Archive for July, 2007

When you are struggling to climb out of a very steep patch of gravel and hedges, narrowly wedged between two hillside houses, and you mutter to yourself, “This is just like my dreams, dammit, when there’s no way to the street without sneaking through a stranger’s hallway,” you can hope that, should you be discovered, the house’s occupant, a distracted older gentleman on his way to the kitchen, will be as oddly unconcerned by your intrusion as he generally is in your dreams.

Charles P. Freeman of Tunick, Me. Who are you?

Meanwhile, back at the office building, you find hollow plastic medallions on the floor in the lobby, and secret them away in your pocket without looking at them very closely. Later you discover they are identification objects for the cleaning staff. The magazine editors, however, are playing a game of mini-golf on a big plastic topographical map of the world, with three dimensional mountains and valleys. Rather, they are pretending to play. They place golf balls in the cups by hand. A spring mechanism pops the balls out again. Clever, no?

The dashing young yoga teacher
(You know who)
Gave her truck more traction
On a snow covered driveway
By pulling over her shoulder
On long canvas straps
Attached to the rear tires.

Well, just to let you know, the doctors will have to go on performing their arcane and impenetrable advanced procedures without the benefit of your explaining to all and sundry the breathtaking importance of what they’re up to. The bastards are all in bed with drug companies anyway.

The bank’s lobby and outer offices, darkened in the after hours, are occupied by a swarm of street people, clientele of a beautiful gypsy healer and seer who does business half reclining on an old Indian blanket in the shadows. Her eyes and earrings reflect the light from the street, and you sense her dignity and power, even though you rather disapprove of the disorder. You’re only there for the cash machine, after all, and the subversive scene makes the money seem suspect.

In the night’s other news, the helpful manager of the hardware store, bearded and barrel-chested, formerly the founder of a Los Angeles regional theater, takes a good look at the plastic connector you are trying to replace and guides you to a cul de sac constructed of blue styrofoam. He unceremoniously punches through it to reveal another world: a gigantic construction site giving onto a vista of beautiful fields and farms. In the valley below, dogs are herding sheep through a pasture at sunset. Wow. You also need light bulbs and AA batteries.

The croquet balls are splintered and broken;
No wonder they don’t roll straight.
The chief of reporters can’t hit them
And neither can you.
Then your mom pulls the car in
On top of the course
And the game is really over.
Your family is hosting a holiday party
At a rented VFW lodge,
Though just what holiday isn’t clear.
Many of the guests are unknown to you,
Young professionals straight from the office.
Their naïve good spirits are harmless.
You mean them no ill.
The event, however, is not going well.
Most of the invited, including your kin,
Are ignoring the art video
That you are projecting rather dimly
On the wall in the corner.
It involves a lot of flashing text
That you don’t quite get
Even though you wrote it yourself.
And the food from a third-rate caterer
Is just plain bad—gelatinous
Pasta salads and gallon jugs of plonk.
Somebody’s going out for beer
But threatens not to return.
Embarrassed, you keep your chin up.
It’s just a lousy party, after all,
And as long as that guy
Comes back with the suds
Everything’s going to be okay.

It’s always surprising
To see a familiar face
Beneath a Louis Quatorze wig,
Especially at the airport.
But there he is, the new man
In your sister’s life,
Happy to greet you,
As if there’s nothing special
About his new coiffure.
You shake hands and smile away.

Then it’s time to ante up for a few hands of five-card draw with poker-faced Professor Faber, eternally middle-aged in his brown fedora. He affects an air of street-wise nonchalance, but you know somewhere behind his penetrating eyes there’s a bookish kid from Queens who wonders if everybody else’s family is just as boring as his is. Faber gives nothing away, and allows his mere presence to signify acceptance of your dubious endeavors. And what might those be? Conquering your fear of heights by training to be a fighter pilot? Or mastering your fear of fighter pilots by … attaining altitude, shall we say.

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Ah, the pleasure of the black designer jeans you bought at the glass and chrome boutique in the hotel complex. They are rockstar cool. They have cleverly concealed convertible compartments that unbutton and unfold around your ankles into irregular combinations of rectangular forms that wing out like abstract sculptures you just happen to be wearing as you make your classy way down the street.

In fact, everything in your hotel suite is convertible, too. Nevermind the popcorn and potato chips scattered around the floor. The bureau opens up into a fireplace, the table turns into a couch, the couch is a hot tub. Quel luxe!

You find yourself in a sandstone geography
Of giant potato chips
Or a cavern beneath a backyard pool,
Where everything above ground
Is darkly reversed on the ceiling.
On the irregular bricks in front of the house
He is soon to leave
Greybeard Professor Katz, famously fit,
Poses in adho mukha svanasana.
You put your hand out
To catch snowflakes,
But your palm fills up
With green pumpkin seeds.
The bells on the wall
In the highschool hallway
Have faces like the man in the moon.

“The level of celerity
Was something to see.
The heights of hilarity
Were scaled by me.”
Those words went round and round
To an artless melody
Sung by a chorus
Of hearty baritones.

But what did they mean? Out on I-75, we drove right through the bus in front of us, our molecules meshing and releasing without disturbing either vehicle. Then the long wait in line with the other game show contestants. The boy and I have a stone, a nice rounded five-pounder, grey and violet in color, and a story about stones as instructional objects. When our on-camera moment arrives, however, Junior has vanished, and so has Our Stone. Heavy snow falls on the street as old burned out Broadway troupers clamor at the basement stage door. The floor manager gives me a crumbling piece of river rock that falls apart in my hands, then he impatiently cuts our bit from the show.

Underneath the studio is a prop and costume storage room that seems more like the musty basement apartment of a former actress, full of show-biz souvenirs. We wander around the jumbled collection of masks and swords, but keep returning to the gold lamé evening gown with matching gloves and palm-size ashtray. There are still a couple of half-smoked, lipsticked ciggies in there, in case her ghost needs a puff.

You walk home on a flat highway
Past hulking brown factory sheds and gray strip malls,
Looking for the familiar smokestacks
In your heart.
Here’s how they made that jump shot
Where you come from:
Fired it high in a mountainous arc
And dropped it into the net, no rim at all.

The boys get into a tussle,
As boys often do,
But when one of ‘em pulls a trigger,
You break up the brouhaha,
Say, That’s no way to play, son,
And send him on home.

The boy and I just walked out of the cage when the jailers left the door open. We cut across campus and kept going until we came to a little restaurant, a hole in the wall pizza place, and hoped nobody would recognize us. We knew the bullet-headed VP would be after us as soon as he got off the plane.