Buying Seersucker

My wife, my brother-in-law, and I were at the mall over the weekend, and ran across a rack of seersucker suit coats. They were that sort of white-and-almost-black-stripe pattern, with the stripes so numerous and narrow that it creates a dizzying optical illusion. Having not moved all summer, they were priced to vanish at approximately $7 each (the original price tag, if it is to be believed, reads $140).

Well... it's not something I would normally wear, unless I were intent upon being mistaken for Don Johnson. However, it did seem just right for a costume piece--I've decided that to emcee my annual scavenger hunt* I should don ye olde garb of a cheesey gameshow host, complete with mini-microphone and helmet hair. Let's make a deal, you know?

So I returned to the department store this evening, selected from the five remaining jackets one that fit me (approximately), making sure to share with the clerk that I would not be wearing this to the club, no siree, this was for a costume. A costume, you got that? However, when the clerk rang up this little beauty we discovered that it was not on sale for about $7.

It had been placed on "ludicrous clearance" (my term, not theirs) for the laughter-inducing grand total of $2.57! And because the planets had aligned just-so, I happened to have $3 cash in my wallet.

I am now the owner of one loud seersucker jacket, and I'm sorely tempted to go back and pick up the others for my best friends, for no other reason than to see how far this joke can go.


*Sorry, the scavenger hunt is just for family and those few people to whom I've sworn a blood-oath.

Hip to the Bean

I have become a coffee drinker. There was no clear line that I crossed, no seductive espresso experience in an alleyway with a lighter and a silver spoon. It started with a cup here, a cup there, a little social drinking. At family gatherings when the question was asked "Does anybody want coffee?" I suddenly found myself with something to say. Peer pressure, obviously. Then I began working in an office, one that provided coffee to its employees in the breakroom, free of charge, and some mornings I just needed a warm drink with a little jolt of caffeine. Now, it's merely the jolt of caffeine I'm after (though not to be unfair to the coffee, the flavor and warmth are certainly attractive features, however it takes two sugars and a lot of cream to make it palatable--a practice my father would shake his head at, having admonished me in my youth that I should "learn to drink it black"). Now I think of Harvey Keitel's suave and indelible character from Pulp Fiction, who could take his coffee with "lots of cream, lots of sugar" and no one would dare question his mettle.

Note to all--the Chicory Cafe does a sinfully delicious cafe mocha. It's like cheating, hardly coffee at all...

Of Tattoos and Cryptozoologists

My voice cracked three times tonight as I interjected my meager commentary among the conversations of the writer's guild. Maybe they didn't notice--I certainly didn't say aloud, "bah! I sound like a thirteen-year-old!" Of course, Charmi is probably reading this now, smirking a much-deserved smirk. They were all wonderful people to meet and I'm glad I decided to attend. At their urging I'm reprinting, here, some of the poetry I brought with me to the meeting. For the non-poetry-enthusiasts reading this (you know who you are, my friends) I promise this will not become "verse central" as my Livejournal (which I'm almost certain you don't visit) has become. No, indeed, I intend to put as much prose here as I can squeeze out of my thick skull. In the meantime...


Notes From The Hospital Room

I.

We are running in new circles
Alien to the spirals and circuits of the last century
Which still keep time for us
Yet familiar as Shakespeare, that old horse
Standing by to draw the fire engine
Should we all catch Hell.

II.

A coin is a coin is a coin
Flipping, once minted and worn through passage is
No less worth the exchange
No longer bitten as proof
So we take in trade these furlongs
These fathoms and miles in the patterned
Grain of body hair, the folds of skin
And brain
Folding and unfolding
A time into a time, into now
Into the moment I understand everything
Has come before, and I am circulated.

III.

The spell is the greatest human invention
Its breaking our grip on the inevitable
But when it takes us the end does not matter
We have left our astounding
Ripples in the polished stone.
In a spell I pour out a torrent of words
And when it breaks, a torrent of words
Soaks the hems of the women's skirts
As they come and go.



[Before you know it]

Before you know it
You have lost the luxury of trying
Something new
Without breaking the whole
Spine supporting everything you count
As your life
And each fresh unbroken face
Peeks and smiles at you from the tapestry
Robing the doorway
You cannot pass
The complex embroidery of truce
Beyond which glimpsed
Young beauty guides a garment down
The concourse of the perfect calf
And tucks something behind one ear
Or beckons, perhaps.

This Circus

Many walk the tightrope, and hope there hides a net somewhere,
miles below, resting under the fog. Others expect nothing more
than an end, and walk without care for the crash.

Yet both of these acrobats, in the absence of balance,
in the face of the fall, find their first instinct
is to clutch at the rope. They reach, unthinking.

That tells me something
about the nature of existence. Our bodies know:
It is worth the stay.
The end of the show will always be there another day.

New Casablanca

Time passes because we need it to pass. If any one of us could be content to remain exactly and perfectly the same forever, Time would stop like a lake freezing overnight. No human being, even the most sedentary among us, remains precisely identical to who they are. We are ourselves for years, then one day our eyes open again, and we see that it was an illusion--who we are stands miles away holding up one last signal light, as if waiting for a plane to land. And the moment we realize this--that who we are now resides like a statue on the horizon--we begin to call it Who We Were and resist the urge to trek back. This is difficult, because the statues of our past gain mass with every passing second, and the gravity they exert cannot be ignored; you would sooner slip away from Jupiter's bed at dawn. High above, winking in the cold, dark morning sky, serene planes with warmly-lit cabins dangle the possible tomorrows within reach.