swing
early morning swim
The smell of damp newspaper on a muggy day in early August after a passing rainstorm, mixed with fresh coffee steaming off a white cup. My father sips as he silently turns the pages of The New York Times. He is sitting on a chaise lounge — metal with a slick vinyl cushion. He peers at me occasionally from behind the paper. In later years, over half-moon reading glasses.
In early years, a Kent king sits in a clam shell ashtray alive and smoking next to his stubbed-out brothers.
It is morning at the Sea Girt house and we are sitting together on the side porch, enveloped in the damp sea air. I am fiddling quietly with a GI Joe action figure, swiveling his arms and examining the detail of his black asasult rifle and heavy pack and equipment –held to his body by a plastic peg inserted into a hole in his back.
We are waiting for the rain to make up it’s mind. It will burn off and the sun will cook the sidewalk. We will grab salt corroded beach chairs and walk three blocks down the baking, stony sidewalks of New York Avenue. Or, the rain will persist and we will sit in a cold and crowded movie theater and have lunch in an equally crowded Andy’s Pizzeria. We will come home and I will watch CHiPs reruns until dinner.
Our suits are on — still damp from the previous day. We are prepared. He turns to me, “screw it. Let’s go.” And we go out, walking toward the ocean with our towels thrown over our shoulders. It is still drizzling, the drops making rings in sidewalk puddles.
I am in barefeet and I pause to float one foot in the clear warm water of a puddle.
We step across the boardwalk gingerly to avoid splinters and down the steps past the badge checker setting up her signboard. She’s written, “AM showers. High tide: 10:38 AM”
fishing
workspaces
a short vacation
The robin’s egg blue Thunderbird is pulled over to the shoulder. Hazards flashing. Check engine light steady.
The driver seat is reclined. The shoulder belt hovers just above her face. She clicks the buckle and it snaps out of view. The dashboard clock — self-consciously analog to match the height-of-retro car — shows 20 minutes to get to the interview. With luck, she would have only been five minutes late.
To her left, the traffic is stacking up on the toll road. On her right, a towering concrete sound barrier fails to shield the brick McMansions from noise, dust and occasional carnage of the highway.
The phone sits uncharged in the passenger seat — useless plastic and liquid crystal.
This was her last dash — a desperate sprint — put forward on short notice and destined to fail.
But now the kids are in school and she’s not expected home for hours. There she sits, enjoying a cigarette, sipping hot coffee and listening to the pop philosophy and canned commercials of the morning show.
She watches the world stand still.
(photo: eazy, used under a creative commons license)
after the rain
and everything is…
the companionship of the cat and the mouse
(From the Brothers Grimm)
A cat and mouse were married
And “set up a common household.”
Winter was approaching
And the loving cat knew his fragile wife
Would not survive the season.
The couple purchased a jar of fat
And placed it behind the alter of a church;
Sealed and tucked in the corner
With the unreached dust and cobwebs.
Embracing, they looked upon their store with hope.
A month passed and the cat felt an urge for the fat.
Feigning a christening he left his wife and
Licked the slick skin off the fat from the jar.
Drunk with satisfaction, he strolled the rooftops of the city,
“Contemplating his opportunities.”
Twice the cat repeated his sin until the fat was gone.
All the while, the mouse diligently kept house, becoming thin and frail.
Winter set in and her ribs began to show.
Her fingers were raw — cut and bleeding from chores.
The mouse begged her husband to allow her to dip into the fat.
He replied:
“You’ll enjoy the taste just as much
If you stick your dainty tongue out the window.”
One night, after the cat had fallen asleep from hard drinking
The mouse gnawed on a sunflower husk.
Feeling tired and weak
She ventured out and discovered the empty jar.
She wept bitterly.
Returning home she roused her husband with her sobbing.
“You ate it all up when you went to be a godfather.”
This was all she could muster and she repeated it.
It was all she could say, but it was enough.
And in an instant her husband leapt up and devoured her.
“You see, that is the way of the world.”
(Photo: Eric Brandt Images, used under a Creative Commons License)
an old couple walks into a sandwich shop
They have been together for a long time. You can see the age in their faces. The black mask around her eyes and nose is flecked with white. The coat is a bit worn. She walks with a perceptible limp. Her tail appears to have been broken and not set quite right.
The leather handle he holds her with — coming straight up from her back — is worn smooth and shiny black.
For him, it is the lines in the face, the sagging eyelids (perhaps exacerbated by his condition), the wiry gray hair and the prominent stoop.
For both it is the teeth and gums — yellowed, red and twisted.
They weave through the spaces like extensions of each other. Navigating the tables and patrons behind the brisk hostess. There is no offer of help. Help and pity are so clearly unnecessary.
They are not particularly kind. Both can be ornery. Both are combative. Both carry near permanent scowls. But the patrons smile at them any way. They project their wishes onto this old couple, making them move through life with with dignity and grace. A mild miracle in a hard world.
As she slips under the table, arranging herself over his feet in one and two turns, laying her head against the table leg, reality approximates the projection.
Eventually, one half of the couple will go. The other may soon follow, unable to bear a life without that loyalty.
Perhaps he will move on. Perhaps he will find a frisky new mate to care for him in his remaining days. A healthy blonde who will wag her tail and strut confidently through the sandwich shop, sharing sideways glances with the patrons. She will sit with a straight back, poised and attentive.
What will the patrons think on that day? Will they think she is unseemly? Or a kind girl escorting him through the final chapter?
In the end, will they simply glance at this new couple moving by, shrug and return to their tuna fish sandwiches?
(Image by Duane Romanell used under a Creative Commons license.)
washington dc metro
We are inconvenienced. We stand, jumbled on the platform, flicking our watches, fiddling with our iPods and reading our free dailies, distracted by our annoyance.
We trade pissed off glances and jockey for position — where we think the doors will be — criticizing each other under our breath for doing the same.
There is no information. The LCD is blank except for a single word: “train” and a scrolling announcement to expect delays. There is an occasional announcement referencing an incident down the line.
We are inconvenienced. We have places to go, children to pick up, dinners to order, films to rent, dogs that chew the furniture if they are left to long. Walls to be painted. Perhaps it’s our night to have sex. Our impatience is palpable.
Then, the red caution lights blink signaling an approaching train. It rushes through the shoot — empty, lights on. Remarkably it stops instead of pushing through with two quick taps of the horn.
We crowd into the cold bright cars falling into the pale orange seats like they were sofas on Christmas morning. We will make our appointments.
At McPherson Square, body parts are being placed into a heavy plastic bag. Yellow tape crisscrosses from the platform wall to the train like streamers.
Uniformed metro police mill around rubbing their hands over the tops of their heads. “It happens,” they say, “two, three times a year. But you never expect it.”
At the end of the platform, a dazed operator sits on a concrete bench explaining what he saw before he could stop the train. He is a big man, but there are tears in his eyes.
Investigators pick their way through the track well, shining flashlights under and around the train wheels.
Somewhere a child waits to be picked up, dinner is not ordered, a film sits on top the television, a nervous dog begins to gnaw on the sofa leg. The wall will never be painted.
Somewhere a woman daydreams of taking her husband to bed and wonders why the trains are so far behind.
(photo by Elle Ko used courtesy of a creative commons license)
Iphone photo: Spinning plates
