American Fez

Staycation Blues

July has caught me by surprise, as if slapping the back of my head with a rolled-up brochure advertising all-inclusive summer vacations in faraway, virus-free, coastal resorts.

'Shouldn't you be somewhere fun by now?' July says, getting up close and personal, its hot breath searing my face. 'Why are you still working from home when you could be working from the beach, laptop balanced on a beer crammed cooler, answering emails while sitting in the shade with autofill spreadsheets and all conference calls on mute.'

It's a good question. But, alas, all travel options are impractical this year. After all, who really wants to wander through a tropical paradise wearing a plague mask and flip-flops, or annex a six-foot circle of socially distanced personal space on the lanai, afraid of boisterous bacteria partying in the hot tub?

At times like these, I stare out of the window thinking an Olympic size swimming pool would easily fit in my driveway. Some deckchairs, a few potted palms, a makeshift cabana, and I can pretend I'm holidaying on the French Riviera. I'd be forced to risk parking on the street, but that's an inconsequential inconvenience compared to enjoying my fantasy version of Saint-Tropez each day.

'You should have thought of that before,' July tells me, exhaling yet another blast of super-humid breath. 'It's too late now. If you started building a pool today it wouldn't be finished until the Fall. I bet the planning permission alone wouldn't be granted before October.' 

Ah yes, the Fall. I wonder what words of wisdom November will have for me. 'Stay inside. The second wave of Coronavirus has arrived. It's not safe out there anymore.' Summer's chiding and cajoling to leave my house rapidly turning into Winter's full-blown paranoia for hibernation.

Frankly, I'm already nostalgic for this past Spring and the early days of lockdown, when a break from routine seemed like an adventure and an interesting challenge to the daily grind, those April and May mornings that truly made a novelty of the Novel Coronavirus.

Add To Basket

The ancient agora became the medieval market square, and from the medieval market square grew the corner store, and the corner store was dwarfed by the shopping mall, and the shopping mall was demolished by Online retailing, so what, I wonder, will eventually supersede Online retailing? I'm no futurist, I'm barely even a presentist, but I have a few ideas.

Luxury goods, which will be the only goods worth buying, will be hand-delivered directly to the lunar estates of one-percenters by courier astronauts wearing zero gravity livery. The rest of us won't be able to afford such quality products and impeccable service, never mind the shipping costs from terrestrial warehouses to the moon.

We will still be residing back on Earth, herded into consumer-economy ghettos patrolled by an army of intrusive and persistent door-to-door robotic salesmen hawking nothing but cheap and disposable junk. An indestructible titanium foot wedged in our front doors will be much harder to dislodge than a human foot, and their pre-programmed digital sales patter much harder to resist. Buy one, get one, even if you don't want one, never mind two.

But on the bright side, when Online shopping is made obsolete by vending-bots and dealer-drones, perhaps the Internet might return to being a simple forum for exchanges of useful information and interesting ideas, and we can browse a web page about Heraclitus without being bombarded by advertisements for creature comforts. It's unlikely, I know, but I am an incurable optimist.

Pneumatic Drills

Everyone knows the ancient Greek word pneuma can mean both 'breath' and 'spirit.' Therefore a ghost of yourself appears whenever you exhale upon a mirror and write You Are Here in the mist created with your fingertip. As encounters with the numinous go, it's perhaps not the most revelatory or profound experience, but I don't claim to be any kind of metaphysician. In fact, the only time I tried dancing to the Music of the Spheres I trod on my partner's toes. But that's what you happens if you try to lead when waltzing with a discarnate entity.

But back to our concept of pneuma. Obviously there are mouth-breathers (Protestant) and nose-breathers (Catholic).Those who assume the lotus position even follow a highly structured breathing regimen. Agnostics, meanwhile, breath on cracked or frosted glass mirrors. And let's not forget about those who require iron-lung breathing apparatus (Materialist philosophers), and only breathe into empty frames from which the glass has been removed.

I like to think of my own breath as puffs of cherubic zephyrs, some armed with bows and arrows, some carrying curlicue scrolls announcing the thoughts of my subconscious, and one or two playing the trumpet, occasionally the bassoon or sousaphone. I can just about make them out when I exhale upon a mirror, if only as smudgy abstract forms, but they fade as quickly as they appear. They last barely long enough for me to write You Are Here, so sometimes I think perhaps I am not.

Sunday School Dropout

Joseph of Arimathea is my favorite New Testament character. In the gospels, after the death of Jesus, Joseph appears out of nowhere (literally, as Arimathea is not an actual place) to claim and subsequently bury the Messiah's body. 

And that's the first and last we hear of Joseph of Arimathea in the good book. Considering he performed such an important role in the Christian story, you might think Joseph would have his own gospel, but he doesn't, unless it's still hidden underground somewhere about ten miles north of Nag Hammadi.

But fortunately our knowledge of Joseph of Arimathea is not limited to Biblical sources. According to medieval legend, Joseph took the Holy Grail across the seas to England. Fellow wayfarers probably though Joseph strange to have brought his own cup on board ship, but I like to think he inspired some Roman entrepreneur to market the first travel mug.

Furthermore, if Joseph had not made that trip with the grail, the knights of Camelot would've wasted their days just slouching around the round table instead of embarking upon heroic quests to find the bloody thing. The world of romantic poetry would be bereft of one of its most fertile inspirations. A retrospective of Pre-Raphaelite painting would consist of far fewer canvases. And worse, there would be no Monty Python movie about King Arthur and his "kerniggits."

Joseph of Arimathea is also, by virtue of providing not only a tomb for Jesus but also his winding-sheet, directly responsible for that wonderful, primitive photographic mystery known as the Shroud of Turin. I'm not sure this ancient fabric does display the actual image of Christ, but it is clearly the face of someone who adept at telling parables.

Anyway, you'd think God-fearing nations like ours would make more of an effort to commemorate such an important Biblical figure. We could at least incorporate a new town in Illinois named Arimatheaville or a waterfront community in Florida called Arimatheaport. 

Theater of the Absurd

There is so much free theater on the streets right now. The Red Players, The Blue Company, and The Purple Ensemble are showcasing alfresco productions of their own Coronavirus opinions for anyone who cares to watch. Alas, it's all predictable, over-emoted melodrama. There is no dialogue, just a series of monotonous soliloquies yelled at the audience, the spotlight swinging wildly around the makeshift stage, searching for the actor with the loudest voice. Numerous Greek choruses wearing masks of tragedy wait in the wings. I think this might be Act Thirty-Seven, Scene Twelve, but I'm not sure. The prompter has apparently already lost his place in the script. 

Fortunately, there is also a lot of free mime to enjoy. For instance, I was walking my dog the other day when an elaborately masked mime appeared about ten feet behind us on the sidewalk. Whenever I stopped at a tree to let my dog sniff neighborhood smells, the mime stopped also, like a living statue, artfully maintaining his ten-foot distance as if separated from me by an invisible bargepole. Then, when sniffing was complete and the dog and I resumed our walk, the mime suddenly sprang back into motion and resumed his perambulations also, always ten feet behind. Highly entertaining if you're a fan of Samuel Beckett.

The other mime who puts on a good show is the in-your-face, confrontational non-mask wearer. I saw his production, entitled 'Bull In A China Shop,' at my local grocery store. It featured the starkly maskless mime shunting a shopping cart containing nothing but frozen TV dinners down the narrow aisles, in the wrong direction, daring anyone to challenge him for ignoring the store's Coronavirus policies. At fifteen minute intervals, a recorded voice on the store's PA system reminded shoppers to wear a mask, keep their distance, and follow directional arrows in the aisles, and each time this announcement was made the maskless mime presented a conspicuous and repudiatory finger to wherever he thought the voice was coming from. A bravura performance.

My play is of little interest, essentially being a comedy of manners which is so out of fashion these days. I stroll about the stage making my own risk assessments of the situations I encounter, trying to be respectful of the risk assessments of others. There is only a single prop: a blue neckerchief I pull over my nose and mouth when I'm around people who care and pull slip below my chin when there's nobody in the immediate vicinity. It won't win any Oscars for Costume Design but I find it to be easy, effective, and relatively non-controversial.

The Emperor's New Palace

Built on what the agent claimed to be "one of the area's most prestigious residential developments," Alfred's new house nevertheless reminded me of an over-sized garden shed. Architecture suitable for California but unlikely to withstand many New England winters. Yet software engineer Alfred pines for a Palo Alto lifestyle so rarely considers north of Boston practicalities.

Inside, the house is no temple of the arts. Alfred likes to bring his work home with him, including the office fixtures and fittings, so his decorating style is best described as contemporary philistine: discount warehouse furniture sets made of synthetic fabrics and materials, designed to be durable rather than attractive. His carpet is stain-resistant, which is fortunate because none of the surfaces are level, especially the floor. 

But it's the cracks already appearing in the wafer-thin walls that worry me. I don't believe they can support the weight of Alfred's cheaply-framed pictures, never mind the ceiling and roof. I've visited portable toilets with sturdier foundations. Never has there been a better example of a house not being a home. If La Courbusier's definition of a houses as "machines for living" is correct, then Alfred's house is a low-tech, hand-cranked contraption barely sustaining the most basic form of life. 

Alfred is most proud of his "prestigious" new address: 12 Newton Court. In fact, all the streets in the development were named after famous scientists. Einstein Avenue, Darwin Way, Edison Terrace, Fermi Lane (cul-de-sac), and so on. "My place is on a corner in the Court," Alfred said. "Top of the range. Great investment, too. I'll sell in five or six years for twice what I paid."

I wondered if the house will still be standing then, but unlike the boy in the story of Emperor's New Clothes I kept my thoughts to myself. Instead, I walked over to the picture windows in the dining room and gazed out at the three giant wind turbines in the distance. "Nice view," I said, tapping the glass with my finger. "But you might want to think about double-glazing." 

To Be A Pilgrim

I passed a monk on the sidewalk who was staring into space; gazing, perhaps, into that numinous infinity only the called can see; or maybe, like Saint Francis, scanning the skies for the preached-to bird bringing lunch from a distant restaurant open for pick-up only. But could he possibly be some Seventh Seal medieval revenant from my imagination, conjured into being by subconscious concerns during this time of plague and pestilence? No, he'd probably just been visiting the nursing home nearby.

Of course, on those rare occasions I do come across a monk, especially a jovial Friar Tuck type, I can't help profanely hoping they reside in a monastery where beer and cheese is made. No doubt there is a particular circle of Dantean Hell waiting for me, forming a Venn diagram with the circles containing gluttons and drunkards and other types of facetious wastrels. Purgatory, meanwhile, would be a monk offering beer and cheese tastings who had taken a vow of silence and was consequently was unable to let me know about his wares. Paradise, a Trappist beer and cheese weekly subscription service with free delivery. by Beatrice Express.

At any rate, it is an unusual experience to encounter a monk strolling around my neighborhood, whether laden with food and drink or not. Although interestingly enough, I had also seen a man dressed in a suit of armor the week before. Judging by his hipster's handlebar mustache, he was actually a refugee from a socially distanced Dungeons and Dragons game. Nevertheless, for all intents and purposes, the image of a perfect, gentle knight was clanking his way down the city streets.

I realize we are a long way past April showers, but, taking these monk and knight sightings into consideration, I do wonder if I will meet every character from The Canterbury Tales by the end of June. There is a definitely a candidate for the Wife of Bath who fails to pick-up after her little pekinese dog when she takes it for a walk. In fact, there are at least three or four Wives locally, several swanky Squires, and far too many cantankerous Reeves. Obviously there are numerous Physicians about at the moment, too, but according to their tales I don't think they're making as much money from the current plague as Chaucer's physician did from his plague. 

Harriet Krishna

The angriest person I ever encountered was a vegan Yoga instructor, controlled breathing advocate, militant meditator, and theoretical Taoist. Unfortunately, she was also the apparently "flexible" girlfriend of my roommate at the time, which made her difficult to avoid. Her personal philosophy was deeply rooted in conspicuous exhibitions of serenity and transcendence. Yet she instantly became a whirligig of red-faced, blustering rage at the slightest provocation, the merest impingement upon her holistic wants and needs: being confronted with a cafe menu that only offered regular tea and no herbal varieties, for instance, would entail a lengthy harangue of the waitress and demands to speak to the manager. 

Her aura of calm shattered easily, like a brick thrown through a plate glass window at point blank range. Her sense of oneness could suddenly split into a zillion infuriated atoms. Her feeling of centeredness might be yanked violently from left to right at any moment. She is almost impossible to describe without resorting to such New Age cliches because she was the ne plus ultra of walking New Age cliches. I often thought of her as a smoldering volcano hidden beneath a Tibetan hat, wisps of smoke billowing out of her ears before she erupted into streams of hot, molten invective. 

Subsequently, she would always pretend these temper tantrums never happened, but quickly flare up again should you insist they had and dare to request an apology. My roommate's day was regularly occupied with making spineless, placatory phone calls and purchasing peace offerings for arguments he did not start. I was expelled from a party at her apartment when failing to remove my shoes before wandering into the room that doubled as a shrine to a collection of mostly Eastern deities, exclusively female naturally, except for the fellow with the elephant's head. Consequently, I complained about being chased away by a herd of stampeding Ganeshas, an attempt at levity which did not improve the situation. I was persona non grata for several blissful weeks afterward. What a relief not to be constantly tiptoeing around on rainbow-painted eggshells.

A working knowledge of the Kama Sutra can only compensate for a certain amount of personality disorder, however, and eventually my roommate dumped her. "I thought she'd be more easy going," he explained. "Because she's such a big hippy." Alas, appearances are deceptive, of course, especially when they are obscured by clouds of incense and ersatz spirituality. After their break-up, she disappeared out of my life for about ten years. Then I saw her again at the Starbucks near my office, unrecognizable at first as her kaftan and Pre-Raphaelite hair had been replaced by business attire and a power perm. But once identified I felt the muscles in my neck stiffen as she ordered a complicated coffee drink, afraid the barista would get it wrong and an unpleasant scene would ensue. 

Fortunately, her order was completed without a problem, so I thought it safe to make my presence known. She had changed far more than I, yet could not place me nor my old roommate. In fact, despite admitting a vague interest in basic yoga she denied ever being an advocate of Eastern mysticism and its various disciplines. Her eyelids were flickering and her lips pursed, always early warning signs of an impending explosion, so I let the matter drop. But it was definitely her. To raise the specter of Ganesha again, I have an elephant's memory for such irritating people. I suppose I should learn to be more Zen when dealing with others, however irksome they might be, but somehow I've never found the right teacher.

Ghost Story

When I was a child, I believed the abandoned, derelict house at the end of our street was haunted. But when I became a man, I put away childish things and realized the house actually provided a great redevelopment and investment opportunity.

The only ghost here was the melancholy specter of that old, crumbling Victorian home, which needed exorcizing then demolishing so a new, nondescript apartment block with underground parking could be built. 

I jest grimly, of course. I'd much rather reside in a haphazard neighborhood of haunted houses than a planned community gridiron of Soviet revival rabbit hutches.

Alas, each year we welcome more condominiums and increased boxification. It's like seeing the ground beneath my feet shift from handmade walnut backgammon board to some kind of computerized chess interface.

This is progress, no doubt. The modern lifestyle comes to town. The only problem is that the apartment blocks seem to be as empty as the abandoned, derelict houses. Occasionally I spy the blue glow of a widescreen TV as big as the wall but often the windows are dark.

At first, I thought the occupants must toil away all night in their "tech district" offices downtown, not getting back until past midnight. But these days everybody is supposed to be working-from-home and the lights are still out. 

Does no-one live there at all? Perhaps it is these apartment blocks that are really haunted; haunted by the dead financial dreams of their developers and investors, by the phantom of ground-floor retail-space zoning. 

Practice Makes Perfect

"Practice social distancing," an epidemiological edict reminiscent of my musical tutor's persistent demand that I practice the scales of the piano, current domestic quarantine situations being an ideal opportunity to practice both at the same time. Although one end of a piano is only about five feet away from the other, so I imagine performance of compositions for four hands are out of the question. C-sharp could easily catch Coronavirus from B-flat by virtue of its unsafe proximity. At least that's how I recall the opposing notational poles of a piano keyboard, not having practiced playing the instrument for many years (and only very irregularly back when I had a tutor, hence his constant hectoring).

But that is mere idle reverie. Obviously human life is more important than hammering away at the works of Chopin, so I practice social distancing with great application. By standing exactly six feet away from the coat stand in my hallway, I am able to memorize the amount of space between it and I, then remain that mental measurement apart from other people when walking abroad or buying wine at the liquor store. Having done this for several weeks, I now have a great eye for distances provided they are divisible or multipliable by six. If I don't think the distance is not a variable of six I'll say "about half a dozen" or "roughly three dozen." Such superficial estimations not only seem to cover most spatial queries, but are also useful practice for making lazy generalizations in other scenarios too.

Alas, my fellow citizens are not as diligent as I when social distancing, many of them happy to wander within four feet of others, sometimes just three feet or even only one-fifth of a dozen. I can't believe such potentially deadly encroachments are made on purpose or are due to willful ignorance. They are undoubtedly the result of cash-strapped consumers innocently purchasing fake, truncated yardsticks manufactured in China. So I ask, when will the unconscionable practice of importing cheap Chinese goods into this country finally be banned? Surely people are willing to pay an extra $4.28 per yardstick for an American-made product, at least in practice, if it means we can all accurately exercise our six-foot social distancing. 

Fahrenheit 45Zzzzzz

Reading in bed at night, my eyelids flicker and the pages flutter, the words drift out of focus and the book falls into my lap. The bedside table lamp seems to dim of its own accord and I'm asleep before my mind has reached the end of the sentence. 

Apparently my mind is so fatigued that in the morning I don't remember what information I supposedly digested the evening before. It's impossible to pick-up where I left off in a story because I possess zero recollection of what the characters said or did.

Consequently I can't seem to get beyond chapter one of any book. To tell the truth, I often re-read the first chapter of a novel six or seven times in a vain effort to make some sort of progress. If it's a whodunnit, I never uncover the surprising identity of the murderer. If it's dystopian sci-fi, I never discover whether or not the survivors of Calyx VI manage to repopulate the Zenethian star system. If it's an English tale of social mores, I never find out if the gloomy narrator will finally stop moaning about class barriers and just get on with his boring life.

This is also true of international travel guides. After learning how to leave the airport by train or taxi, I start dozing off before making it into the center of the city. My knowledge of natural history is extinct after the meteorites wipe out the dinosaurs. As far as I'm aware, there are no great feats of engineering after the fall of the Roman Empire. 

So I started reading a short story collection, one easy-to-finish story per night, in order to regain a feeling of accomplishment. The shorter the story the better was the plan. But, alas, I didn't find the form very satisfying. Short stories just don't provide the mental nourishment a novel does. In fact, they are so unsatisfactory that I threw the book at my bedroom wall and lay awake all night feeling cheated.

Masquerade Ball

Many years ago, when visiting Venice, I purchased a souvenir Venetian carnival mask: the 'plague-doctor' model featuring an elongated nose that resembles the face of the Looney Tunes cartoon buzzard. It's white with black curlicue embellishments and ties elaborately around the head by means of a silken ribbon. Besides colorful glass bowls and squares of fancy lace, a carnival mask is the sort of thing tourists bring home from a trip to La Serenissima. Damp socks, too, if their visit coincides with Acqua alta flooding.

At least damp socks can be dried and reworn. You can balance the colorful bowl on the end of a side-table and fill it with pistachios when friends come round. Even the lace can be spread across the back of an armchair or draped over a lampshade to dim ambient light. But what are you going to do with a plague-doctor mask? I guess you can hang it on the wall but it doesn't really fill the space, and as home decor it looks uncomfortably similar to those schmaltzy porcelain Pierrot masks that festoon the bedrooms of teenage girls. So why, you wonder, did you buy the stupid thing in the first place? It's not like you're getting invited to a masquerade ball in some waterlogged Palazzo anytime soon.

Until last week, I kept my my plague-doctor mask in a box of other homeless object d'art in a dark corner of the household coat closet. Since we're in the midst of this Coronavirus pandemic, however, I decided now was as good a time as any to remove it from storage and actually put it on. There is, after all, an actual plague stalking the land you understand. Not that I'm intending to practice unlicensed medicine or paint cautionary crosses on victim's doors, of course, but it does add a sense of theater and historic occasion to our present Quarantined circumstance.

Alas, the Venetian plague-doctor mask was designed to protect the practitioner and not his patient. Consequently it does not comply with State Government guidelines for covering your face in public places, which stress masks are supposed to shield the passer-by from any disease the wearer may carry and not vice-versa. Apparently I could be coughing Coronavirus all over the street (or the Grand Canal) if I coughed while wearing my plague-doctor mask outside. Which means I'm forced to wear this generic, flat, hospital-blue fabric thing with elastic attachments that hook behind my ears. It's not a look even Casanova could have rocked during Carnival.

Pneumatic Thoughts

According to Paul Bowles, whom I've been reading lately, the North African Tuareg people believe that the soul and breath are identical. What this means for common respiratory maladies such as garlic breath isn't, alas, made clear in his narrative. Could an unwary tribesman find himself afflicted with "garlic soul?" Or perhaps the Tuareg never eat garlic? Bowles doesn't say. Tuaregs inhabited an area of the Sahara controlled by France, so garlic soul was obviously a problem. Imagine a poor, Islamic Tuareg goatherd being interrogated by a close-talking French Legionnaire and getting not only garlic soul but also Catholic soul breathed all over him at the same time. The horror, the horror ...

Since COVID 19 infection is communicable by breath, I find myself wondering what the Tuareg think of the current pandemic. Can you catch Coronavirus of the soul? What sort of mask best prevents particles of contagious soul being coughed into the atmosphere? And how long does Coronavirus soul contamination survive on different surfaces? At least the Sahara provides a great deal of space in which the Tuareg can practice social distancing. Just remember not to share camels and wash your hands at the oasis. And on that unwarranted exhortation to an unknown people in uncertain times, I'll conclude this embarrassingly ignorant rumination on Tuareg culture and modern virology. 

Whale Of A Time

Smutney Galleries, dealer in collectible coins and printed ephemera, is closed for the coronavirus season. There is not enough elbow-room to achieve adequate social distancing and, let’s face facts, the yellowed lithograph and oxidised money trade is hardly an ‘essential business’ in anyone’s book.

Nevertheless, peering through the grimy, almost opaque windows, squinting into the interior gloom, I can just about make out the Rockwell Kent woodcut illustration of Moby Dick I’ve been coveting. It still hangs on the back wall in an art deco-ish silver frame which adds a significant amount to the asking price. But I wouldn’t want the picture without the frame, and probably vice versa: they complement each other perfectly. 

My fear is that extended closure will force Smutney Galleries into unresolvable bankruptcy. Then the object of my desire will be forever lost to me: indifferently cataloged in some obscure auction lot far away, receiving no bids and condemned to the local landfill, or sold as novelty dining decor to a philistine seafood restaurateur. Woodcut Moby Dick will be one more unknown victim of the current pandemic instead of gracing the vacant space above my kitchen table.

To be honest, I’m not bothered about the gallery owner’s livelihood, as I believe it’s just a hobby job for him anyway. Judging by his limited opening hours, he can’t even approach earning a living wage from selling vintage travel posters and Victorian pennies on the weekends, so he must possess another, regular and substantial source of income. Probably a trust fund or an indulgent and successful spouse. 

I guess I should have bought the picture when I had the chance. But I didn’t plan for these retail store shuttering quarantine contingencies. Perhaps I could have run down there just as the owner was locking his door for the final time. “Please let me in. I don’t exhibit symptoms and I know what I want. It will only take a minute and I’ll pay in cash.”

Of course, even cold, hard cash is feared these days. Your old crinkled greenback might be diseased, it could be the Typhoid Mary of currency, so beware the bacteria where the pyramid meets the eye. George Washington’s face should be replaced by a biohazard skull and crossbones on the one dollar bill. Now that would be interesting printed ephemera for display.

Such, Such Were The Joys

There is no 'echoing green' outside my front door, but a gang of pre-teen kids once congregated on the street corner, deciding what to do with their day. Running up and down the busy road while shouting was the usual consensus. Such random exertion was obviously a competitive game of sorts although its rules remained a mystery to me despite having taken part in similar activity at the same age.

Coronavirus has now confined these kids to their homes, of course, since the parents whose risk management policy apparently allowed for their offspring dodging speeding cars and trucks are afraid of invisible Covid 19 infection. I suppose a covert enemy always increases paranoia, but still ... the threat of Martian invasion when I was young would not prevent my father from forcing me to go out and get some fresh air. Can Coronavirus really be more deadly than the synthetic world of the 1970s? 

Discretion is the better part of valor, however, and my neighbors are right to follow the latest precautionary advice about social distancing and so on. I've seen some of them at the supermarket is full Hazmat gear. Our sidewalks are not six feet wide so I cling to the curb while they shrink into the shadows of apartment buildings if I pass them when walking my dog. It's possible they're afraid of my pandemic mask. It's modeled on those worn by ancient Greek thespians, albeit with tight-lipped features rather than an openly bewailing Theban mouth, but still unmistakably the grim face of a tragedian. 

Gazing down at the now deserted and silent street corner from an upstairs window, I feel like an audience of one impatiently waiting for the curtain to rise on the second act. God knows this intermission has lasted long enough already. My seat in the stalls is unbearably uncomfortable; the theater bar has run out of both food and booze; and the less said about the toilet paper situation in the restroom the better. So turn the streetlamp spotlight on and let the kids resume their endless pantomime. It's a noisy, incoherent play but it's better than just sitting here in the window watching nothing like a lugubrious Edward Hopper painting.

Modern Doxology

It was in the Year of the Virus, after a take-out feast of Szechuan crispy pork with brown rice and wonton soup, when I discovered my lucky numbers were seven, twenty-three, forty-nine, and Infinity-plus-one.

Fragments of brittle cookie lay scattered across the table surrounding a small, oblong paper fortune that fell out when the cookie was cracked open. I picked the paper up and read its short, pithy prognostication: You will have a pleasant surprise, it proclaimed. Well, that was good if not especially specific news. What could the pleasant surprise be and when would it surprise me? More to the point, would my surprise be big enough and so agreeably pleasant that I'd immediately recognize it as the pleasant surprise foretold by the cookie, and not just some easily overlooked, random, everyday lucky event?

Alas, fortune cookies don't contain a second slip of paper answering such Frequent Asked Questions, and there are no customer service contact details either. Typically inscrutable Chinese soothsaying was at work, obviously. Oh well, I turned the paper over and made a mental note of the lucky numbers printed on its reverse. Maybe simple, unambiguous mathematics would provide a little more practical information.

The number seven wasn't particularly exciting. After all, seven is considered to be an all-purpose lucky number for everybody, so I'd been pretty much cheated out of an exclusive slice of serendipity with that allocation. Numbers twenty-three and forty-nine were also somewhat disappointing, as $23.49 was the total of my take-out order. What the Hell did that mean, then? That I'd be 'pleasantly surprised' to not get indigestion from all the MSG in my dinner this time? I guess so because my stomach did feel unexpectedly non-dyspeptic. So only the dubious Infinity-plus-one remained as a functional integer of good omen, if such an abstract notion could be considered an integer.

Having been dealt this poor hand of lucky numbers, I decided Infinity-plus-one was the ultimate trump card as it must contain every other number. Therefore I could make my own luck by bestowing fortunate properties on whatever combination of numbers I came across. Four, nine, thirteen, Pi, the square root of forty-nine, anything divisible by sixty-three. In my mind, all numbers were indicators of glad tidings now, even 2020, which would be a pleasant surprise considering how the year has begun.

In which regard, let me just say glory be to yesterday, today and tomorrow, as it was in the beginning, and now, and ever shall be, world without end, plus one.

There's No Appeasing Some People

Ancient man performed sacrificial offerings to appease his angry Gods, usually by casting these annual tributes into whichever volcano or waterway their priests believed the God resided. Poor beasts and blameless humans were flung into fiery Krakatoa, submerged beneath the surface of sacred ponds, or swallowed whole by the peat bogs of Northern Europe.

Perhaps tribes possessing the technology might even have catapulted sacrificial victims into the clouds to pacify their sky God? If so I guess they'd need to explain why these airborne offerings fell back down to Earth again, apparently rejected by the deity aloft. Did the ungrateful God in question require much fatter cows than those chosen to be discharged into the heavens? That would mean building a larger, more powerful catapult which might not be practical. Ugh, what a quandary for a Bronze Age brain.

Which makes me wonder how ancient man would face placating a modern God of Coronavirus. It can't be easy to submit your sacrifice to an invisible mist of respiratory droplets. Then again, we know ancient man was keen on wearing masks and other types of protective gear, so viruses probably weren't a problem for him. Ancient man was, however, beset by deadly plagues and pestilence, and any God unleashing plagues and pestilence is a vengeful God who won't be placated by simply slitting the throats of a virgin, some random goats, and a selection of cattle. A vengeful God desires to wipe out the entire tribe and no amount of ritual slaughter is going to stop him.

The contemporary God who merely dispenses viruses among his people seems rather apathetic by comparison. A divine power who merely wishes to exercise a little Adam and Eve-thinning. He coughs into creation and sits back to see where the chips fall. Maybe his contagion will kill a few here and there, maybe it won't, whatever. Like everything else these days, it's a hit or miss affair. We are truly made in our own God's image.

I, Survivalist

The city is filled with wild animals during Coronavirus curfew. Mostly furry rabbits that our ancestors once fashioned winter hats from, and large, aggressive turkeys of the kind you see eaten in pictures of the first Thanksgiving. No doubt both feel safer simply because it's Spring, never mind the current dearth of predatory humans walking the streets after dark.

There are possibly coyotes around also, but being infamous tricksters they probably disguise themselves as the mailman or the UPS guy. And let's not forget that Sasquatch I saw behind the garbage cans. Although I guess that might be just my neighbor with his shirt off. It has been unseasonably warm the past few days.

It's the squirrels and rats I feel sorry for. Their traditional urban territory has been invaded by strangers from far afield, literally. The country mouse is here to steal the city mouse's discarded Chinese take-out.

In fact, considering how many footloose rabbits and fancy-free turkeys are wandering around, it might soon be safer to sneak out at night hunting food with a shotgun rather than buying it at a deadly virus compromised supermarket. But can I bring my self to skin and pluck my own dinner instead of simply defrosting it from a package? It's what cutting-edge anthropologists call the Hunter-Gatherer versus Shopper-Microwaver conflict.

At any rate, I've been checking the social media profiles of all my neighbors. If the community does descend into roving packs of post-apocalyptic barbarians, I want to be sure I join the strongest pack. I intend to volunteer my services as a looting and pillaging strategic-planner. After all, if I'm honest with myself, cooking rabbit stew and turkey meatloaf from complete carcass scratch isn't my area of expertise, and I certainly wouldn't want to weaken my pack by poisoning all its members with E-coli and botulism, never mind the pervasive COVID-19 concerns.

Meanwhile, I have enough canned vegetables and sardines in olive oil to make it through the next month. Let's hope the world has returned somewhat to normal by then. I really don't want to put my survival skills into practice unless it's absolutely necessary. So stay safe, reader, and keep your Bowie knife sharp.

The New Influencer In Town

I began binge watching The Barefoot Chef's Chinese Kitchen on YouTube. It's streaming video of some American wannabe-gourmet without any shoes on preparing various rice and noodle dishes. He kung-fu kicks the door open at the start of each show. Other than that there doesn't seem to be anything Chinese about this chef at all, nor any reason for him to be barefoot.

I was up to episode three, the one about chow-mein, when the barefoot chef accidentally dropped a cast iron frying pan on his foot. Should have been using a wok, I thought to myself as he hopped and howled around his kitchen, a wok wouldn't hurt as much. Obviously that episode was cut short, but between winces the barefoot chef promised to return next week.

I wondered if he would rename the show after his injury: The Chef With The Crushed Toenail's Chinese Kitchen, perhaps? But he didn't. The format was essentially still the same except there was no kung-fu kicking entrance and zero filming below his waist. However, alert viewers could hear the tell-tale clickety-clack of protective plastic clogs on the kitchen tiles instead of the usual slapping sound of the soles of his feet. And it's continued that way ever since.

So why the show's title retains the barefoot reference is a mystery to me. It's a show about basic Chinese cooking, after all, not a demonstration of treading grapes or artisanal kneading dough with heels and toes. I guess everyone feels they need a gimmick on the web and lack of appropriate footwear was his. I'm curious because I'm considering starting a YouTube food blog of my own. The theme is homemade Foie Gras using the livers of geese that congregate in my backyard this time of year. I've never force fed birds before but I'm willing to learn on camera.

I just need a gimmick. Obviously the barefoot thing has already been done, albeit badly, so how about barefaced? The Barefaced Liar's Foie Gras Farm, and my catchphrase would be 'Gavage in. Gavage out,' since the foie gras process is called 'gavage." I think that's pretty neat and definitely worth a million Internet hits, making me the world's foremost foie gras influencer.

Jonah Works From Home

Despite being a morning person, I'm still irritated by Jeremy's cockcrow chirpiness. 'Let's make today a great day' he says every day; and it usually was until his arrival. 

Like a human-shaped locust swarm, Jeremy's appearance in the office blights everything. The switchboard jams; computers freeze up unexpectedly and the Internet fails; coffee suddenly goes cold, muffins disintegrate into inedible crumbs; and I haven't checked but I'm pretty certain our sales fall as well.

He is our equivalent of Coleridge's ancient mariner. God knows what occupational albatross he killed to bring down such misfortune on the company. Someone from the mailroom? A corporate consultant? The guy who fills the vending machine in the cafeteria?

'Let's make every day a great day.' Jeremy might as well be invoking an ancient curse for all the good this cliche does. It's actually a howl of neurotic paranoia in positive thinking clothes. Obviously Jeremy thinks it will magically come true if he repeats the mantra often enough. But then he immediately breaks the printer. 

Unfortunately our office is open plan, otherwise we could confine Jeremy to his cubicle. For his own protection, of course, before an exasperated colleague walls him up in the conference room or buries him alive beneath the reception desk. 

Recently, of course, we've found ourselves working from home because of Coronavirus. We can't blame Jeremy for a public health crisis, but it can't be coincidence that our virtual meeting software frequently cuts out when he is talking.

Rationalisation Springs Eternal

Spring cleaning started early this year: the cuckoo, the daffodil, and the All-Purpose Spray Disinfectant all appearing in mid-March. They usually make staggered entrances from the beginning of April through, in the case of detergent and scouring pads, as late as the end of July. Nevertheless, there I was, on my hands and knees, fighting the cobwebs and dust in the hallway closet on March 17th, St Patrick's Day. 

I suppose St. Patrick's Day is a propitious day to begin any type of cleaning, as he famously evicted all the snakes from Ireland, but his serpent-handling exploits seem a minor achievement compared to my heroic struggle of organizing and fumigating the hallway closet. Even HP Lovecraft would find difficulty describing the things that have crawled away to die in its corners; those unknown and unnameable forms that lurk in a closet's shadows defying categorization.

Originally, the hallway closet was where I kept my rain boots and winter coats, but it quickly devolved into a clothing graveyard where I bury things I never wear but can't bear to throw away. Mostly uncomfortable shoes that I failed to break-in and stylish but impracticable lightweight jackets, but also a variety of useless accessories: belts that became too big when I lost weight, itchy scarves, hats that make me look stupid, and an ancient leather satchel still full of the random junk that accumulates in bags. I hoped there might be some forgotten money stashed in the pockets and, indeed, I got lucky. Alas, it was only a nickel and two pennies.

Seven stinking cents, hardly the glittering bounty of a treasure hunter's dreams. There wasn't even an old packet of unopened tissues or a virgin notepad or anything that could be repurposed. Just the small change, a wad of crumpled receipts for purchases I wish I'd never made, an abandoned granola bar emerging stickily from the remains of its wrapper, several business cards for now defunct businesses I'd written their competitor's phone numbers on, a handheld calculator, and a medium-size metal key. Of course, finding a key could spark the start of an exciting adventure, except I immediately realized what this key unlocked. 

Wedged into the very back of the hallway closet was a safety deposit box. Bought with good intentions of keeping my important documents in, the box soon became merely a smaller version of the closet in which it resided. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there was yet another box inside that one containing more worthless ephemera; and so on ad infinitum down to a box no bigger than a thumbnail housing microscopic mementoes invisible to the naked eye. So much dross and dreck, so little spring cleaning time despite getting an early start.

This is why I believe my task is harder than St Patrick's. He chased a few snakes into the sea from the comfort of his monastic cell. Big deal. I need to collect my unwanted junk in garbage bags, stack it all in the back of my car, then personally drive it to sea. Who has the time for all that palaver these days?

I got up off my knees, giving the inside of the closet one last brief critical survey, pocketed my seven cents, then shut the door. Later, I'd take care of it later. There's a beautiful day outside, after all, don't waste such great weather. Surely spring cleaning can wait until the sky turns grey and overcast?

And besides, I might need all those old bits of papers for a papier-mache project, for example, should I feel so inspired, so it would be foolish to consign them to the trash without carefully thinking it through. Never discard today what you could need tomorrow. I'm sure I read that in some book of commonsense quotations. Excuse me while I go lay down on the couch for a moment and try to recall the author's name.

The Bridle Path Mystery

There is a dirt track called The Bridle Path near my childhood home. Once an equestrian route from countryside into town, it has become the domain of dog-walkers, recreational cycling clubs, dressing-gown and slipper clad wanderers from an adjacent lunatic asylum, and rural vandals whose hobby is apparently smashing crockery in the open air, specifically Blue Willow patten china. 

Judging by the regular appearance and sheer number of these tiny blue and white fragments appearing on the ground, I'd guess the vandals have easy access to an unlimited stockpile of entire Blue Willow dinner services. Could the vandals be disgruntled employees of a restaurant supply store? Or maybe they are violent partisans of the Royal Copenhagen pattern, driven to such desperate measures by the figurative nature of their Chinoise rival? Can the mystery ever be solved?

Let me take a little reconnaissance ride down the Bridle Path on my bike to see what I can see. Laying in that grassy verge beside the track I observe the shattered remains of a soup tureen, a gravy boat and four teacups; underneath this hedgerow are what's left of six plates and a milk jug; and just now I've ridden over the sharp edge of a broken bit of saucer and my bike has a puncture. So much for my amateur sleuthing, the hooligan masterminds have outwitted me once again.

Frankly, devoid of clues or leads, I doubt even Sherlock Holmes will find anything "elementary" about the Blue Willow case. Hercule Poirot's "little grey cells" are completely stumped. And disconsolate Inspector Maigret surrendered long ago, retiring to a quiet cafe to drown his failures in a glass of pastis. I'm only guessing, but a crime involving decorative crockery with an Oriental theme must surely call for the combined talents of Miss Marple and Charlie Chan. Now that would be a detective story worth reading.

Through A Glass, Virally

The street below my window resembles a Spring cover of the New Yorker illustrated by Jean-Jacques Sempe: the sun shines; the flowers bloom in pink and white, little fat figures go about their business, and an overstuffed oblong dog can't decide whether to run right or left. The cartoonist is in his pastel heaven and all is right with the world.

But, alas, it isn't, of course. A virulent virus stalks the land and we are forced to work from home or 'shelter in place' or practice some other form of self isolation. It's not quite the Black Death but it's certainly becoming the Grey Illness. Instead of gangs of self-flagellators roaming the countryside we have gangs of medical experts appearing on TV, often with contradictory advice. So all we can really know for sure is that we must wash our hands regularly, avoid close contact with people, and not to panic because trillions of stimulus dollars are being released into the economy. They also say don't hoard essential supplies but, being mindful of logistical failures of the past, I'm not entirely convinced on that score.

So I wonder what the street below my window will look like come early summer? A colorful, cute cartoon where life goes on as usual in all its sunlit glory? Or a piece of brown plain paper slowly disintegrating into the sidewalk? Frankly, I'll take anything by Charles Addams at this point.

Done And Dusted

Frank has cleared out his desk. After thirty years he leaves behind nothing but a carpet-thick layer of dust, ancient crumbs, numerous coffee stains, and a heavy snowfall of dandruff flakes: the detritus from which Frank and his increasingly obsolete career have long since become indistinguishable. Send in the clowns. And the Hazmat team.

The robots will come for us all in the end, he announced on his lugubrious farewell tour of the office, ignoring the obvious fact that eliminating his job barely required the services of a pocket calculator, never mind 'the robots' to whom an antediluvian factotum such as Frank would be beneath notice. 

His departure was euphemistically described as Early Retirement, much like euthanasia is politely known as putting someone to sleep. In truth, he was given a choice of leaving of his own accord or being fired within the month. Still, we all pretended to believe he'd be spending the rest of his days on a golf course rather than staggering desperately across the scrapheap.

What are you going to do with all your spare time? I asked him, knowing full well it would be divided between diligently but fruitlessly scouring the Help Wanted ads and bouts of heavy drinking. He told me he'd take a month or two off, maybe do a trip west, see a few people he hadn't seen for a while, then he'd come back, better than ever, and see where things stood. Whatever, he'd be fine, he claimed.

Things always have a way of working out, they say. I hope for Frank's sake that's true, even if the machinations of things are somewhat vague in his case. Meanwhile, the company custodians came to remove the desk and vacuum the area, so now even Frank's dust is gone.

His empty cubicle has become a beige Stonehenge of which future generations will ask 'What was this built for and why?' And, to be honest, I'm not sure I know the answer to that question myself anymore.

The Stars Stare Down

Having reached that easily exhausted age where my "rhythm of the night" is the same tempo as my rhythm of the day, best described as a sort of awkward Bossa-Nova, I put my dancing shoes away and seek more comfortable, arch-supported footwear, provided it has waxed and rounded braided laces and not the dreaded flat athletic style. 

And I would never ever, ever consider wearing sandals. God forbid my standards should fall so low despite the advancing years. The only excuse for a man wearing sandals, and it's a poor one at that, is when staggering somnambulantly around a hospital ward after being bed-ridden for at least six months. Or, and this excuse is also fairly thin, you are dining unexpectedly at a sushi restaurant and do not wish to appear rude.

The rhythm of men's sandals is a sound unsuitable for either day or night or any time at all for that matter. It is the unedifying rhythm of a single gong clang followed by an embarrassed silence; a rhythm that you cannot even tap your foot to; a rhythm that inspires nothing but immobility. In fact, a man wearing sandals does not deserve to possess feet at all.

I'm not quite sure how I arrived at such a draconian judgment in three short paragraphs. One minute I am merely bidding farewell to painting the town red and the next I am advocating guillotining the legs. Forget all that nonsense about awkward Bossa-Nova, I guess the goose step is really the perfect interpretation of the rhythm of my night: a blood-soaked moon illuminating a demented old man, albeit a demented old man in very presentable shoes. 

Presidents Day

This coming Monday is Presidents Day, or Washington's birthday (observed), which happily coincides with National Apathy Day; a day for reflecting on the sheer pointlessness of voting for Presidential candidates of any political persuasion except, perhaps, representatives of the Ruritanian Reunification Coalition. 

The current resident of the White House, a strangely tinted emanation of disreputable Goetian conjuration, does not appeal. The enjoyment of golf is always a deal-breaker for me, ditto the wearing of baseball caps with a suit, and double-ditto the application of self-tanning creme to the face. These may seem trivial reasons to you but they are hills of varying size upon which I am prepared to die. 

His potential "Democratic" challengers, meanwhile, pace back and forth upon the deck of the Ship of Fools, some posing as the figurehead, others barely clinging to the rigging, and quite a few already forced to walk the plank. Joe Biden is the Cap'n Ahab of this unseaworthy vessel, doggedly pursuing the great white whale of his own political legacy until he shipwrecks everyone.

So I shall spend my Presidents Day watching a Three Stooges marathon, reminding myself that in the binary world of American politics there are really only two stooges, neither of whom, alas, is the silent one.

The Enigma Machine

Receiving tax documents in the mail, I immediately sense Franz Kafka's shadow lurking in that dark M.C Escher alleyway where IRS agents perfect their notorious double-cross system known as Form 1040. 

My annual income for 2019, masquerading as W-2s and 1099s and the mysterious "capital gains," approaches the Berlin Wall dividing a healthy refund and the dark world of money owed. It makes underground network contact with various exemptions, deductions, and the treacherous Schedule C, hoping the auditors have their searchlights switched off and their guard dogs shackled. 

Encrypted messages, secret codes, impenetrable ciphers, and esoteric symbols: the sleight-of-hand stock-in-trade of the surreptitious number-cruncher at tax time. I sometimes think it might be appropriate to file my return in a dead letter drop, then hide in a safe house until I receive official clearance from the Feds.

I have nothing against paying my fair share of taxes, but I can't think why we allow the laws that govern that payment to be written by the combined efforts of Ceausescu's politburo and the Sphinx playing with a random number generator.

God knows it is easier to guess what song the sirens sang, what name Achilles assumed when he hid among women, or what Ruritanian strategy in the Balkans might have been than to figure out how much tax I should pay each year.

The Numbers Don't Lie

Raymond, exhibiting all the shortsighted impulsiveness of a lepidopterist who mistakes moth pupae for those of butterflies, has hired a new assistant. Her name is Sharon and her eyelashes are longer than her curriculum vitae; her lipstick redder than the red pen with which Raymond strikes through the names of the other, unprepossessing candidates. 'Sure, they have more experience," he explains. "But Sharon brings freshness and youthful pizazz and we can certainly use some of that around here. Plus she's really cute."

I can tell Raymond is already dreaming of Sharon dolled up like Marilyn Monroe, heavy breathing her way through "Happy Birthday Mr. CFO" when he turns sixty next year. He imagines she will order a cake decorated with innuendos in icing and organize a Viagra themed card. Such puerile displays of office flirtation are what Raymond's aging but still sophomoric mind means by 'youthful pizazz.'

He's never been married and I can't remember the last time he even dated anyone. I suppose he can be excused his peccadillos provided they don't affect the rest of us. Fortunately, he's more of a balding sloth than a silver fox, so there's probably not much for HR to worry about on that score. And anyway, the receptionist tells me Sharon called back this afternoon and rejected the job.

Apparently she got a better offer elsewhere or we just couldn't pay her enough to occupy a cubicle with Raymond all day. It seems our business can afford experience but not pizazz, for which I am truly grateful. Meanwhile, the sex pheromones visibly evaporate from Raymond's sweaty body as he receives the news, rising like the last wisps of pale smoke from a cigarette crushed in an ashtray. His attention slowly returns from its erotic interlude to the company's ledger books, from dollar bills stuffed in garter belts to invoices emailed to clients, not that there's many of them these days of course.

Lamentations in the Canteen

Throughout the day, the staff kitchen at work is cursed by so-called classic rock radio. The relentless sound of sledgehammered, unsubtle chord changes and melodious yelling pervade the air like the bad smell of somebody's stale tuna fish sandwich. Frankly, I would prefer to listen to just the buzz of the fluorescent lighting but apparently silence, although reportedly golden, isn't an option. God forbid we should find ourselves alone with our thoughts. There is enough existential angst to be found at our desks, enough silence to be heard on the other end of the telephone when calling our clients. 'We'll be right back after these messages,' the disc jockey says as if anyone might fear he and his horrible music were gone for good. Then the jingle-happy radio advertising begins, an insult added to injury in the canteen of a company that can barely afford classified ads in the Yellow Pages.

This morning, While My Guitar Gently Weeps was playing as the coffee pot was percolating. 'This one goes out to the calculator belonging to Bob in accounts,' I announced for my own amusement. 'Which is also in deep distress.' In fact, all the utilities and appliances in this office are more upset than George Harrison's instrument, many of them even wailing with despair and perhaps suicidal. This coffee pot, for instance, will surely soon shatter from the slave-driven misery of brewing bitter-tasting sludge each day. The microwave will explode with frustration after reheating one too many breakfast burritos. Only the radio will remain, obliviously broadcasting Queen and Led Zeppelin into the tear-stained ruins. But for the time being our business blows its nose and wipes its eyes, somehow manages a smile and staggers forward into another sales pitch.

From Greek God To Gray Geek

The only thing necessary for the triumph of back hair and blotchy skin is for middle-aged men to do nothing. I would apologize to Edmund Burke for the paraphrase but, well, just take a look at the old,  double-chinned windbag. He should have written it, or at least thought about it. I know I do, every day. For when I was younger, I looked like a George Platt Lynes image of Adonis: chiseled, toned, smooth, and symmetrical. Pert, even.

Oh, how Time has withered my body on the vine, brought the scourge of winter to my skin and deforestation to my scalp. Nowadays, instead of homoerotic Hollywood art photography, I resemble something by Diane Arbus that's gone wrong in the darkroom. 

My new year's resolution, therefore, is to be fitter and more mindful and ruthlessly efficient when it comes to my personal grooming regimen. Apparently such so-called manscaping requires not only constant vigilance and endless willpower but also special tools.

Behold the electric nose hair trimmer, the macho moisturizers, tiny pots of "essential" eye cream and enough particularized deodorizers to make Caliban smell like Oscar Wilde. There is even a long scimitar-shaped razor for removing unwanted tufts of dark air from beneath my shoulder blades and wherever else it has strayed. The danger, of course, is that I end up looking like a plucked turkey with inadequate stuffing. But better that, I suppose, than Bigfoot's puny brother and his associated odors.

New Years Vignette

My table provided a good view of the bar, formerly the serving hatch of a genteel Victorian home that was now the only restaurant within walking distance. Steaming piles of boiled vegetables and slabs of beef had once passed through this portal; now it was all craft cocktails, obscure varietals, and black lager although the architectural details and lighting remained the same. The shadowy figure drinking and the colors in the room reminded me of pulp novel cover art, so I quickly snapped a picture with my phone, as if I were some grizzled gumshoe tailing an errant husband meeting his mistress at the bar, a routine assignment suddenly turning tricky when a murderer concealed behind one of those fluted pillars shoots my subject in the head. Smoldering cigarette smoke twirls in the air and a smoking gun silently disappears into the black ether from whence it came. 

Then my cassoulet arrived, delivered by a Kohl-eyed waitress who belly-danced her way around the tables like she was auditioning for a Sultan, one hand holding the plate high above her head, the fingers of the other conducting whatever music was the soundtrack of her thoughts. Is there anything to do around here? I asked her. She shook her head and told me to just eat, drink, and be merry. I guess I'll have another one of these, then, I said, pointing at my empty wine glass. And can you bring me a new knife? Mine fell on the floor when I was taking a picture of the bar.

Advent Vent

Far from being "merry and bright," I often feel that Christmas is an ever-expanding black hole into which I am inexorably drawn by powerful calendrical gravity. It is not atheistic armies that wage the war on Christmas but Time. Behind every door on my advent calendar is an anxious man with a worried expression. He has too much to do and not enough hours in the day and there is a deadline of December 25th that cannot be missed. If only the festive season was a simple and straightforward as just showing up at some lowly cattle shed.

Only bringing a single gift each? The Three Kings of Orient had it easy if you ask me. And I cannot but conclude they put little thought into their offerings to the Christ child. Gold was obviously the ancient equivalent of a Target gift card, Frankincense a cheap department store aftershave, and Myrrh a vaguely festive-smelling lump of tallow picked-up last minute at Yankee Candle. But perhaps they were in a hurry, crossing all that desert on unreliable camels to make in time for the virgin birth. That star of wonder wasn't going to wait around while they shopped for the perfect present and selected just the right card.

And Christmas is on a Wednesday this year, the middle of the working week, also known as "Hump Day" to the commuting masses. Shepherds watched their flocks by night and I'll have to keep an eye on my email inbox in case there is a client crisis. Many people will be working Christmas Eve and even St Stephen's Day ... because, apparently, it doesn't make sense to take Wednesday and Thursday off and then come in again on Friday for the one day. Scrooge would be pleased.

The Winter Waltz

November's early snowfall, wispy, intermittent, and non-sticking, what the weatherman calls 'a wintry mix,' otherwise known as sleet. Imagine icy rain floating down to Earth wearing a white parachute of flakes; rain in a fur coat rubbing cold shoulders with rain in a polyester anorak, there is no social barrier in the late Autumnal air. 

It's a hint of Christmas Yet To Come, Yuletide directly ahead, the Compliments of the Season we are walking into, and therefore Jack Frost's nose-nipping reminder to rehearse jolliness instead of misery, even when your fingers and feet are frozen to the marrow and your blood feels like it's turned to sub-zero slush.

Easier said than done, of course. You've forgotten how itchy that scarf is, how cumbersome your heavy Duffel coat is, how this bobble hat barely offers protection against a slight breeze never mind skull-shattering wind chills. And why did you buy those fingerless gloves again?

Nevertheless, fa-la-la la la la is the tune we must aspire to dance to every day, no matter how frigid it is outside. So put on your dancing shoes (the waterproof ones you can wear with thick, woolen socks) and take your positions for the winter waltz.

Orchard Precautions

Per old wives' instructions, I eat an apple every day (usually a Gala) to keep the doctor away. Obviously, at a certain age, this becomes a mostly ineffective strategy and, although not exactly shoulder to shoulder with me on a daily basis, the doctor can still be found lurking at an indiscreet distance. "Bugger off," I want to yell. "Can't you see I'm eating an apple?" But the doctor merely laughs maniacally while whipping his stethoscope around his head like a cowboy with a lasso. So much for Mother Nature's medicine cabinet. At least eating apples is enjoyable, which can't be said for drinking those revolting and equally worthless kale smoothies that the New Wives' Tales suggest.

In my imagination, I saw doctors reacting to apples much as vampires react to garlic: a hiss and a snarl and then cowering away back into the shadows of the examination room. But I now know this was pure fantasy. I don't know, maybe I should be eating two apples every day? I could even mix it up: my regular Gala and a Golden Russet, or even 'go-green' with a Granny Smith. I could wash both apples down with a pint of cider, cold in the morning and hot-mulled at night. And since I'm upping the ante, why not add a nice slice of apple pie every evening to my regime? You are what you eat, they say, and I'm prepared to turn myself into a human orchard if it means I can avoid my annual check-up at the clinic.

Boo Hoo

According to the weather forecast, this year's Hallowe'en festivities will be haunted by the specter of relentless rain. Flickering flames in Jack O' Lanterns will surely be extinguished by the torrential downpour and just imagine all those damp phantoms and sodden wraiths floating around, dripping water all down the whispering gallery and leaving puddles beneath their portraits in the study. Spooks will need to hang their shrouds up to dry after stalking the streets and ghostly revenants should wipe their feet before crossing any thresholds. It's going to be a dank and swampy night for those returning from the grave; as if the dead don't smell bad enough already! 

I suppose we should feel sorry for them rather than afraid. After all, this is their one big night of the year and it will be a total washout. Skeletons must feel it the most, being bereft of protection against the elements. I mean, they are literally going to get soaked through. Dry as a bone? Not tonight, skull face. If they come trick or treating I'd be inclined to hand out umbrellas and sou'westers instead of candy or whatever it is the spirits actually want. Of course, they probably don't know themselves which is why they're always so gloomy and point portentously at nothing in particular. The rain is obviously only going to make their mood worse but I hope you have a happy Hallowe'en nonetheless.

Shopping Mallowe'en

Hallowe'en is here once again: a pumpkin-shaped cauldron crammed with monster masks and vampire dentures, luminescent skeletons and styrofoam tombstones, stage blood, too much chocolate, and enough fake cobweb string to weave a web so large it could ensnare an automobile. Free shipping via broomstick or expedited bat on all orders over a hundred bucks. As usual, this year my costume is an easy to assemble 'sexy' killjoy frown and grimace. 

The observance of All Hallows Eve, of course, was transformed into the modern holiday of Hallowe'en many years ago, so mine is an ancient gripe. But I often wonder when the consumerists will exploit currently under-commercialized observances like Ash Wednesday with collectible stickers for your forehead, palm leaf theme home decor, and confessional trading cards. Perhaps they already have and such items are sitting in a warehouse somewhere awaiting hype and promotion by Instagram influencers and a TV show tie-in. Then, just after New Year's Eve, we can complain about the local stores, "They've put the Lent stuff out already and it's not even St. Valentine's Day yet."

Crypto Currency

One of my pipe-dreams is to issue commemorative gold coins of myself. The obverse will feature my head in smug profile winking; the reverse an image of the Pied Piper with his rats. Around the coin are engraved the immortal words "This Coin's Value Is Frequently Debased," rendered in Latin and so small as to be unreadable without a microscope. On the other side is stamped the bad advice, "Make Important Decisions By Flipping." The coin will cost twenty bucks to special order, not including postage and packing, although I'll shave the gold down to a mere eight or nine bucks' worth before I actually release it into circulation Alas, I've yet to be involved in an event worth commemorating so the world of numismatics is short one very shiny but very fraudulent collectible.

Not that there would be much demand for my coin anyway. Most people do not carry cash around with them these days, preferring the convenience of plastic debit cards, and I'm sad to say this modern consumerist trend is true of me also. But I have a good reason for dispensing with dollar bills and small change. For a nominal fee, my bank allowed its customers to decorate their debit cards with a design of our own choosing. I suppose many family portraits or favorite works of art were sent to the bank's printers, but I uploaded an image of a plain blue background emblazoned with the caution "Are You Sure You Want To Buy This?" in bold yellow letters. If nothing else it's a conversation piece at cash registers and other points of purchase and makes me happy until I can finally mint my coin.

Distressing Tresses

One afternoon in October of 1987, on my first day of work at a real job, Sarah the receptionist went home in a flood of tears. It was nothing to do with me, thank God.

Apparently, there had been a mishap at a hairdressing salon during her lunch hour; either her hair color was now a displeasing shade or her permanent wave was too frizzy or perhaps not frizzy enough. The exact circumstances surrounding her distress were not explained to anyone, especially new members of staff like myself. Suffice it to say that Sarah could no longer answer the phone with such a disastrous hairstyle. An executive assistant sporting a low-maintenance pixie-cut took her place for the rest of the day.

As this was my first day of work, I callowly assumed all this commotion to be standard procedure in any place of business. Hence, should I require time off, I could simply bribe some complicit barber to give me a ridiculously lopsided pompadour. 'Go home and let that mess grow out,' I imagined my boss saying, 'and we'll see you back here in a month or so.'

But, alas, when I actually did get my hair highlighted in a foolish-looking eighties fashion, my boss forced me to remain at work suffering the taunts and mockery of my more conventionally coiffed colleagues. How I wished I'd settled for a simple military buzz cut instead of trying to be the office David Bowie. I took to wearing a baseball cap at my desk to deflect the wisecracks. 

Nor was I granted a leave of absence when I detected my first bald patch a few years later. By then, of course, I fully understood that Sarah going home because of an upsetting experience at the salon was the exception rather than the rule. Our workplace was no nurturing cradle of compassion when it came to matters of personal embarrassment. In fact, it was a dark, Satanic mill where the best you could expect was graphic images of your humiliation pinned to the company noticeboard for weeks. 

I saw Sarah again recently at my local pharmacy. She was buying a box of tissues and a bottle of hair dye. I had no doubt the two items were related: the tissues a precaution should the new hair color prove unattractive once again. And would she call-in sick to wherever she worked these days if that was the case? The leopard cannot change its spots despite the woman unwisely deciding to change her hair color yet again.

My own basket contained a month's supply of rejuvenating scalp tonic and a jar of Bay Rhum beard oil. I'm pretty sure Sarah squinted at me but couldn't put a name to the furry face beneath the gleaming pate. At any rate, she left the store without saying hello.

Economy Class

The airport concourse is a parade of travelers clad in flips flops, sweatpants, fleeces, and plushy neck pillows that call to mind a resort-wear version of an Elizabethan ruff; so much synthetic fabric that you might imagine the airplanes on the runway are borne aloft by static electricity.

At the departure gate, a young woman in full-body pink polyester is sprawled across three seats, encircled by her personal technology devices, a fast-food feast, and a mountain-range of carry-on luggage. She might as well be at home curled up on her own couch for all she cares about her surroundings. I could never feel comfortable being as comfortable as she so evidently is. In fact, I'm only that relaxed when asleep in my bed at night, and even then I'm probably having an anxiety dream. 

Later, in Row Z of the plane, I'm squashed in beside a pungent man who's obviously spent a five-hour layover in the airport bar. He's dressed in a suit and tie but smells like he bathed in a barrel of beer then toweled himself dry with a pack of Doritos. Clearly my lifetime ambition should have been to buy a private jet. Alas, it's too late for that now.

You Can't Win

Many years ago, I was a gung-ho type of guy. "Geronimo!" I would eagerly leap forward to grasp the nettle at all hours of the day or night. Perhaps even a "Banzai!" escaped my lips every now and again when in an especially uncompromising mood. Then one day I landed awkwardly and hurt my knee. It was the demanding specter middle-age suggesting Tarzan relinquish his jungle vine forthwith; that the Kamikaze should surrender his headband. 

So I took the specter's advice and became a take a step back sort of person. Well, if I'm being honest, really a two or three steps back after grumpily waving his cane at whatever is in front of him sort of person. I call it curmudgeonly caution. Never send to know about whom the cranky old man is muttering; he mutters about thee. 

I don't recall my former gung-ho approach to life getting me into trouble. Mine has always been a curious nature and even in my most impulsively hotheaded moments I was disinclined to shoot first and ask questions later, preferring a prior interrogation before the commencement of gun firing. Sure, my questions were considered peremptory and I usually would still shoot after asking them, but at least I took the opportunity to get to know, however briefly, the target I was shooting at.

I still enjoy asking questions. Alas, taking a step back when asking questions means it's harder for my respondent to hear me because I'm further away. And if I decide to shoot when I've finished my debriefing I'm undoubtedly going to miss because the target is harder to see. My eyesight isn't as good as it was, in addition to those other aforementioned physical frailties that confound my aim. Oh, how I wish I taken a step back before listening to that damn demanding specter of middle-age. But I was too gung-ho back then.

Status Bar

These days, old enough to often find myself forced to follow instructions from clients young enough to be my children, I sometimes think I'm suffering from the workplace equivalent of clinical senility.

Behold the youthful movers and shakers of business dressed in sneakers, skinny jeans and superhero t-shirts. Visiting their open-plan glass-fronted offices in my gray flannel suit and old fashioned power tie, I feel as though I might just as well be wandering aimlessly around a sanatorium corridor in my dressing-gown and slippers.

In meetings, they reserve a rocking chair for me. An executive assistant drapes a blanket over my knees as I demand the Powerpoint volume be increased. On video conference calls, my young colleagues wear Bluetooth enabled earbuds while I wave my ear trumpet in the air, squinting at the screen. Here I am, an old man in a fourth-quarter, being lectured to by a boy, waiting for budget updates. Did T. S. Eliot feel so obsolete when he was aging in his bank?

Back in my grey cubicle, this ancient wheezing desktop computer chugs along in imitation of the little engine that could, dragging a spreadsheet installation over a mountain of processing hardware. Then it stops. Just taking a breather or did I forget to replenish the printer paper? The only thing around here with less memory than my computer is me.

Meanwhile, the youngsters have all decamped to Starbucks with those new-fangled lightweight laptops, working from their home away from home. I clock off at five when they are relocating to that trendy bar across the street, there to finish assignments between martinis and restructure modules after ordering appetizers, still working into the wee hours.

Get a life, I want to tell them, and enjoy it while you still can. Alas, nobody listens to someone old enough to remember when people worked to live instead of living to work. Perhaps that's why I'm always passed over for promotion. "When will he retire?" I can hear them mutter when they think I am asleep.

Who Is The Working Stiff?

"Good morning," says the grubby, unkempt man pushing a corroded shopping cart strung with greasy bags and other bric-a-brac. It's the traditional greeting of one commuter to another but this guy is heading for my curbside recycling bin rather than any high-rise office. He's looking for deposit-stamped cans and bottles to redeem for money at a nearby collection center, or even a faraway collection center; I'm sure he'd tramp a great distance to claim a few coins, enough to buy whatever it is he requires to keep going.

"Good morning," says the grubby, unkempt man, and he says it so lightly; as if he's just another nine-to-fiver with Powerpoints to present, reports to prepare, deadlines to meet, and not some unfortunate rat who got left behind in the rat race. Indeed, he bends over my bin like an especially diligent clerk searching for an important folder in an overflowing filing cabinet, so intent on his task I'm surprised he's not wearing an old-fashioned accountant's green eyeshade. Mind you, he can't be very good at his job if it's taking him so long to find my two cans of beer and a single wine bottle nestling amid the loose paper and crushed cardboard box. Perhaps such a demonstration of inefficiency is why he found himself cast out into the street in the first place: a non-recyclable human rummaging through recyclable stuff. 

"Good morning," says the grubby, unkempt man to my neighbor striding towards his car, who merely glances back in the man's direction and grunts. And that is the grubby unkempt man's tragedy, of course: the desire to be seen and acknowledged, the effort taken to play even the smallest role in daily life, only to fail at being normal yet again and be dismissed by a grunt. Meanwhile, after four years of living side by side, my neighbor and I have never exchanged a greeting of any kind except to occasionally nod silently in each other's direction, so what exactly is normal? Chastened by this unhappy thought, I sheepishly walk back to my recycling bin and return the grubby, unkempt man's good morning salutation. But he's too engrossed in his task and I don't think he hears me.

Sandy Cove Nuptials And Their Discontents

Invited to a beach wedding, I'm told that male guests are requested to wear Hawaiian shirts, apparently a surfer dude's idea of black-tie. Personally, I'd prefer to attend both the ceremony and reception in a rubber wet suit with snorkel and flippers, but I don't want to ruin the happy couple's special day by looking like a police diver searching for the drowned body of Uncle Jim who will probably fall into the sea after one too many Mai Tais. So I guess Hawaiian shirt it will be, albeit the cheapest and plainest design available for purchase.

There is a reasonably acceptable specimen at my local department store, mostly solid blue with a single pineapple embroidered over the right chest. It's not exactly Hawaiian but it's Kon Tiki enough for me. Alas, no S sizes can be found on the rack, just M, L, XL, XXL, 2XXL, and one so huge it presumably doubles as an emergency canopy to shade your entire family from the tropical sun. This means sending the stooping, apathetic sales associate on a stockroom search for the size small I need.

But it turns out there's no need for such an expedition. The store doesn't sell small sizes in anything, the sales associate tells me with a smirk. Most men refuse to consider themselves as small or short, he explains, so they usually size up to at least size medium. It's as if they believe buying larger clothing will magically make them bigger men, no matter how ill-fitting and inelegant their actual reflection in the changing room mirror. Apparently, the tiny size tag sewn into a seam can transform you from Pipsqueak Pete into Superman. Welcome to the irrational gymnasium of the inadequate male mind. Apparently, everything Gloria Steinem says is true.

No wonder there is so much macho rage in the world if men can't even accept they're just a few inches shy of average height. I would describe them as knuckle draggers but since their hands have disappeared inside too-long shirt sleeves it's their oversized cuffs that are scraping the floor. The sales assistant wasn't at all apologetic about his inability to help me. In fact, he clearly thought me weird for not caring I was diminutive, miniature, pintsized, or whatever his favorite disparaging term for short people happened to be.

In the end, I ordered a similar shirt in my size from the Internet with zero human contact besides waiting for the mailman to deliver the package. Of course, I looked conspicuous at the wedding, neat and trim in my size small, discretely pineappled attire. My fellow guests billowed around the beach in voluminous and extravagantly patterned Hawaiian shirts almost hanging down to their knees. Any casual observer might assume they'd wandered into the annual pageant of some Polynesian appreciation society. Pacific burlesque staged on an Atlantic shore for puzzling reasons.

I was certainly puzzled by the Hawaiian motif: the aforementioned de rigueur shirts for men; the fruity rum signature cocktails; the enormous plastic palm tree that threatened to topple over at any moment and crush the flower girls; and, God forbid, the bridesmaids' fluorescent Hula girl costumes. Neither the bride nor groom had ever been west of Pennsylvania as far as I was aware. It was like a destination wedding in the wrong location. At least the happy couple seemed happy. That's what counts on these occasions, after all. 

Anastasia's Armoire And Its Discontents

The homeless man had draped himself across a shaded park bench before falling into a seemingly imperturbable stupor. His meagre possessions, stuffed in plastic carrier bags emblazoned with the logos of a consumer society from which he was excluded, were carefully arranged around his prostrate form like the makeshift crenellations of some nomadic gnome's foul-smelling fortress. God knows what these bags contained: a few itchy blankets perhaps; scavenged spare clothing; that day's harvest of bottles and cans; maybe even one or two relics of his former life. Nothing anyone else would ever care about. But what interested me was the silver and pink plastic bag nestling between the Nordstrom Rack and Target bags. It was from Anastasia's Armoire.

Anastasia's Armoire is what my friend Jane calls her 'alternative atelier,' where she sells bespoke gothic frocks and corsets to customers desirous of impersonating Dracula's Daughter. At least, that's the vision the Anastasia Armoire brand evokes in my mind. Jane would no doubt prefer a less campy point of reference for her creations, but I call them as I see them, despite the reproachful punches on the arm I get. Neither of us would expect, however, to see a Anastasia's Armoire boutique shopping bag recycled as an itinerant's traveling pack; a disintegrating carry-all for the collected works of a disintegrating life. 

Sure, it's really just a plastic shopping bag, but it's silver and pink and (considering Anastasia's Armoire's infrequent commissions) exceedingly rare. The sort of boutique shopping bag customers keep in their closets because it's too nice to throw away. It was definitely incongruous amongst the typical workaday shopping bags of box stores and retail chains, like a fairytale palace in the middle of a slum or a princess trapped in an ogre's dungeon. I even contemplated rescuing the poor thing from the greasy clutches of its abductor, surely a fate worse than death for any aristocrat, even one with reinforced handles and a flashy printed logo. I'd be doing Jane a favor if I did. She certainly wouldn't want her 'alternative atelier' known as the official bag supplier to the city's bums and bag ladies. 

But in the end of course I left the homeless man in possession of his prize. Carting around his few treasures in an Anastasia's Armoire boutique shopping bag was the closest he came to being someone who can afford a fantasy life, never mind just a plain old normal life. Whatever notions of upward mobility he once entertained became the downward spiraling anxiety of daily survival on the streets. So what was the homeless man dreaming of now while slept, I wondered, for he seemed happy enough in his slumbers. And I thought of Shakespeare's Caliban who upon waking cried to dream again. Dream on, then, homeless man on your bench, dream of pursuing Dracula's daughter through the Mall of America in search of her shopping bag-shaped coffin.

Is Anybody There?

In the summer of 1989, on a remarkably stormy day in early August, I attended my first an only seance. Spasms of thunder and lightning wracked the sky all afternoon with periods of torrential rain. An ideal atmosphere for paranormal activity but not great for walking from the nearest subway if you've forgotten your umbrella.

To make matters worse, it was absolutely freezing in the seance room. Apparently, the spirits of the dead demand their air conditioning be set on high, as if the grave isn't proverbially cold enough already. In fact, it was so cold in the seance room that I worried I might catch my death and join them on the Other Side before the first candle had been lit. 

The medium was named Madame Susan but introduced herself as plain Susan. I insisted on adding 'Madame' to feel as though I was getting my money's worth. The full arcane and esoteric effect, as it were. "Susan" didn't sound sufficiently eldritch or appropriately European enough as a name for a person disgorging ectoplasm and interrogating discarnate entities. 

Besides myself and Madame Susan, there were five other sitters, exclusively female, ranging in age from middle-age to elderly. They all regarded the lone male twentysomething suspiciously, convinced I was there purely to turn the lights on mid-session and dramatically expose paranormal fraud by dragging a sheet-wearing actor out from beneath the table.

And much as I would enjoy participating in such a spectacle, the truth was I hoped to hear from my recently deceased uncle Chip. When he was alive there was always talk that I would inherit his souvenir silver platter commemorating the 1855 unveiling of the Smutney Monument, a simple stone obelisk originally designed to honor the town's first mayor but which quickly became a notorious phallic pick-up and drop-off point for ladies of the night and their patrons.

Suffice it say, the platter was not found amongst uncle Chip's effects when the family was sorting through his possessions. Where could this coveted object be? Nobody knew and nobody cared. Be content with his Omega watch, I was told, it's very valuable and that stupid Smutney Monument platter really isn't as funny as you think it is. Which is why I was forced to resort to disturbing Uncle Chip's eternal sleep via the medium of a spirit medium. Go to the source, I decided, even if the source has been reduced to ashes and poured into the second-cheapest urn available.

Actually, I was surprised and somewhat annoyed that Uncle Chip's restless spirit had not tried to contact me already. Surely he would be doomed to haunt his own house until the Smutney Monument platter was united with its rightful recipient. His phantom could easily arise from a cold mist in the basement storage area, pointing portentously towards where the platter was concealed. Then Uncle Chip could return to playing in the fields of the Lord or however else he planned to spend eternity. It wasn't hard. 

Alas, it looked as though I was going to have to do all the leg work myself, including forking over sixty bucks for an hour with Madame Susan and her beldame acolytes. We sat in a circle and held hands while the lights were extinguished and Madame Susan summoned her spirit guide, whom she claimed was an ancient Cherokee called Singing Crow. To my ear, when his ponderous voice materialized in Madame Susan's throat, Singing Crow's vocal intonation seemed more reminiscent of a Belching Owl or a Hiccuping Parrot than a warrior wraith from the happy hunting grounds.

'There is a spirit named Alec who wishes to speak,' Singing Crow announced as solemnly as his ethereal croaking would allow. 'Does anyone here know an Alec?' 

'Alec was my brother,' the woman to my left answered, then proceeded to furnish the circle with a lengthy biography of Alec and an even lengthier description of Alec's final days. If Alec wanted to speak he was going to have a hard time getting a word in edgeways with his chatterbox sister. I wondered what Alec's message from the spirit realm was: 'Stop talking,' probably.

When Alec finally did get a chance to speak, I was reminded of Jacob Marley as performed by an adenoidal teenager in a high school production of A Christmas Carol. Alec confessed he'd been too keen on life's material rewards, neglecting his immortal soul and other intangibles. He didn't want his sister to make the same mistake. She replied by offering to itemize what threatened to be an exhaustive inventory of her New Age credentials until Singing Crow wisely cut her short.

Uncle Chip was the last spirit to speak. Very typical of him to keep people waiting. That's how I knew it really was really Uncle Chip, despite the voice issuing forth from Madame Susan sounding more like my Great Aunt Daphne choking on a mouthful of Hot Tamales. Also typical of him, he was feeling very sorry for himself. Apparently, his immortal soul was trapped in Limbo, or perhaps Purgatory, or just drifting around lost in the ether. He wasn't quite sure where he was, which was yet another standard Uncle Chip idiosyncrasy.

This anxious inability to define his own current location trumped any interest Uncle Chip might have in helping me find the Smutney Monument platter. Every time I broached the subject he selfishly ignored me, responding instead with more tedious observations about his equivocal existence in the limitless void.

'Susan grows weary and the curtain between this world and the next begins to close,' said Singing Crow with evident relief. 'There are profound secrets of the afterlife that can never be divulged,' he continued rather sanctimoniously. 'Including the whereabouts of certain silver platters of no importance, and so we must accept that much must remain occulted in the shifting shadows of the astral plane, especially if it is something as banal as a foolish souvenir that only frivolous young men care about.' Then his presence faded with a puff of ectoplasm and Madame Susan slowly stirred from her trance into wakefulness. 

The seance was over and I wasn't satisfied. Sure, I had seen incontrovertible proof of the existence of life after death but if Sunday School lessons are anything to go by I'd more or less taken that as a given anyway. So what was the point of all this sitting in a circle and holding hands clairvoyant business? What was the point of contacting a ghostly revenant if it couldn't even answer a simple question about missing silver platters? And why do ghostly revenants make the effort of crossing over from great beyond if they're only going to complain about their present circumstances? They could at least impart a smidgen of ancient wisdom and timeless truth to the still living, even if it's completely inscrutable or in the form of a Sphinx's riddle.

But no. It's moaning and groaning in the dark for an hour with a woman called Susan and her snooty Cherokee compere. Furthermore, I could easily have purchased my very own Smutney Monument souvenir silver platter using the money I'd wasted attending the seance to locate Uncle Chip's. And I'd still have a few bucks left over to buy a bottle of polish to give it a good clean.

Which is why I decided from that point forward I to let the dead bury the dead, as the saying goes. No longer would I seek to peer beyond the veil of death to divine the secrets of the angels, for I had finally learnt the meaning of The Ineffable: it's simply demiurge and man having a discussion but never listening to what the other is saying. So what's the point?

Summer Sales

Waiting in a boutique while women browse the blouses or choose between very similar looking shoes, I am slumped on a purple ottoman, conspicuously bored, listening to the scrape and clatter of clothes hangars on the sale rack as last season's dresses and skirts are summarily dismissed. So much for the life's work of hunchbacked child laborers.

We have been here for hours without end but there is always another corner of the store to explore. It's like traipsing around C. S. Lewis' wardrobe with price tags attached to the contents. When the last piece of fabric has been examined we will suddenly stumble out into snowy Narnia where the White Witch is modeling the latest in puffer jackets.

Casting a cold eye around this boutique, I see so many unwanted clothes. Nothing fits correctly anymore; there is too much branding; polyester is back; the pattern is irregular; the stitching is poor and the seams are not straight. The hymn sheet of the cheap and disposable is an anti-Hallelujah chorus of complaints. 

As with everything else in the world, it seems the center also cannot hold when it comes to fashion. A little black dress costs either a thousand dollars or sixty bucks, available in satin or polyester, designed for either Mata Hari or a nun. There is nothing in between so take your pick. Even a simple pair of sandals can be over-complicated nowadays: your choice of a single strap or some sort of Roman legionnaire's lattice-work legging thing that buckles around the thigh. 

Eventually, we leave the store having bought, typically, a new bag. The bag makers can always be counted upon to provide just enough of a difference from a bag already owned that the bag becomes a must-have. But I'm not bothered about that. I'm just happy to escape the purple ottoman and the automaton shop assistants with their FBI head-sets.

Casting of the Prunes

The frequent casting of condemnatory stones is my great failing. Not just the first sinner to cast such stones, I'm usually the last also, and I'll be searching for yet more stones to cast when all the other Pharisees have long gone home. Jesus would be disappointed but he must know my targets don't feel the pain of cast stones anymore. They don't notice the persistent hail of judgmental missiles bouncing harmlessly off their bodies. Their thick-skinned foreheads are impervious to being bloodied by rocks of criticism thrown by the likes of me.

Years ago, I remember a prominent politician's vociferous response to my impertinent application of a Mark Twain quotation to himself. Nowadays I doubt any congressperson would acknowledge my existence, never mind reply in kind. And I don't blame them. No sane person would voluntarily enter the maelstrom of brickbats being tossed back and forth by anonymous maniacs on Twitter, Facebook, or whatever cranky, frazzled area of the Internet they inhabit. I live on this blog, which is obviously the lowest form of opinion, the most decrepit corner of the web from which electronic stones are cast, so my pronouncements are the least noteworthy.

But I'm not bothered about that. What concerns me is losing all sense of whimsicality and just being bad-tempered. Scrolling down this page to previous posts from ye olde blog entries from bygone times, I detect traces of whimsy and inspired humor when my herd of brain cells grazed in left field. God forbid that picturesque meadow has become barren and brown, a blasted heath where only ineffectual stones are scattered, where the Mount of Olives, Ozymandias' antique land, and my personal Waterloo all merge into one unreadable map reference. Meanwhile, I'm casting this stone at myself, a large prune pit, and "ouch" that hurts.

A Brief Rant

No matter how incontrovertible the fact or indisputable the evidence, no matter how indivisible the number or how finite the sum, and especially no matter how plain the nose on the front of his face, that implacable, pigheaded egoist who thinks he knows better than consensus reality will always be with us. 

In conversation, he refers to himself as a contrarian and everyone else as "the sheeple." At our office, declaring his methods are superior to standard practice, he browbeats management into rerouting tried and tested workflows into his own convoluted and confusing system, which takes much longer to complete and creates extra tasks for all his colleagues.

What is the root cause of the stubborn egoist's self-perpetuating, misguided self-confidence? Time and time again he is proven wrong in everything he says and does. But the lesson is never learned. In fact, he dumps objective reality on its head once more and insists he was right all along, despite a Bible-size paper trail cataloging his errors and illustrating his ignorance. His is a profoundly illogical application of (black) magical thinking. He is Socrates in negative: the anti-Aristotle; Plato forever exiled to the darkest crevice of his inescapable cave.

If such an irritating person may be likened to a pain-in-the-ass, then he is a particularly persistent ache that has made its camp at the base of your spine and is striking out to all parts of the body. He will become a human migraine; the personification of chronic constipation; every agonizing affliction that manifests itself as a spasm or a twinge in your flesh and bones. And there is no remedy for the torment his presence brings.

Vive La Revolution

Today is July 4th in the post-Julian calendar that we hang from our office walls, usually illustrated with photographs of places we'd much rather be. It's a public holiday, obviously, but the grim ghost of work still haunts your BBQ, manifesting as a cold, damp spot near the grill, then clanking its chains around the punch bowl and walking clean through the volleyball net. Sometimes it appears as a screaming skull in the sky during the fireworks, or the headless horseman with his head under one arm and a spectral manila folder under the other, galloping alongside the holiday traffic. No matter how much beer you drink, we can't escape this revenant of business-requiring-urgent attention, arising from the clammy tomb of last week's conference call. Jacob Marley in a pin-stripe suit materializing as a text on your phone instead of on a doorknocker. The restless spirit of job insecurity doomed to walk the Earth forever in search of the life it lost in life.

Which is why I like to think of July 4th in terms of the Revolutionary French calendar, where today happens to be quintidi 15 Messidor in the year of the Republic CCXXVII, celebrating the chamois, by which I assume they mean the shaggy goat and not the car cleaning cloth. Such a datebook trick doesn't entirely exorcise the ghost of work, of course, but it does help a little to think of tomorrow as sextidi 16 Messidor, celebrating tobacco, rather than just another crappy work day. My technique is not unpatriotic, either, because where would we be without the revolutionary French? Probably still hosting tea parties to honor the Queen's birthday on June 8th, with scones instead of hot dogs and hamburgers.

Penny Farthing For Your Thoughts

Apparently ignorant of the principles of kinetic energy and rudimentary mechanics, many adults fail to ride a bicycle efficiently. They pedal furiously along level surfaces in low gear. Their legs revolving at rates ten times faster than the wheels of the bike are actually moving. I'm reminded of the whirlwind feet of cartoon characters scrambling in thin air when the ground beneath them suddenly disappears. If it's possible to careen in slow-motion, that's how these floundering cyclists propel themselves forward, and I'm forced to cross my fingers they don't crash land like Daffy Duck always does. 

Of course, metaphorically speaking, wobbling uncertainly down the busy road is how most of us move through our daily lives. How foolish and decrepit we must appear to those A-type personality high-achievers on the fast track to success. 'Eat my dust loser!' You can see it in their eyes as they rush past. They are the winners who take all, including your pension. Whatever happened to the Tortoise and the Hare? Well, these days the tortoise gets kicked to the sidelines as soon as the starting pistol cracks, disqualified by his own prudence and sagacity. Don't think, just do it. There's no time for circumspection. And so we run as fast as we can in whatever direction we're told, sweating and grunting, trying to keep up with the pack, some of us capable of going through the gears, others not.