella and basil leaves dressed with a lovely California olive oil.  There was a second salad of locally grown cucumber with chopped tomato dressed with wine vinegar and a light sprinkling of sugar.  We ate corn on the cob picked this day and roasted in the oven.  Dessert was fresh local raspberries a little sugar and a dab of the first real ice cream I’ve eaten in two months.  The flavors stood out clean and pure. 

Of course September is the ideal time for fruits and vegetables.  Annette marveled how much she paid for the yellow tomato, but eating less meat is good for the budget, and we don’t go to restaurants much any more.  A modest lunch for two can run forty bucks, which will go quite a way in the farmer’s market. 

One thing I like about Pollan’s succinct philosophy is its not confining.  I am not forbidden the flesh of every creature.  I like the “Eat food” part.  I have taken a vow against fake food.  Fat free sour cream is an impossibility.  Cream is fat.  I’m willing to eat it seldom if at all, but I won’t settle for some laboratory concoction badly simulating the real thing. 

I’m trying to follow the “Not too much,” part.  There’s nothing like hunger for making food taste good.  I don’t suffer all the time, but I don’t need a watch to tell me it’s mealtime. This is no fancy diet, just don’t eat too much.  I hear that it takes one to three years to really change your habits, but so far it’s working.

Nutrition is a young science, and research is difficult.  Everyone notices that proscriptions change.  No one doubts that in ten years the advice will have altered again.  Meanwhile, if we want to eat healthily, we have to decide how.  I like Pollan’s way.  It seems sensible that Americans should eat less.  We should get our fruits and veggies, and avoid fake food.  Common sense is an uncommon thing, but I’m finding it a health plan I can follow. 

The Magic Bookstore

This is the final week of Border’s going-out-of-business sale.  The selling area has moved inward like Fantasia growing smaller under the attack of the Nothing in the film “The NeverEnding Story.”  The children’s department, the art books shelves are barren. 

My feelings on entering were mixed.  I felt like a scavenger robbing corpses on a battlefield, but there was a pleasanter change.  All the discounted best sellers, new arrivals, and other popular trash displayed as you enter were gone, and it seemed the store had turned into a shop where a person with esoteric tastes and moderate means could find a treasure. 

At 80% off, I got a book of essays by John McPhee and Six Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  There was a poetry shelf where I found Flower and Hand by W. S. Merwin, Auguries of Innocence by Patti Smith, and The Poets Laureate Anthology published in association with the Library of Congress.  It says in the forward that the poet laureate Joseph Brodsky wanted to place poetry books in motels and supermarkets.  Imagine finding Longfellow or Sylvia Plath next to the Gideon Bible. 

Delight was still tainted with guilt.  I saw a stack of unsold Good Poems, American Places selected by Garrison Keillor.  It’s a wonderful book for dipping into at odd moments, and I got a copy from Amazon.com. 

It had been so convenient – just a few keystrokes and some clicks of the mouse and it arrived at my door.  Why drive to the mall, find the shelf and take the chance it wouldn’t be there?  It was this that did Borders in.  I was not only pillaging the aftermath of a lost war; I had fired some of the enemy shots myself. 

At these prices the enchanted shop was filled with book lovers and some others whom the magic never touched. A man was paging through a large atlas, his visage bathed in delight.  His wife’s face revealed her opinion that she had married an idiot.  “Is it just maps?” she asked.  

The Omen

It was a small dead tree

so the seven or eight crows

seemed like a flock,

stark and black,

on bare branches

against gray sky.

Not a flock – a murder of crows,

as the saying goes.

They looked like an omen

predicting death,

but there were people around.

We couldn’t all die,

or rather, one by one,

 we could.

It’s just that the crows

weren’t saying when.

Turning Year

Labor Day is an arbitrary boundary, but real none-the-less. Summer ends.  No matter how many hamburgers we grill, horseshoes we toss, or strokes we swim, this is it; we’re on to other things. Like all milestones, it’s a time to look back and ahead. 

As children we despaired to see the back to-school signs in the windows of Woolworth’s.  Equipped with pencils, erasers and shiny shoes, we trudged off on the appointed morning, but there was an aura of anticipation that added a couple ergs of energy to our Shakespearean snail-like creep. 

So it is for us all. Things start up.  Throughout July and August the year holds still, but with the gentle lurch of Labor Day it starts again.  Activities resume and a feeling of normalcy returns. Like school, it’s a change for good or ill. There’s tonic in the cooler air that starts us moving. Orchestras return from firefly lighted venues to perform in their accustomed halls, plays open, and clubs meet.  Like the children, we greet tanned and rested friends who are ready to resume normal life.

Labor Day is as much the beginning of a new year as January 1^st, and I make resolutions. I will walk the streets of Boston and forsake the seaside fish houses for the flavor of French cuisine.  I’ll pick apples or at least buy some at the orchard’s edge.  I’ll notice the turning of the leaves.  A visit to Myles Standish State Forest revealed that a couple of trees are performing opening numbers before the headliners take the stage. 

Happy Labor Day.  Look back at the summer with a sigh, but look ahead as well.  Maybe not too far ahead; we need not dwell on puddles of slush, but there are good things to come and duties to be performed. It’s time to square our shoulders, step up to the blackboard, and do our sums.

Fairy House

Experts agree that a fairy house must be constructed exclusively of natural materials.  I have seen pictures of them on the internet that I’m sure have felt the sear of a glue gun, but if fairy noses detect the chemical stench, the tiny creatures never come to dwell.  My granddaughter turned five the other day, and received a book of fairy stickers and a cake decorated with images of our little winged friends.  I built a fairy house. 

I walked in the woods collecting clumps of moss, sheets of bark from a dead tree, lichens, sticks, Indian pipes, and a baby pine. The sticks were stuck in the ground, bark leant against them, and a lightweight roof was constructed of arborvitae branches and English ivy.  A forked stick served as an open door, and the blossoms of flox, hosta and black-eyed Susans served as decoration. 

When the birthday girl arrived, I showed her the dwelling and observed that if I’d done my job well enough a fairy might decide to live there.  She was of the opinion that one was in residence already.  All three of my grandchildren got down and peered in the door to see if they could see it. 

I was gratified, but if the fairy moved in, it vacated the next day when the flowers wilted and the roof began to slide.  My glueless creation was ephemeral and had to be relegated to the humus pile, but for a moment the magic was there.

Ah September!

It’s dark when I wake, and the air blowing through the screen is chilly.  I see the sunrise through the bathroom window. There are asters now, and apples are on the way.  The tourist throngs will dwindle, and perhaps the price of lobsters will go down.  Before the cold, I walk in the cool.

Epilogue

I wrote the following as an entry in the Plymouth Public Library’s contest for a new ending to “Romeo and Juliet” and was gratified to see it performed on the library lawn this afternoon. 

AFTERWARD

Enter Nurse and Friar Lawrence

Nurse:

A pretty peace we have, good friar, a pretty peace,

I know the Capulets and Montagues.

They did not give up wine, nor break their swords.

The streets are narrow; someone must give way.

This is the world no matter what we say.

A generation’s tears would sink a mighty fleet.

I tell thee Juliet was loved of old.

With these two breasts I suckled her

When mine own babe had died.

I heard her first sweet tinkling laugh.

I heard her babble turn to words.

And to these arms her first three steps did run.

Now tell me friar, although I know that thou canst not,

How did the prophets know if God were speaking in a dream,

Or if they dreamt He spoke?

If I were Abraham of ancient times, I’d fear the booming voice

Were but a terror of an addled brain.

No matter. Last night I pressed these bony knees to stone

And prayed to know the justice of it all.

And when I slept I saw the pair with children all around.

I saw them agèd in a bed,

Each snoring his or her own kind of snore.

I asked of God why this could not have been.

And then I heard a voice much like a choir

That said the couple had more joy

In one enchanted night than many married folk

In two long lifetimes feel.

“Where are they now?” I cried,

“Woke they in heaven to the rising sun

Without the danger or the fear?”

But God is God e’en in a woman’s dreams.

’Twas I who woke to silence in the heavy dark.

Friar Lawrence:

At least thou rose to pondering and doubt.

I would that Romeo had pondered long.

He saw as death what was a peaceful sleep,

And rashly fled a phantom soon to fade.

And Juliet so late from childhood come

Saw ne’er a hope in all her life ahead

And in stark certainty embraced the blade.

We two are given greater age

We’ve seen a thousand certainties

Into confusion fall.

Thou sayest God is silent,

Yet we’re blest by His commands.

Heed them as in thy grief thou plod along.

Plod on and ponder, doubter, plod and pray.

Beyond the darkling night there dawns the day.

A Treasure of Time

In the famous lyric to “September Song” by Maxwell Anderson “the days dwindle down to a precious few,” but the wonderful thing is that, when time grows short, you have more of it.  I was thinking of this on a lazy summer afternoon as I sat on the sun porch of my Mayflower Street home reading a book.

 

Perhaps you might say it was I who was lazy and not the afternoon, and indeed somewhere there were people rushing about getting things done. I’m fond of idleness; I confess it.  I remember the Fridays of my childhood when my grandmother would take me to her home in Hanover.  On Saturday I would be perfectly free to do anything I wished. 

My grandfather was a jeweler, a watchmaker, and a repairer of clocks.  He had a workroom where the walls were filled with scores of windup clocks and the sound of them all tick-tocking together was music I’ll never forget.  When the top of the hour arrived one would strike and the others chime in with a cacophony of dings and bongs. It was an event worth waiting for.  

Time was mine to use, and use it I did.  I would range the woods with Timmy, my Grandfather’s beagle who would give voice as he followed the scent of a rabbit.  I could see the use of a beagle in hunting because often the rabbit would appear close by, interested only in the rushing about of the ecstatic dog.  Had I been armed, it would have been an easy shot.

But the rabbits were safe. To my Grandfather’s great disappointment, Timmy was gun shy.  Grandpa tried to get him used to the sound by firing a cap pistol whenever he gave Timmy his food, but it only made the dog dissolve into a quivering mass whenever he saw a child with a toy gun.  Timmy never caught a rabbit, and for all his woodland yodeling, was as useless as I. 

And I was completely without worth.  I opened drawers full of interesting old tools, made swords out of scrap wood for the fighting of pirates, and watched “Space Patrol” on the snowy black and white TV.  Besides the house there was a great barn to explore. 

On Sunday, my mother and father would arrive, visit for a while, and fetch me home where my homework would be in my room where I left it. I would hear the sound of Ed Sullivan as I forlornly labored. 

Now I’m useless once again.  Like my grandfather’s workshop, the sun porch was a room full of time.  My book was non-fiction, but nothing that was liable to improve my mind.  Say what you will you achievers, you rushers-about, idleness is sweet.  The slower you go the slower is the movement of time.  You can look out the screened window at the sunlight on the moving leaves.  I know my time won’t last forever, but what I have isn’t being wasted – not wasted at all. 

Picket Fence

Back in Town

In from the beach, I’m rediscovering the beauties of summer among trees. Out there scrubby pitch pines and cedars give us a dark olive green, but we don’t have what you’d call leafy realms. Instead, the horizons are long, and we’re surrounded by sea and sky. 

There’s nothing wrong with blue, of course, and the sunsets reflected in the waters of the harbor are sublime, but evening light sifting through the branches and making shadows on lush lawns is nice as well.  I’ve been noticing goldfinches in bright summer plumage. 

Rainy days at the beach are beautiful.  We get a sense if isolation when the town waterfront disappears into the mist and the expanses of beach are empty.  Breaks in the showers invite a solitary walk. 

In shore the rain keeps things green.  Brown and crispy is alright for breakfast cereal, but not for the lawn. The sound of rain at night substitutes for the rush of surf.  During the intervals between showers, I walk down the street.  My neighbor’s picket fence is festooned with roses bejeweled with drops of water. 

  

Philosophy

My sister-in-law, the graphic design major, was saying that the bookcase in the dining room interrupts the flow and gives the area a cluttered look.  Annette, who is definitely a less-is-more decorator, nodded ominously.

Yes we have books in the dining room; we have them all over.  I find it pleasant to look at them, even if I’m not likely to read them in the near future.  When you’re recovering from a cardiac event, the distant future is cloudy and hard to see. 

Issues of feng shui may increase this summer’s contributions to the book table at the Antiquarian Fair, and among the possible losses to my home library is Plato Selections, a paperback left over from my college days. In it there’s a passage I marked with the intention of having it read at my funeral.  In those happy days I was an insufferable intellectual snob and imagined how impressed mourners would be to listen to Socrates’ ruminations on the nature of death.

When you're about to undergo cardiac catheterization, you sign a document that mentions rather bluntly that you just might die.  Although fantasies of proclaiming to my friends and relatives that I was a reader of Plato have passed away, I had some vestigial idea of facing the situation philosophically. 

Before the catheterization I was to undergo an echocardiogram, and a man who introduced himself as George arrived to wheel me on a gurney to a place where this would be done.  He was furious with the Republicans, who he thought might cut Medicare, causing the hospital to close and he and his fellow staff members to be thrown out of work, and he was angry at the Democrats for failing to oppose this disaster with sufficient toughness. 

He wheeled me to an elevator that was indicated to be out of service and reached under the paper taped over the button and summoned the car.  The stainless steel interior was scarred from collisions with gurneys like mine, but above and below the point of contact it looked as though it had been distressed with flailing chains.  The car baulked a little, then rumbled and rattled downward in its shaft.  Finally the door opened and we emerged.       

We were traveling down a long, empty corridor, and I began suffering chest pains, which grew alarmingly worse.  I interrupted George’s political observations. “I need a nitroglycerine pill,” I told him. 

“I don’t have one,” he said.

“Then take me someplace where they do,” I said. 

“Do you want to go back to your floor?” he asked. 

It had seemed like a long journey, and I remembered the elevator.  “Just take me to the nearest place where they have nitroglycerine,” I said. 

We entered a room where a crowd of people gathered around to stare at me as a person who didn’t belong.  George explained my need.  Someone took my blood pressure, which was alarmingly high.  A woman, who I later found was a physician’s assistant, saw the frightened look on my face.  “Don’t worry,” she said kindly, “you’re in the right place.”  So much for being Socrates calmly quaffing the hemlock. 

Plato Selections will be available for 50¢ at the book table of the Antiquarian Fair August 27^th at Hedge House on Water Street.  It has given me all it can.  I hope to be there to sell it to you, myself.

I still believe in philosophy, and when Death comes for me, I’ll do my best, but I’m not promising anything.