She went to see John of God. I remembered when I noticed she had a bit of an incongruous tan. It's only March. Where would this tan have come from? Normally she's so pale, shunning the sun even in the summer. I couldn't help but notice the sunny color on her cheeks and remember, oh yeah...
"How was your trip? How was John of God?"
"he was wonderful!!" People describe John of God with tones of reverence and awe that somehow manages to elude all details that might tie things back to logic. Ahhh logic. Faith in little things that are a bit visible rather than that big invisible pinch hitter.
Then she runs away from me. A few minutes later she's standing behind me with cupped hands. Opening them I see a milky rock the color of peony pink.
"This was with me when I visited John of God, and I had it with me the whole time soaking up energy and Brazilian sun... and it's for you!"
I scoop my jaw off the floor and accept the gift. It's pretty. It tingles when I put it in my hand. I take it home. I rub it against the spot where my back aches. I put it next to my pillow. And then I go to sleep.
When I wake up I've left my body somewhere and I'm climbing a ladder into the attic. The attic is full of people. Some laugh. Some are sexy. There's tons of antique furniture and hangers full of fancy clothes. I'm bumping into people that I haven't seen in years. The attic is a fun party until that tune goes off in the distance which I know is my alarm clock. I waive goodbye and climb back down the ladder.
This could be yet another goofy dream of the attic. I've had those a few times in my life. But then the next night upon dozing off I find myself climbing those same wooden steps. I put on a suit from one of the hangers in order to enter and be properly dressed. This time the people are much tamer, sitting and talking, and I can spend my time rummaging through the antique furniture. I shuffle through papers and old trinkets. I look into antique mirrors and the face reflected back is always a different age. She's older in one mirror and a child in others. Somehow I have this thought that this is so much better than the attic of the place where I used to live. It's not as dusty and run down.
There, in the back of a drawer that I've pulled out of a mahogany chest, I find it. It's glowing through the cloth which covers it. When I reach in and grasp it and bring it out to see I'm surprised at what I find in my hand. It's the John of God rock.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Lucid Dad
At the bottom of the stairs, the grey mist parts and I find myself on a moonlit landscape. A wide, open area fenced in by trees that are blackened with night is illuminated by a half moon. The moon I saw over my shoulder just a few hours ago was a waxing crescent. Ah, I must have just woken up.
There's a house. As I approach it, various creatures come toward me from the woods all around. A big orange cat slinks by. Birds flutter around, trying to glean seeds from the cold night ground. Something a bright shade of blue moves towards me. It looks part playful cartoon monster and part dinosaur. I don't feel particularly threatened by it as it approaches clumsily on clawed feet. Quickly, however, a black lab bounds around the house to come between us, preventing the blue monster's advance. It moves to the side, skirting the dog and continuing toward me. But then another dog, and another and another, German shepherds with black coats or black labs, come around from behind me and form a circle that prevents the monster from making any sort of advance. Dogs, I know I should trust their instincts even if mine are easily duped. "Listen to my dogs!" I tell the monster, and it leaves.
It's then, behind the house, that I see her in the advancing light of dawn. I start out running and leap into her arms, and she catches me. But she is Divine Law. While she can catch me, this is not the cuddly side of god and she puts me down on the ground dispassionately before pointing off and to the left. The light is sprouting quickly and the sky advances to bright blue. In the daylight I see him working, still wearing those polyester knit pants and brown nylon coat. It's early spring and the grass is brown. He's picking up fallen branches from the lawn. I shout to him so loud I must have been talking in my sleep:
Daddy!!
In the daylight I recognize this place as the back yard of the house I grew up in. But, it feels much bigger, like it did when I was in a smaller body. He looks up from his work, drops the sticks and comes over toward me.
When he's right in front of me I reach out and hold his face in my hands. He looks young. His skin is much smoother, his hair has more dark than grey in it, and there are none of those funny age spots on his skin. There is no disease to his comportment. Of all the questions I'd like to ask, out comes a corny: "Daddy, I miss you!".
He seems to answer by saying five sentences simultaneously. But only these words emerge from his mouth;
"I remember when you were little. I'd sit down and you would be climbing all over me."
"I do remember. I remember lots ! I've made you part of my art. "
"I know!" He turns a bit red. Perhaps he's none too pleased by having been turned into such a public subject. Then he adds: "I talk to you because no one else can hear me. Tootsie, you have to live your own life. Don't worry about your mother or anyone else. Get up and LIVE."
Faster than I can ask what he means the scene melts and slips away. I find myself lying in my dark apartment with the foot sounds of my upstairs neighbor echoing through the room. The room has clutter and ticking clocks. Street lights paint a funny pattern across the ceiling. This can't be real.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Blackberry jam
On tippy toes I stretch up to retrieve a tiny purple jar from the top shelf of the cupboard over the frig. The lid is labeled "BK". Hm. Blackberry. Not sure how many jars of how many flavors I have left up there. I pop the lid.
My mom still makes homemade jam and seals it into jars with a layer parafin on top. I have to poke at the wax and pick it out. This was the norm for opening jam when we were little. I don't know when it stopped. Maybe some time in the 70's when mom got pressured into going back to work. The jam disappeared. The homemade doughnuts with a funny german name disappeared. The special lunches on the first day of summer vacation, the vegetable garden filling our table with fresh stuff, it all disappeared. Dinner came from boxes that mixed up fast, now. We learned to pop popcorn.
Inside is that wonderful purple paste of seeds and pulp and sugar that mom still makes every year. I put some on my buttered toast.
mmmmmmm - thanks mom.
I have a mom that still makes jam and homemade pies. She still calls on birthdays to sing. She used to mail boxed baskets full of home made chocolate treats every Easter - even putting in Easter grass as packaging. She did this until we were all safely into our 30's and expressing concerns about contracting the family diabetes.
As the knife laden with dark jam comes out of the jar, a thought flashes through my mind. Someday there will be a last jar of jam with no hope for getting more. Will I open that jar and taste, for the last time, the flavor of sunshine, of fingers picking blackberries in a secluded woods with coyotes and deer nearby and of mom boiling fruits in her special kettle? Or will I leave it on the shelf?
What's more important? The sentiment of memories trapped in a jar or the taste of sunshine and love?
My mom still makes homemade jam and seals it into jars with a layer parafin on top. I have to poke at the wax and pick it out. This was the norm for opening jam when we were little. I don't know when it stopped. Maybe some time in the 70's when mom got pressured into going back to work. The jam disappeared. The homemade doughnuts with a funny german name disappeared. The special lunches on the first day of summer vacation, the vegetable garden filling our table with fresh stuff, it all disappeared. Dinner came from boxes that mixed up fast, now. We learned to pop popcorn.
Inside is that wonderful purple paste of seeds and pulp and sugar that mom still makes every year. I put some on my buttered toast.
mmmmmmm - thanks mom.
I have a mom that still makes jam and homemade pies. She still calls on birthdays to sing. She used to mail boxed baskets full of home made chocolate treats every Easter - even putting in Easter grass as packaging. She did this until we were all safely into our 30's and expressing concerns about contracting the family diabetes.
As the knife laden with dark jam comes out of the jar, a thought flashes through my mind. Someday there will be a last jar of jam with no hope for getting more. Will I open that jar and taste, for the last time, the flavor of sunshine, of fingers picking blackberries in a secluded woods with coyotes and deer nearby and of mom boiling fruits in her special kettle? Or will I leave it on the shelf?
What's more important? The sentiment of memories trapped in a jar or the taste of sunshine and love?
Friday, March 7, 2008
7 dis-[function] sets
[
The train has its delays one the one day I’ve planned things a little too tightly to tolerate such dawdling. What happens to all these Red trains that I always see leaving the station religiously every five minutes when I’m stuck at Howard waiting for a Purple one? How is it that by the time one gets to Belmont and is trying to catch a Red train they only seem to come every fifteen minutes? What happens? Does some monster eat half of the trains?
Don’t forget to get off at the next stop. I get up to wait by the door as we glide past a local station. People stand about in coats and hats under the rusty red “Wellington” sign. Too bad that no one at the Wellington platform actually wears Wellingtons.
]
[
Somehow, with my somewhat clumsy but sensible and comfy shoes, I manage to take this woman’s pump off her left foot. I’m part of the rush of people getting off the train, flooding down the stairs and draining out into the street. She’s one of those bodies trying to push upward to wait in the frigid air for transportation. We pass each other and somehow my shoe catches her little pump, sending it flying. I apologize profusely and bend down to pick up the cheap little black shoe and put it back onto her foot. She does not turn into a princess.
]
[
I’m walking up the street, just meeting someone for the first time over coffee (even though I don’t drink coffee) at a little place that caught my eye 3 years ago. Hard to forget a place with “pig” in the title. Everyone else is walking the other direction. Their faces are so young! They look terribly tidy and terribly ready to face the world. Young men. As I pass them some turn their heads to look at me. Fast, though, so they don’t get caught. There’s something funny in the air today – as if suddenly people will halt their march into the job machine, turn, open their jackets to reveal saffron robes, and break into unison singing. “Cha’i guru deva – OHMMMMM - Nothing's gonna change my world...”
]
[
Everyone is at a table by themselves when I get there. I play pick-the-single for a second or two. But, he’s easy to spot. Profile just like the picture that I’ve been looking at as I typed out emails for the past week. He’s hunched over the Wall Street Journal in the same way he slumps over a dog in one of the online photos. But this isn’t online. This is the real person who will have a real inflection to discern when he says words that he, until now, he would have typed. Here sits the mind and the meat suit. Hello person named after a sharp object, nice to meat you.
When someone who reads the Journal hands you his business card, it means he wants to talk again. I realize that 40 minutes after we part ways on a traffic island to head off to respective jobs.
]
[
P~ the computer addict sneaks around the corner of my cubicle, with a barely concealed glee.
“There’s a new baby Mac in my house!”
“Really?” I roll around my chair dramatically and make a flourish with my arm. “How many does this make?
“Five!” He’s beaming like a new dad.
“Five? What, are you guys, Catholic?”
]
[
I’m walking down the street toward the annual anal raping I take at the accountant. How does one profession manage to magnetize the most bland, monotone, individuals on earth? What happened to people like that before there was a need for accountants? Did they hang out in barns counting sheaves?
Preacher man is on his same corner where he has stood as long as I’ve lived in this city and walked past this corner. He rants into his karaoke machine in front of the Old Navy telling all of the teenagers eager to exercise the credit cards they shouldn’t have about how they ‘Canna go to heaven if they drinkin' liquor! You can’t get to heaven with a cigarette in your hand!’ The lecture goes on to talk about Jesus. Jesus this Jesus that. I look up a bit. One block down is the brownstone with bay windows where I lived for two summers. I count up 12 floors and spot the window that used to be mine. That room, that solitude, was heaven. I had a lot of great sex in that room while preacher man ranted below under the hot sun on a concrete griddle. I pass him, his pointing finger and cheap loudspeaker, with a big ole’ grin on my face.
]
[
Don’t forget, never forget, to see something good in every person you pass. Imagine them as a good secretary, a kind voice on someone’s phone, something good to someone somewhere. That black girl with the high leather boots that are a bit too industrial to be sexy and the face that’s too round and teenage pimply to be pretty, she’s doing the best she can even though she looks so cold and tired. I see her. I see her trying to be someone, not just another nothing person disregarded for her skin color or thick lips. She’s just beautiful, really. I smile at that beauty I see in her and when she looks at me the coldness and tiredness, the youthful frustration, melts from her face for a second and she smiles back.
]
The train has its delays one the one day I’ve planned things a little too tightly to tolerate such dawdling. What happens to all these Red trains that I always see leaving the station religiously every five minutes when I’m stuck at Howard waiting for a Purple one? How is it that by the time one gets to Belmont and is trying to catch a Red train they only seem to come every fifteen minutes? What happens? Does some monster eat half of the trains?
Don’t forget to get off at the next stop. I get up to wait by the door as we glide past a local station. People stand about in coats and hats under the rusty red “Wellington” sign. Too bad that no one at the Wellington platform actually wears Wellingtons.
]
[
Somehow, with my somewhat clumsy but sensible and comfy shoes, I manage to take this woman’s pump off her left foot. I’m part of the rush of people getting off the train, flooding down the stairs and draining out into the street. She’s one of those bodies trying to push upward to wait in the frigid air for transportation. We pass each other and somehow my shoe catches her little pump, sending it flying. I apologize profusely and bend down to pick up the cheap little black shoe and put it back onto her foot. She does not turn into a princess.
]
[
I’m walking up the street, just meeting someone for the first time over coffee (even though I don’t drink coffee) at a little place that caught my eye 3 years ago. Hard to forget a place with “pig” in the title. Everyone else is walking the other direction. Their faces are so young! They look terribly tidy and terribly ready to face the world. Young men. As I pass them some turn their heads to look at me. Fast, though, so they don’t get caught. There’s something funny in the air today – as if suddenly people will halt their march into the job machine, turn, open their jackets to reveal saffron robes, and break into unison singing. “Cha’i guru deva – OHMMMMM - Nothing's gonna change my world...”
]
[
Everyone is at a table by themselves when I get there. I play pick-the-single for a second or two. But, he’s easy to spot. Profile just like the picture that I’ve been looking at as I typed out emails for the past week. He’s hunched over the Wall Street Journal in the same way he slumps over a dog in one of the online photos. But this isn’t online. This is the real person who will have a real inflection to discern when he says words that he, until now, he would have typed. Here sits the mind and the meat suit. Hello person named after a sharp object, nice to meat you.
When someone who reads the Journal hands you his business card, it means he wants to talk again. I realize that 40 minutes after we part ways on a traffic island to head off to respective jobs.
]
[
P~ the computer addict sneaks around the corner of my cubicle, with a barely concealed glee.
“There’s a new baby Mac in my house!”
“Really?” I roll around my chair dramatically and make a flourish with my arm. “How many does this make?
“Five!” He’s beaming like a new dad.
“Five? What, are you guys, Catholic?”
]
[
I’m walking down the street toward the annual anal raping I take at the accountant. How does one profession manage to magnetize the most bland, monotone, individuals on earth? What happened to people like that before there was a need for accountants? Did they hang out in barns counting sheaves?
Preacher man is on his same corner where he has stood as long as I’ve lived in this city and walked past this corner. He rants into his karaoke machine in front of the Old Navy telling all of the teenagers eager to exercise the credit cards they shouldn’t have about how they ‘Canna go to heaven if they drinkin' liquor! You can’t get to heaven with a cigarette in your hand!’ The lecture goes on to talk about Jesus. Jesus this Jesus that. I look up a bit. One block down is the brownstone with bay windows where I lived for two summers. I count up 12 floors and spot the window that used to be mine. That room, that solitude, was heaven. I had a lot of great sex in that room while preacher man ranted below under the hot sun on a concrete griddle. I pass him, his pointing finger and cheap loudspeaker, with a big ole’ grin on my face.
]
[
Don’t forget, never forget, to see something good in every person you pass. Imagine them as a good secretary, a kind voice on someone’s phone, something good to someone somewhere. That black girl with the high leather boots that are a bit too industrial to be sexy and the face that’s too round and teenage pimply to be pretty, she’s doing the best she can even though she looks so cold and tired. I see her. I see her trying to be someone, not just another nothing person disregarded for her skin color or thick lips. She’s just beautiful, really. I smile at that beauty I see in her and when she looks at me the coldness and tiredness, the youthful frustration, melts from her face for a second and she smiles back.
]
The legend of the meat suit
"Who told you that you are naked?"
God must have been puzzled at human's sudden need to cover themselves with bits of shrubbery. Surely that can't be comfortable. Surely it can't be as durable as the skin they're already wearing. The next lines from God's mythic mouth have been lost by poor transcription and eons of muddy translation. But I wonder ~
"You already had clothes on! I made you that nice meat suit to wear. It's a perfect little away-garment for while you are experiencing this sensual world. Now don't tell me that you got the idea into your head that when I made the meat suit I was making YOU? No no...who got that idea? The man did? oh...."
And so went the first of many cascading less-than-perfect ideas. The funny part is how mistakes can be so normal after a while that we forget to question them. They become projected out as part of the reality we imagine for all beings in the universe. Won't we just be surprised when folks show up from Jupiter's moon, all stark staring naked, and ask us to turn up the warmth-consciousness on our planet? Maybe they'll send us all to detox to remedy a rampant addiction to our physical bodies.
It's no simple matter to get over body addiction. After he passed my father lumbered through my dreams for months, confused as to why no one could see or hear him. He responded when we talked but we didn't turn our heads. He felt more spry and healthy than he had in years but no one seemed to care.
"How come you can hear me?" he asked one morning while we walked through some park filled with blue trees and purple sand.
I turned to him and asked "Who told you that you are dead?" He waived an arm at me and shook his head. Me and my crazy ideas.
But, in the coming months he would begin to show up in different forms. I knew him only by imprint as he was realizing that the identity that came with the recently discarded meat suit wasn't necessary. He floated through in all manner of ways, only taking on the face-of-Dad that I remembered when he needed to step in and show urgent disgust for some boy that I had just met.
It all makes perfect sense - until it doesn't. Aliens can get a pass on nudity. Humans? not so much.
Carl yanks me out of dream world again. I stuff my head in the blanket to snooze for as long as i dare before I know I must get up. It's not quite so light at 6 am yet that I can see clearly but not so dark anymore that I feel the need for lights. In this greyscale world I stand in front of the closet, hoping that the garments I pick look ok together and that I don't look like a color copy of Mr. Caffeine again. If that man owns a moss green shirt I'll just...have to take mine off!
God must have been puzzled at human's sudden need to cover themselves with bits of shrubbery. Surely that can't be comfortable. Surely it can't be as durable as the skin they're already wearing. The next lines from God's mythic mouth have been lost by poor transcription and eons of muddy translation. But I wonder ~
"You already had clothes on! I made you that nice meat suit to wear. It's a perfect little away-garment for while you are experiencing this sensual world. Now don't tell me that you got the idea into your head that when I made the meat suit I was making YOU? No no...who got that idea? The man did? oh...."
And so went the first of many cascading less-than-perfect ideas. The funny part is how mistakes can be so normal after a while that we forget to question them. They become projected out as part of the reality we imagine for all beings in the universe. Won't we just be surprised when folks show up from Jupiter's moon, all stark staring naked, and ask us to turn up the warmth-consciousness on our planet? Maybe they'll send us all to detox to remedy a rampant addiction to our physical bodies.
It's no simple matter to get over body addiction. After he passed my father lumbered through my dreams for months, confused as to why no one could see or hear him. He responded when we talked but we didn't turn our heads. He felt more spry and healthy than he had in years but no one seemed to care.
"How come you can hear me?" he asked one morning while we walked through some park filled with blue trees and purple sand.
I turned to him and asked "Who told you that you are dead?" He waived an arm at me and shook his head. Me and my crazy ideas.
But, in the coming months he would begin to show up in different forms. I knew him only by imprint as he was realizing that the identity that came with the recently discarded meat suit wasn't necessary. He floated through in all manner of ways, only taking on the face-of-Dad that I remembered when he needed to step in and show urgent disgust for some boy that I had just met.
It all makes perfect sense - until it doesn't. Aliens can get a pass on nudity. Humans? not so much.
Carl yanks me out of dream world again. I stuff my head in the blanket to snooze for as long as i dare before I know I must get up. It's not quite so light at 6 am yet that I can see clearly but not so dark anymore that I feel the need for lights. In this greyscale world I stand in front of the closet, hoping that the garments I pick look ok together and that I don't look like a color copy of Mr. Caffeine again. If that man owns a moss green shirt I'll just...have to take mine off!
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Hell and wednesday
Coco Chanel thinks it's terribly funny that she put self-tanning creme on my face while I was napping. The brown blotches on my nose and cheek are such an amusement. And here I thought Harry Connick was smiling and laughing at me because he thought I was charming. It's enough to make a girl want to go shove her face deep into the hazelnut whipped creme that the french matron hosting this fete is bragging about. As she places it on the table and I hover over the bowl, spoon in hand, intent on taking it all for myself. Carl Kassel crashes the party, promising word of an upset in the primary elections... "after this news".
Who invited him? Oh yeah, the clock radio,that's who. Waking up to NPR has mixed some odd bedfellows into my morning dreams. Carl I'm more used to seeing. He's become my canary in the coal mine. When he shows up in the dream with his bland cheeriness then I know it's probably time I found my body and woke it up.
Ugh the waking world. The apartment littered with days of mail that i dropped carelessly after opening, clothes not properly retired into the closet and two days of dirty dishes. In front of the closet I hang up yesterday's blue shirt and pull out today's clothes. Cargo pants, black again, also with pockets and zippers all over them. Pullover shirt, this one purple.
For shits I take the train instead of the bus. An old man gets on and sits next to me. His coat is big and bulky and a bit dingy. His face is hidden with a big hat and his possessions are all in a plastic bag. The smell of coffee and Ben Gay wafts toward me. It doesn't look like he's homeless, but it also doesn't look like life on a fixed income is treating him well at all. An alley full of dumpsters might just be his shopping mall.
Shopping mall. Living in Somerville I used to joke that a street on garbage night was like a chinese shopping mall. All night they would go up and down the street with shopping carts and pick through the garbage. "Chinese shopping mall..." I'm such a racist bitch sometimes. When I was moving and filling that curb with 8 years of undesirables I sure didn't mind how they would clear things so I could put out more. I was up all night that night putting out more and more garbage, amazed at what was picked through, collected as treasure or left behind.
An asian woman steps in front of me and starts walking slow. I get instantly impatient and push her out of my way. "What the HELL was that for?" I ask myself. What was I so afraid of not getting in those few extra seconds it cost me to slow my pace and walk behind her? It's not about this woman or her pace. Fact is, I've always been jealous of asian women. Stupid. Racist and stupid.
I'm heading into the break room for a beverage when I collide in the doorway with Mr. Coffee with cream from yesterday. I'm coming in to grab water. He's holding a Mt. Dew in his hands. He's still in crisp pants and an arrow collar shirt. I'm still in pants covered with zippers and pockets and a pullover. We're both wearing black pants again... and today he, too, is wearing a purple shirt. We could be on some weird color wavelength together. Or there could be a cycle of colors that people start to go through together when they work in the same space. I have no doubt that a survey of cubicles would reveal a surplus of purple shirts and black pants. I go back to my desk and instantly shop online for garments in green and robin's-egg blue.
Who invited him? Oh yeah, the clock radio,that's who. Waking up to NPR has mixed some odd bedfellows into my morning dreams. Carl I'm more used to seeing. He's become my canary in the coal mine. When he shows up in the dream with his bland cheeriness then I know it's probably time I found my body and woke it up.
Ugh the waking world. The apartment littered with days of mail that i dropped carelessly after opening, clothes not properly retired into the closet and two days of dirty dishes. In front of the closet I hang up yesterday's blue shirt and pull out today's clothes. Cargo pants, black again, also with pockets and zippers all over them. Pullover shirt, this one purple.
For shits I take the train instead of the bus. An old man gets on and sits next to me. His coat is big and bulky and a bit dingy. His face is hidden with a big hat and his possessions are all in a plastic bag. The smell of coffee and Ben Gay wafts toward me. It doesn't look like he's homeless, but it also doesn't look like life on a fixed income is treating him well at all. An alley full of dumpsters might just be his shopping mall.
Shopping mall. Living in Somerville I used to joke that a street on garbage night was like a chinese shopping mall. All night they would go up and down the street with shopping carts and pick through the garbage. "Chinese shopping mall..." I'm such a racist bitch sometimes. When I was moving and filling that curb with 8 years of undesirables I sure didn't mind how they would clear things so I could put out more. I was up all night that night putting out more and more garbage, amazed at what was picked through, collected as treasure or left behind.
An asian woman steps in front of me and starts walking slow. I get instantly impatient and push her out of my way. "What the HELL was that for?" I ask myself. What was I so afraid of not getting in those few extra seconds it cost me to slow my pace and walk behind her? It's not about this woman or her pace. Fact is, I've always been jealous of asian women. Stupid. Racist and stupid.
I'm heading into the break room for a beverage when I collide in the doorway with Mr. Coffee with cream from yesterday. I'm coming in to grab water. He's holding a Mt. Dew in his hands. He's still in crisp pants and an arrow collar shirt. I'm still in pants covered with zippers and pockets and a pullover. We're both wearing black pants again... and today he, too, is wearing a purple shirt. We could be on some weird color wavelength together. Or there could be a cycle of colors that people start to go through together when they work in the same space. I have no doubt that a survey of cubicles would reveal a surplus of purple shirts and black pants. I go back to my desk and instantly shop online for garments in green and robin's-egg blue.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Tuesday: a word concierto
The lake looks like many rows of grey teeth marching toward the shore to take a bite out of the land. It seems to be enjoying how the weekend thaw removed the icy fence from its margins. The wind is whipping it up into a frenzy. The same wind twirls paper, garbage and leaves into mini tornados through the streets and whips flags around around their poles. The bus driver has had his window open. Maybe he's one of those men who is just always too warm. That March wind reaches in and grabs something out of his pocket, stealing it away into the air. It's just a small, white piece of paper but he stops the bus and runs out into the middle of the busy & crazy intersection of Hollywood, Sheridan and Lakeshore to retrieve the prize. Cars screech to a halt to avoid hitting him. I'd hate to see a bus driver die.
A new display is going up on Michigan Avenue in front of the Hancock tower. It's not quite done and it's difficult to tell what it will ultimately advertise. But for now a rugged looking construction crane parks on the side walk suspending a giant hot dog in the air over the crowd. Is this supposed to make us hungry for hot dogs or frightened? Real hot dogs can kill if you eat too many of them. Giant fake hot dogs might just kill, too. It almost looks as if the machine is hungry and has just stopped off at a roadside stand for an industrial- sized snack.
We're both dressed with blue on the top and black pants with tidy black shoes. We couldn't be more different. The difference goes beyond his brown skin vs. my white. My black on the bottom is cargo pants covered with pockets and zippers. Not like those crisp dress pants that look ready to tackle any client. I don't have that kind of arrow color shirt on. No, I personally could not survive without the pullover. I'm pulling the bag of my own herbal tea out of my pocket while you stir cream into your coffee and mix in sugar. Mr. Black n' blue - we got nothing in common.
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