American Fez

Audubon's Outcasts

The city birds seem distracted these days, no longer chirping lively messages to one another but staring apathetically into the middle distance from opposite ends of a leafless branch, crapping indiscriminately on whatever passes by below.

Late risers who can catch no worms, these birds forage for food in trash cans instead, becoming obese from a diet of greasy human detritus, unable to fly south because they are too fat.

It's mostly the pigeons, of course, the avian equivalent of street corner delinquents demanding your small change and cigarettes. I wouldn't be surprised to see a pigeon sporting a tattoo on its breast or wearing ripped up fishnet stockings with leather wings, a switchblade stuck in its claw. 

And above is the black-feathered Rebel Without A Cause of that pigeon underworld, hanging tough after drag racing cardinals and blue jays on a track in the sky. I thought he might grab my phone with his claw but he was probably too doped up to care.

The Triumph of Le Corbusier

On our street of many-gabled Victorian homes, real estate developers are building several Lego-looking domiciles. Flat-roofed, angular blocks of plasticated timber more suited to new fangled Silicon Valley than quaint New England. And this tech-bro curb appeal is no doubt the reason for their incongruous architecture, clearly designed to accommodate rootless individuals instead of families. After all, who else can afford such characterless "machines for living" except the lead programmer for Prometheus Data Solutions with his lucrative stock options? 

Standing on the corner by the redundant old blue mailbox, I glance up the road at these out-of-place oblongs being wedged into a row of curlicues. The lovely old kinks of our neighborhood are getting ironed out as the street gets streamlined and decluttered. That empty plot which was once a two-story house will soon be an interactive loft-style duplex featuring fully networked appliances. Meanwhile, the Wilsons at number 38 have been replaced by an anonymous hacker in Unit 2A, who's hoping to move to the planet Mars whenever Elon Musk provides the opportunity. He is sleeping in a crash pad now but dreaming of a landing pad in the stars.

In fact, all the new arrivals around here seem like they're practicing for years spent in suspended animation. I only ever see them when they're picking up packages and food deliveries from their porches: sweat pants, hoodies, flip flops and blue, computer screen tans. Are they even flesh and blood or just virtual reality simulations of people next door? Where have the actual neighbors in my neighborhood gone? I'm suddenly a stranger in my own backyard surrounded by human machines hiding out in machines for living. "Be seeing you," as the Prisoner said.

The Loneliness of the Lost Glove

Although encasing sweaty and often unwashed hands can be no paradise, a pair of gloves, like Adam and Eve, is made to be together. You can't imagine a misanthropic glove wanting so-called 'alone time' or sailing single-handedly around the globe. A glove needs to be half of a happy couple or it has no purpose, unless some joker balances it on his head while impersonating a chicken. And being condemned to life as an ad-hoc chicken costume is a fate worse than the garbage dump for any surviving five fingers of a once proud Christmas present. 

I came across such a solitary glove cowering on the sidewalk yesterday afternoon, left behind in unfamiliar and hostile territory, having fallen unnoticed from its owner's coat pocket as they ran down the street to catch the bus at the corner. Picking the glove up, I gently laid it on top of a nearby mailbox in case its owner should return in search of their lost property. For surely anyone suddenly discovering themselves in possession of only one glove wishes to reunite such a bereft woolen mitt with its absent partner as soon as possible? I would. But then I'm apparently one of those sentimental fools who secretly believes inanimate objects are endowed with human feelings. I'd be frantically retracing my steps while reassuring my remaining glove it would be reunited with its other half before the sky grew dark.

Unfortunately, the lost glove was still unclaimed when I passed the mailbox this morning, its knitted fabric frostbitten by an overnight cold front and the day's forecast predicted freezing rain. Soon the glove would be too weatherbeaten to be of much use to anyone except a one-armed scarecrow. Honestly, if I knew its owner's address and name I'd stick a first class stamp on the palm and send the glove back home in style. Meanwhile, I can only hope the callous, careless owner of the glove is punished like the three little kittens who lost their mittens and gets no pie.

Stepping Out Into 2023

If, as good old Polonius said, 'apparel oft proclaims the man,' what personality traits are betrayed by the clothes we own but choose not to wear? For example, my chest of drawers is full of fancy cashmere dress socks that have never experienced the indignity of being pulled on to my feet. These are the socks of princes. Beautiful specimens of the hosier's art woven in luxurious shades of grey and tan that are simply too nice to suffer such a hideous and undeserved fate.

I don't even dare separate the individual socks apart from their lush, crinkly packaging. They still reside in the elegant drawstring tote bag from the store, ceremoniously placed inside by the shop assistant as if they were priceless diamonds. The sort of majestic socks that should only be laundered in asses milk by sensuous Egyptian handmaidens; masterpiece socks you might rush into a burning building to save from the philistine flames. Meanwhile, in the drawer below, down-at-heel cotton socks bunched up in balls slowly smolder with resentment.

Life isn't fair, especially if you're a pair of cotton socks. And in fact I've begun to feel sorry for them. Perhaps, I think, it is time for the cotton socks to un-ball themselves and rise unfettered from their servitude to overthrow the cashmere sock monarchy. Yes, maybe the fancy cashmere socks should do some work for a change, see how they like being stuffed into size nine clodhoppers and frogmarched around town; being tossed unceremoniously into the laundry hamper, washed on warm and cold rinsed then power dried with my underwear and towels. 

And I did briefly consider wearing a par of my beautiful cashmere socks on January 1st: a hedonistic resolution to start 2023 as I meant to go on, in mindless extravagance and high style. But I faltered at the crucial moment. Like an unworthy questing knight denied a vision of the Holy Grail, I lacked the courage and purity of heart to break the cashmere sock drawer's sacred seal and reveal the treasures within. So I cravenly snatched a pair of my old comfortable workhorse cotton socks instead, striding into the New Year with all the panache of a couch potato accidentally kicking an empty chip bowl across the carpet.

But then New Years Day is a holiday, after all; a day more suited to lounging around in fleece lined slippers and flannel pajamas than cashmere socks, opera pumps and a tuxedo. I had no place to go, nobody to impress, no shoe-removing function at the Japanese embassy to attend. So why soil a pair of perfectly good, not mention very expensive, cashmere socks for no good reason? Their time will come, I'm sure. The occasion will surely arise that calls for feet sheathed in lustrous fibers. I'm just hoping I'm invited to such an event before it turns out to be my own funeral.