While watering your downstairs neighbor’s plants you’ll find a photograph on one of his shelves of your downstairs neighbor with his arms around your shoulders. The memories will come flooding back. Your downstairs neighbor will come out of the closet where he was hiding.
“I thought you were on…
The Window Washer
Bucket of blue water,
Water on, wash, up, down, right, up, down, right.
Squeegee, left, right, down, left, right, down.
Spots, scrub, shine.
Look at the clean windows.
”I wish the boy was here,” he said aloud and settled himself against the rounded planks of the bow and felt the strength of the great fish through the line he held across his shoulders moving steadily toward whatever he had chosen.
When once, through my treachery, it had been necessary to him to make a choice, the old man thought.
His choice had been to stay in the deep dark water far out beyond all snares and traps and treacheries. My choice was to go there to find him beyond all people. Beyond all people in the world. Now we are joined together and have been since noon. And no one to help either one of us.
Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing I was born for. I must surely remember to eat the tuna after it gets light.
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, p. 50
“Why do you always have to be so cynical?”
“Because sometimes things come, good things, but there’s no future in them.”
“You’re a modern woman, Rach. Forget the wedding. Believe me, I’d do anything for some romance right now.”
“In the summer when the hands of a clock point to seven, it is a nice time to get up, but in winter the same time is of no value whatever. How much better is the sun! When he clears the pine tops and clings to the front porch, be it summer or winter, that is the sensible time to get up. That is a time when one’s hands do not quiver nor one’s belly quake with emptiness.” John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat, p. 154
“The word is a symbol and a delight which sucks up men and scenes, trees, plants, factories, and Pekinese. Then the Thing becomes the Word and back to Thing again, but warped and woven into a fantastic pattern.” John Steinbeck, Cannery Row, p. 14
The Stoner Floral Merchant
You are no doubt wondering what’s on the mind of the stoner floral merchant throughout his day.
When a petal falls to the floor, he ponders its flower’s angst. With the one-time appendage floating to the dirt and grime kept below, the flower must feel something, right? The separation between body and limb must be like that of a child from its mother—but this mother knows her child’s fate is doomed. The stoner can do so little; he grabs the petal and tears it up to put it out of its misery—that floor really is dirty.
When a droopy flower must be pulled away from its otherwise healthy peers, the merchant thinks himself an undertaker, not far from being the one who plucks from society the elderly who still function as normal humans do, who yet do not belong.
When he trims their ends and pulls their petals in an effort to “groom” them, do they scream? Or out of pleasure do they make an inaudible “Aahhhh,” causing the others to envy?
When he places them in fresh water, are they too cold? Is the salty solution too decadent, or is it like the first warm meal after being lost in a snowy wilderness and forced to eat tasteless berries and twigs?
Do they see themselves as cogs in a machine, made to conform, or as singular beings, flavored just slightly different from the others by the graces of God’s meticulous craftsmanship?
The stoner floral merchant experiences anxiety over their well-being, their self-esteem, because they are so damn beautiful, and yet like most humans are set aside as merely part of a whole, when they are the whole, and should think of themselves as such.
“Sunday is before Saturday.” –Backwards Man
“The roof is below the floor.” –Upside Down Man
“Backwards Man and Upside Down Man are always confused.” –Correct Man
my bike
i once walked behind a gentleman on his phone, and he said into it, “dude, i’m on campus and there’s a bike locked up, with stickers on it, and one says, ‘pray hard retard’…heh heh heh, i know, dude, right?… and the other one says, ‘keep abortion awesome’… Totally, man, college is somethin’ else!…” and it was my bike he was talking about, with those stickers on it, and i felt proud of myself and that something had happened there where my bike received praise and i therefore had too, but the man had no idea that he had given me that praise so directly.
when i bought the bike those stickers were already there
