American Fez

A Change Of Scenery

I was gazing out of the window when the window briefly blinked. I think, maybe, it has grown tired of the view. 

And who can blame the poor window? Nothing to look at all day except a narrow city street with those anonymous neighbors across the way. Even the old elm tree standing on the sidewalk was decapitated and carted off last year. Only a shadeless stump remains.

Perhaps I should switch the glass panes around from front of house to back and vice versa. New vistas for all my windows. Then the blinking pane could spend a decade or two observing the rear alleyway instead of that all too familiar street it apparently finds so dull.

Although, I must admit, not much happens in the alleyway. Just me taking out the garbage and recycling every Wednesday morning and the odd rat scampering from nook to cranny after dark. In fact, the window overlooking the alley is probably more bored out of its mind than the window facing the street. I guess the grass is always greener, eh? Or, in this case, the asphalt always grayer.

I wonder how much it would cost to have the whole house uprooted from its foundations and transported to a sunny spot beside the beach. Of course, the alleyway window would get the ocean view and the front window stuck with the dune flanked shore road. Still, it's a nice change of scenery for all concerned.

Huh, did the window just blink again? Or was that possibly a twinkle?

The Attire of Attrition

I'm no clothes horse, more of a clothes donkey to be honest, but I do try to take pride in my personal appearance. Alas, I'm usually dissatisfied whenever I study my reflection in a full-length mirror. I wanted to look debonair but this would-be Beau Brummell turns out to be Bow-legged. In fact, what I thought was a sleek and smart parade of fashionable masculinity is actually just an unappealing heap of disheveled deadbeat. 

The proportions are all wrong somehow. Time to summon my inner quick-change artist. I slip on a different shirt, swap out that sweater, kick off those stripy socks, pull on other pants, thread another belt around my waist and do my best to hide everything beneath a dark blue blazer. The mirror still denounces me as the absolute opposite of the fairest of them all. So what if I roll these sleeves up and tuck the shirt tails in tighter, unbutton a second or third button, taper those trousers, shorten the hem on everything and switch the pattern from polka dots to plaid or perhaps just plain?

But nothing I do streamlines my silhouette to an acceptable degree. I don't know. They are all conventional store-bought clothes in my correct size so why do I seem to be wearing clown shoes, jodhpurs, and an off-the-shoulder blouse? That might be fine for the nine-to-five in an Oriental harem but I don't think it's appropriate as business casual in the city. Nevertheless, I have to leave now or else I'll be late for work.

Of course, I'd easily still win the Best Dressed Award at my office, despite looking like Sinbad the Sailor after six years lost at sea. After all, most of my colleagues resemble vagrants who've just crawled out of a bed of nails and through a charitable clothing distribution center before arriving at their desks. Such are the disgraceful sartorial standards of the modern workplace that even a slipshod chap like me can be Cary Grant compared to his slovenly associates.

Personal Myth

Stories from the ancient myths can sometimes offer interesting and instructive reflections of our modern lives. Of course, we never actually struggle though the labors of Hercules or welcome literal Trojan Horses into our homes but I for one do remember Mrs Hargreaves, a high school teacher, who with the simple addition of a few snakes to the crown of her head would have made a passable Medusa.

Which makes me wonder, had I found myself on the wrong side of Mrs Hargreaves, what kind of stone I might have been turned into. Tough and craggy granite? An elegant marble? Perhaps a sun-kissed sandstone? Alas, I probably would just be a pillar of plain crumbly chalk. The sedimentary equivalent of your average, awkward neighborhood white kid.

Although Mrs Hargreaves' head was not adorned with snarling and spitting snakes (at least none visible to the naked eye), I nevertheless always took the precaution of never looking directly at her. This wasn't easy because Mrs Hargreaves was the sort of teacher who enjoyed frequent and usually confrontational consultations with her students, especially me.

'What are you looking at, boy?' She would scream into my face during a heavyweight title examination of my poor grammar and spelling. Obviously I couldn't reply 'Not you Gorgon that's for sure,' so I would be forced to admit to some random object of my attention. 'The blackboard' was a common response; 'The world map on the wall' was another; and once, when I was very desperate, 'Samantha Noble's hair.'

If Mrs Hargreaves played the role of Medusa in my personal myth, and I clearly Perseus, then Samantha Noble had a good claim to be a teenage Andromeda (although it only required escorting her to the cinema a few times, not fighting and killing a ravenous sea monster, to make her mine). Unfortunately she later turned out to be more of a Nemesis than an Andromeda, they always do, but that's another story. 

The Changing Light At Burnt Norton

Here is an idea for a contemporary hit TV show: Father Marple, a religio-transvestite stigmatic spinster who solves crime conundrums while dressed as a priest. Nicknamed "Her Holiness" by the bumbling local police inspector, Father Marple flounces around the pretty yet blood-soaked village of Chesterton wearing a pink cassock and high heels, dispensing justice and absolution and selling the occasional indulgence to the gullible. Episode One could be called The Razor-Sharp Rosary.

Meanwhile, there is a fancy cheese shop not far from my house, staffed by snooty gourmands in white smocks and Dutch-boy caps. Here they will correct your pronunciation of 'gouda' ("howda" more or less) then wince if you can't tell the difference between mozzarella and burrata; and you stand in line behind Bleuchâtel bewitched customers with their noses pressed their against the glass presentation case like suction cups, waiting patiently for the cheesemonger to coax them into making a decision. Personally I just want whatever goes well with the red wine that was on sale at the liquor store. The cheesemonger usually suggests manchego or the aforementioned gouda, which I could pick for myself, so I don't know why I always ask his opinion. It's possible that, despite his condescending air of superior connoisseurship, he doesn't actually know much more than me.

And so I sit at my desk with discount red wine and the same old cheese, inventing Father Marple and the case of the Razor Sharp Rosary. A poet, noted for writing very long poems, has been found brutally murdered in a country house, garroted by a length of rosary with beads sharpened to a fine point. The only witnesses are two fellow poets, TS Eliot and Robert Merrill, but the bumbling local police inspector can't understand a word they are saying because he is unfamiliar with their many classical allusions. Only Father Marple has the wit to find the culprit before they strike again. But forensics have just discovered that the murder weapon belongs to Father Brown herself. Just who is trying to frame the religio-transvestite stigmatic spinster?