Re: Strawberry Sensualities
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Hikari
Aug 26, 2010, 10:31:27 PM8/26/10
to Original Fiction
Egg salad? I was sure it was gonna be strawberries in that bag! But
I see you worked "Strawberry" into the ending there.
Well, a fine first effort for our literary salon! Very vivid domestic
detail--I can see that apartment in my mind's eye. A friend of mine
is living in a similar 'pad' right now, though minus the whimsical
bathroom and the lovely blue rug. But thanks to her apartment I
didn't have to wonder what a Murphy bed is.
Your story is emotionally understated and yet with a real-life
versimilitude about it. Something about the precise imagery with the
undercurrent of sex more felt than show has a whiff of the Updikean
about it. I love John Updike--but for his short stories, not his
novels. His collection "Trust Me" is a favorite of mine. You also
have a snappy way with dialogue, kinda like a 1940s noir detective. I
enjoyed it, though it raises many questions: What happens after the
egg salad? Do strawberries ever figure in in a sensual way? Is this
a case of art imitating life? We are off to a very good start.
I note however that the content is somewhat more PG-rated than the
title would suggest. I can see I will have to restrain myself and not
post something too very Anais-like for my first outing. At least.
This is going to be fun.
MM
On Aug 26, 4:50 am, Just Me <jpd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I really hadn't the first notion that this girl had the hots for me,
> no idea whatsoever, nor for that matter that I'd have the hots for
> her. But on that lovely spring day when I heard my own name ringing
> --among the marble pillars like a chime from the tower, only then to
> catch her, so very much to my surprise as she flew into my arms--I
> hardly knew what to say as the light, breezy kiss to my cheek lingered
> there. She yet held to my arms as she swung about me to say, "Gee,
> Johnny! I thought you'd never get here. I was just on my way to an Art
> class, but to heck with it. Are you going for coffee at the Grill?"
>
> Well! Indeed it's true, that's just where I'd been headed. So she took
> my arm, waving adieu to her sister art student friend as together we
> passed further inward beneath the high pillared porch of the student
> union building. I'd been sharing breaks between classes with this not
> unattractive, pleasingly svelte, not quite corn-silk tressed lassie in
> various booths of the Campus Grill, since way back around the
> beginning of Winter Quarter. Her short-haired, slightly squat, sort of
> butch, forever paint splattered friend was the girl-friend of a folk-
> singer friend of mine, and one morning she had accosted me there in
> the cafe to say, "Haven't I seen you at one of those rent parties over
> on the West Bank?" And that's the way it had all begun.
>
> As had been my custom, I was about to slide into the seat opposite Jan
> at the table, but she'd got hold of my wrist, to say, "Come! Sit here
> next to me." It was all I could do to keep my coffee with cream in the
> cup as I submitted to her bidding. My! But the way she was looking at
> me, those blue eyes with irises so bright, they seemed to spiral like
> tiny pinwheels to mesmerize and draw me in. Something was going on
> here that I had no way to understand. There was knowledge in those
> eyes of something that had freed her to this, something that had
> melted away the ice of all previous inhibition.
>
> She knew something having to do with me, that I had no way of knowing,
> through that same association of friends, and what she knew, what
> she'd just recently found out was that my wife, not only now, but for
> quite some time had been busily engaged in not being faithful to me.
> Oh, I'd had my suspicions about some of those young engineers at the
> place where she worked as a receptionist for a diamond drill company,
> one which had machined parts which were slated to go to the moon with
> the Apollo project. Yes, I'd had my waking and sleeping nightmares of
> worry over it, but like most dumb schmucks, even till now, I'd been
> pretty good at the art of calling myself a 'jealous fool' if not a
> 'crazy man' for so much as even beginning to suppose it.
>
> There had been that letter I'd taken from the mailbox in the foyer of
> our apartment building the month previous, which upon seeing it, she
> tore from my hands to jam it down in her purse. Unfortunately for the
> dear girl, I had managed to see it was addressed to me, and return
> addressed to the Public Library--so of course I'd had every right to
> see it, to demand of her what she was up to.
>
> "It's nothing!" she insisted as she went through the door I'd opened
> to the stairwell. And turning as she preceded me up the the first
> flight, her skirt getting all tight and creased across her hips. "I
> took out a book on your library account, forgot to get it back in
> time, so it's overdue."
>
> When I asked her, on the landing before the second flight, how she
> could take out a book without my library card she said, "I just told
> them I'm your wife."
>
> "Boy!" I said, "You could get away with just about anything, that
> way." Her laugh, derisively flew out of her like a bat to send its
> radar reverberating all the way to the 3rd floor ahead of us. "What
> book was that?" I wondered as she went before me out of sight into the
> corridor to the left, and I had to repeat my question while she
> rummaged through her purse for the key. "I haven't seen any library
> books around the pad."
>
> "Apartment!" she said. "Will you just for the crissake call it an
> apartment, so long as I have to pay half the rent? While I have to
> work in some square job to send your ass through school? The only
> 'pad' I know about is the one I got right now between my legs, which
> needs to be changed, if you don't mind taking a rain check on the
> third degree!"
>
> I closed the door behind us and watched as she walked over the
> alternating bands of thick and thin blue pile on the rug we'd bought
> as our very first purchase after the wedding. It left enough of the
> wax polished oak floor exposed to look pretty swell, gleaming under
> light of the French windows that looked down upon the busy avenue
> below. She'd gone into the alcove that hides the Murphy Bed and
> doubles as a closet, a nook for the dresser, and off that the bath. It
> was a great bathroom, with a claw-foot tub and a painting "by
> Mondrian" completely covering the walls. The gay guy who'd had the pad
> before us, and who'd sold us all the furniture, had a painter for a
> lover, and he'd done the bath like that. It was always the first thing
> we'd show to guests. We'd bought everything he had in the place but
> the bookcases, right down to the bamboo beads hanging from the
> proscenium of the arch which led to the dinette and kitchen: the
> standard urban efficiency apartment you rented for 70 bucks the month.
>
> "What goddam book, I asked you?"
>
> "Christ!" she said, with one leg raised, leaning against the dresser
> to unhook a garter, her slip already having been tossed over the
> clothes bar. "It was for a friend of mine at work. A book on sailing."
>
> "Sailing, for the godsake? Sailing! Who the hell among any of our
> friends has anything to do with sailing?"
>
> "Your friends, John, are not necessarily 'our friends', and my friends
> are not necessarily your . . ."
>
> "Forget the necessarily!" Now I was getting mad. "There is no way for
> those flat-top friends with corners on their heads of yours to be any
> friends of mine."
>
> "Yes, I know that, John."
>
> "Well, who the hell is this, with the sailing books drawn out of the
> library, overdue no less, on my card--my goddam card!"
>
> "Adrien."
>
> "Who?"
>
> "That kid from Oxford, the engineering student from England. The one I
> told you about, who you said you cared less to meet. That guy."
>
> "Oh, that guy!"
>
> "So, what's the big deal. Shit! It's just an overdue book."
>
> It was just an overdue book, one they'd gone downtown on the bus to
> the library TOGETHER to get, somehow, someday, when they'd some way
> managed to get away from work, completely out of sight of me and my
> supposed knowledge concerning the daily whereabouts of my wife. But
> she was good, very good at making this manner of thing look innocent,
> and me guilty, as some sort of half-psychotic jealous fool. So, I was
> very used to taking her side of it, against myself, deciding that I
> had 'issues' that needed to be solved.
> --
> "So!" said Jan. "How's your wife been treating you? Things getting any
> better?"
>
> "Hah! Are you kidding?"
>
> "Ah, what's the matter now?" She was digging around in a super-large
> fabric bag she had with her this day, the one she'd shoved to the back
> of the booth on her way in. She she was all twisted around and bumping
> her butt against my thigh as she worked.
>
> "Same old thing. All she wants to do is fight."
>
> She paused, turned to face me. "Well, I'd find something better than
> that to do with you, if it was me."
>
> I laughed. "Say, baby," I said. "That would be a change, I can tell
> you."
>
> "I know. You told me. Lots of times. Look what I have," she said,
> turned back around, and placing a brown paper bag on the table.
>
> "What's that?"
>
> "Lunch."
>
> "Lunch?"
>
> "For the two of us. I thought you might like to have lunch with me
> today." So that's what explained all the excitement out front, why
> she was so glad I finally showed up. She had plans for me on this
> day, or that is, for us."
>
> "Hey, that's swell. What do you have in there?"
>
> "Egg salad sandwiches. Do you like?" She acknowledged the hungry
> affirmation of my nod. "But not here."
>
> "Really?"
>
> "I thought we could take a walk, on account of how it's such a nice
> spring day, and all."
>
> "Wow!" I said. "Great."
>
> "Or even better than getting all wet sitting in the grass, we could go
> sit in my car, turn on the radio, listen to some music while we eat
> some nice egg-salad sandwiches."
>
> As we walked out under the tall elms along University Avenue, heading
> for the parking ramp down at the end of Harvard Street, I just kept
> telling her about how sweet she was to have thought of me like this.
>
> "Well, you deserve it," she said. But, I deserved it? All I could
> stupidly suppose at the time was that's on account of my being such a
> nice guy? But no, I deserved it because of the pain I was in that I
> knew nothing about, but she did. Relief, I deserved from the
> humiliation and betrayal she knew all about, that I only knew from my
> bad dreams.
>
> It must have been *The Strawberry Alarm Clock* or some-such thing
> playing on the radio as we took our first, creamy bites from those egg-
> salad sandwiches.
> --
> Mr. JoyBoy
I see you worked "Strawberry" into the ending there.
Well, a fine first effort for our literary salon! Very vivid domestic
detail--I can see that apartment in my mind's eye. A friend of mine
is living in a similar 'pad' right now, though minus the whimsical
bathroom and the lovely blue rug. But thanks to her apartment I
didn't have to wonder what a Murphy bed is.
Your story is emotionally understated and yet with a real-life
versimilitude about it. Something about the precise imagery with the
undercurrent of sex more felt than show has a whiff of the Updikean
about it. I love John Updike--but for his short stories, not his
novels. His collection "Trust Me" is a favorite of mine. You also
have a snappy way with dialogue, kinda like a 1940s noir detective. I
enjoyed it, though it raises many questions: What happens after the
egg salad? Do strawberries ever figure in in a sensual way? Is this
a case of art imitating life? We are off to a very good start.
I note however that the content is somewhat more PG-rated than the
title would suggest. I can see I will have to restrain myself and not
post something too very Anais-like for my first outing. At least.
This is going to be fun.
MM
On Aug 26, 4:50 am, Just Me <jpd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I really hadn't the first notion that this girl had the hots for me,
> no idea whatsoever, nor for that matter that I'd have the hots for
> her. But on that lovely spring day when I heard my own name ringing
> --among the marble pillars like a chime from the tower, only then to
> catch her, so very much to my surprise as she flew into my arms--I
> hardly knew what to say as the light, breezy kiss to my cheek lingered
> there. She yet held to my arms as she swung about me to say, "Gee,
> Johnny! I thought you'd never get here. I was just on my way to an Art
> class, but to heck with it. Are you going for coffee at the Grill?"
>
> Well! Indeed it's true, that's just where I'd been headed. So she took
> my arm, waving adieu to her sister art student friend as together we
> passed further inward beneath the high pillared porch of the student
> union building. I'd been sharing breaks between classes with this not
> unattractive, pleasingly svelte, not quite corn-silk tressed lassie in
> various booths of the Campus Grill, since way back around the
> beginning of Winter Quarter. Her short-haired, slightly squat, sort of
> butch, forever paint splattered friend was the girl-friend of a folk-
> singer friend of mine, and one morning she had accosted me there in
> the cafe to say, "Haven't I seen you at one of those rent parties over
> on the West Bank?" And that's the way it had all begun.
>
> As had been my custom, I was about to slide into the seat opposite Jan
> at the table, but she'd got hold of my wrist, to say, "Come! Sit here
> next to me." It was all I could do to keep my coffee with cream in the
> cup as I submitted to her bidding. My! But the way she was looking at
> me, those blue eyes with irises so bright, they seemed to spiral like
> tiny pinwheels to mesmerize and draw me in. Something was going on
> here that I had no way to understand. There was knowledge in those
> eyes of something that had freed her to this, something that had
> melted away the ice of all previous inhibition.
>
> She knew something having to do with me, that I had no way of knowing,
> through that same association of friends, and what she knew, what
> she'd just recently found out was that my wife, not only now, but for
> quite some time had been busily engaged in not being faithful to me.
> Oh, I'd had my suspicions about some of those young engineers at the
> place where she worked as a receptionist for a diamond drill company,
> one which had machined parts which were slated to go to the moon with
> the Apollo project. Yes, I'd had my waking and sleeping nightmares of
> worry over it, but like most dumb schmucks, even till now, I'd been
> pretty good at the art of calling myself a 'jealous fool' if not a
> 'crazy man' for so much as even beginning to suppose it.
>
> There had been that letter I'd taken from the mailbox in the foyer of
> our apartment building the month previous, which upon seeing it, she
> tore from my hands to jam it down in her purse. Unfortunately for the
> dear girl, I had managed to see it was addressed to me, and return
> addressed to the Public Library--so of course I'd had every right to
> see it, to demand of her what she was up to.
>
> "It's nothing!" she insisted as she went through the door I'd opened
> to the stairwell. And turning as she preceded me up the the first
> flight, her skirt getting all tight and creased across her hips. "I
> took out a book on your library account, forgot to get it back in
> time, so it's overdue."
>
> When I asked her, on the landing before the second flight, how she
> could take out a book without my library card she said, "I just told
> them I'm your wife."
>
> "Boy!" I said, "You could get away with just about anything, that
> way." Her laugh, derisively flew out of her like a bat to send its
> radar reverberating all the way to the 3rd floor ahead of us. "What
> book was that?" I wondered as she went before me out of sight into the
> corridor to the left, and I had to repeat my question while she
> rummaged through her purse for the key. "I haven't seen any library
> books around the pad."
>
> "Apartment!" she said. "Will you just for the crissake call it an
> apartment, so long as I have to pay half the rent? While I have to
> work in some square job to send your ass through school? The only
> 'pad' I know about is the one I got right now between my legs, which
> needs to be changed, if you don't mind taking a rain check on the
> third degree!"
>
> I closed the door behind us and watched as she walked over the
> alternating bands of thick and thin blue pile on the rug we'd bought
> as our very first purchase after the wedding. It left enough of the
> wax polished oak floor exposed to look pretty swell, gleaming under
> light of the French windows that looked down upon the busy avenue
> below. She'd gone into the alcove that hides the Murphy Bed and
> doubles as a closet, a nook for the dresser, and off that the bath. It
> was a great bathroom, with a claw-foot tub and a painting "by
> Mondrian" completely covering the walls. The gay guy who'd had the pad
> before us, and who'd sold us all the furniture, had a painter for a
> lover, and he'd done the bath like that. It was always the first thing
> we'd show to guests. We'd bought everything he had in the place but
> the bookcases, right down to the bamboo beads hanging from the
> proscenium of the arch which led to the dinette and kitchen: the
> standard urban efficiency apartment you rented for 70 bucks the month.
>
> "What goddam book, I asked you?"
>
> "Christ!" she said, with one leg raised, leaning against the dresser
> to unhook a garter, her slip already having been tossed over the
> clothes bar. "It was for a friend of mine at work. A book on sailing."
>
> "Sailing, for the godsake? Sailing! Who the hell among any of our
> friends has anything to do with sailing?"
>
> "Your friends, John, are not necessarily 'our friends', and my friends
> are not necessarily your . . ."
>
> "Forget the necessarily!" Now I was getting mad. "There is no way for
> those flat-top friends with corners on their heads of yours to be any
> friends of mine."
>
> "Yes, I know that, John."
>
> "Well, who the hell is this, with the sailing books drawn out of the
> library, overdue no less, on my card--my goddam card!"
>
> "Adrien."
>
> "Who?"
>
> "That kid from Oxford, the engineering student from England. The one I
> told you about, who you said you cared less to meet. That guy."
>
> "Oh, that guy!"
>
> "So, what's the big deal. Shit! It's just an overdue book."
>
> It was just an overdue book, one they'd gone downtown on the bus to
> the library TOGETHER to get, somehow, someday, when they'd some way
> managed to get away from work, completely out of sight of me and my
> supposed knowledge concerning the daily whereabouts of my wife. But
> she was good, very good at making this manner of thing look innocent,
> and me guilty, as some sort of half-psychotic jealous fool. So, I was
> very used to taking her side of it, against myself, deciding that I
> had 'issues' that needed to be solved.
> --
> "So!" said Jan. "How's your wife been treating you? Things getting any
> better?"
>
> "Hah! Are you kidding?"
>
> "Ah, what's the matter now?" She was digging around in a super-large
> fabric bag she had with her this day, the one she'd shoved to the back
> of the booth on her way in. She she was all twisted around and bumping
> her butt against my thigh as she worked.
>
> "Same old thing. All she wants to do is fight."
>
> She paused, turned to face me. "Well, I'd find something better than
> that to do with you, if it was me."
>
> I laughed. "Say, baby," I said. "That would be a change, I can tell
> you."
>
> "I know. You told me. Lots of times. Look what I have," she said,
> turned back around, and placing a brown paper bag on the table.
>
> "What's that?"
>
> "Lunch."
>
> "Lunch?"
>
> "For the two of us. I thought you might like to have lunch with me
> today." So that's what explained all the excitement out front, why
> she was so glad I finally showed up. She had plans for me on this
> day, or that is, for us."
>
> "Hey, that's swell. What do you have in there?"
>
> "Egg salad sandwiches. Do you like?" She acknowledged the hungry
> affirmation of my nod. "But not here."
>
> "Really?"
>
> "I thought we could take a walk, on account of how it's such a nice
> spring day, and all."
>
> "Wow!" I said. "Great."
>
> "Or even better than getting all wet sitting in the grass, we could go
> sit in my car, turn on the radio, listen to some music while we eat
> some nice egg-salad sandwiches."
>
> As we walked out under the tall elms along University Avenue, heading
> for the parking ramp down at the end of Harvard Street, I just kept
> telling her about how sweet she was to have thought of me like this.
>
> "Well, you deserve it," she said. But, I deserved it? All I could
> stupidly suppose at the time was that's on account of my being such a
> nice guy? But no, I deserved it because of the pain I was in that I
> knew nothing about, but she did. Relief, I deserved from the
> humiliation and betrayal she knew all about, that I only knew from my
> bad dreams.
>
> It must have been *The Strawberry Alarm Clock* or some-such thing
> playing on the radio as we took our first, creamy bites from those egg-
> salad sandwiches.
> --
> Mr. JoyBoy
Just Me
Aug 26, 2010, 11:18:53 PM8/26/10
to Original Fiction
On Aug 26, 9:31 pm, Hikari <hikari...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Egg salad? I was sure it was gonna be strawberries in that bag! But
> I see you worked "Strawberry" into the ending there.
>
> Well, a fine first effort for our literary salon! Very vivid domestic
> detail--I can see that apartment in my mind's eye. A friend of mine
> is living in a similar 'pad' right now, though minus the whimsical
> bathroom and the lovely blue rug. But thanks to her apartment I
> didn't have to wonder what a Murphy bed is.
>
> Your story is emotionally understated and yet with a real-life
> versimilitude about it. Something about the precise imagery with the
> undercurrent of sex more felt than show has a whiff of the Updikean
> about it. I love John Updike--but for his short stories, not his
> novels. His collection "Trust Me" is a favorite of mine. You also
> have a snappy way with dialogue, kinda like a 1940s noir detective. I
:-) So glad you did! Interesting you should mention "kinda like a
1940s noir detective" because that was the style of the most recent
thing I submitted to the Zoetrope site--all about a private detective
in L.A. of just that era: a novella length romantic mystery thriller
about a private eye and a dime-a-dance girl.
> though it raises many questions: What happens after the
> egg salad?
we find out what happens *with* the egg salad. ;-) I had to quit at
that point, because I too, did not know the answer. And it did not
come to me until long after the light was out and I was in bed. When
it came, it was like that scene in the second episode of *Byron* "The
Eloquence of Action" where he's reading some smutty little missive
from his sister/lover, and his wife asks, "What on earth are you
laughing about?" My wife stirred in bed with the same question!
> Do strawberries ever figure in a sensual way?
Not that I know of, as yet. Actually, I would have entitled this part
"Egg Salad Sensualities" but I just felt somehow that would be giving
too much away. I wanted it to be a big surprise, what was to emerge
from Jan's big fabric bag. So maybe I should change it, and let come
what may? You must may have hit on something here.
> Is this
> a case of art imitating life?
"Weeeeeell, John, that would be tellin'." ;-)
> We are off to a very good start.
>
> I note however that the content is somewhat more PG-rated than the
> title would suggest. I can see I will have to restrain myself and not
> post something too very Anais-like for my first outing. At least.
installment, and then we shall see what that may tend to open in the
realm of erotic possibility--for us both!
>
> This is going to be fun.
Ciao, dear lady.
> MM
--
Mr. JoyBoy
Message has been deleted
John McDonald
Aug 27, 2010, 3:23:47 AM8/27/10
to original...@googlegroups.com
On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 10:48 PM, Mary Wenzel <hika...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> It took us that long to finally meet in person because I was here
> and he was in the fucking Yukon Territory. For real. Well, after nearly 2
> years of dancing, we finally arranged a meet. I flew to the Yukon in 2003 with
> the highest of hopes and . . . had them all dashed. Our meeting was a
> disaster. Really crushing, I came back here totally heartbroken.
I've heard some amazing adventure tales in my time but that's one for
the books. The Yukon. Damn. Something for Jack London to write. Or, if
you could ever get over it, something for you. Tell it in third person
and entitle it, "Call of Wild Redux."
Those are hard stories to write, though, when it's the protagonist who
comes out on the losing or heartbroken end. I've got lots of events in
my life that came out like that. They made bad stories at first
because I had no sense of humor about them. Once you learn to laugh at
your losses, though, THEN you've got a story. ;-)
--
JM
Message has been deleted
JP David McDonald
Aug 27, 2010, 8:39:17 PM8/27/10
to Original Fiction
This is quite a story, and it needs to have its own thread, under its
own title/subject header, Mary. Just look for the "New Post" hypertext
under "Discussions" on the right sidebar, and post it again. Then I
can delete this copy so that the thread goes back to its original
title, so that anyone looking for the Strawberries my find them, you
naughty little claim jumper, you. ;-)
On Aug 27, 9:11 am, Mary Wenzel <hikari...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Come to think of it, Whitehorse Serenade would make an excellent story title . .
> .But I won't write a story about Whitehorse because my memories are all too
> painful to turn into art. That's what artists do, turn pain into art, but I
> don't feel particularly artistic about my sojourn up there. But just to prove I
> really was there, here's a few of my less-painful recollections . . .
Who would have thought? It's no different than what happened to the
old Gold Towns of California. But so far north as that--who'd have
guessed. You'd think places like Dawson City and Whitehorse would
always have remained the same. Why you'd think that is anybody's
guess, but you do.
That's what I thought about the little off-campus university village I
used to haunt at my old alma mater. Then when I returned, after some
thirty years to have a cup of coffee at my favorite old soda fountain,
of course it was gone. Gone! Gone with the ice cream parlor across
the street. Gone with the little "Tokyo" cafe with all those
affordable little rice dishes that starving students like to (or have
to) eat. Gone with the movie theater and the little Italian
restaurant: everything was GONE, but the bookstore, among the shelves
of which so many of my dreaming hours were spent.
Of course, they would have been gone--but so surely as all those
places live in the favorite most part in my memory's heart they are
not gone. And it was a stab to my heart to see them so. It was WRONG.
It killed me. I couldn't stand it. To see that very lunch counter at
which Garrison Keillor and I used to share, not knowing one another
from Adam, with never a word between us over the chili, or the cherry
pie. STo see that gone was an OUTRAGE.
What can you say? You conclude: what was in the past cannot be
removed, not so long as we live, alive in memory. What is in the
present can be removed at the blink of an eye, and you do learn to
live, as Stanley Kubrick put it with Eyes Wide Shut -- and you can be
happy.
--
JM
own title/subject header, Mary. Just look for the "New Post" hypertext
under "Discussions" on the right sidebar, and post it again. Then I
can delete this copy so that the thread goes back to its original
title, so that anyone looking for the Strawberries my find them, you
naughty little claim jumper, you. ;-)
On Aug 27, 9:11 am, Mary Wenzel <hikari...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Come to think of it, Whitehorse Serenade would make an excellent story title . .
> .But I won't write a story about Whitehorse because my memories are all too
> painful to turn into art. That's what artists do, turn pain into art, but I
> don't feel particularly artistic about my sojourn up there. But just to prove I
> really was there, here's a few of my less-painful recollections . . .
Who would have thought? It's no different than what happened to the
old Gold Towns of California. But so far north as that--who'd have
guessed. You'd think places like Dawson City and Whitehorse would
always have remained the same. Why you'd think that is anybody's
guess, but you do.
That's what I thought about the little off-campus university village I
used to haunt at my old alma mater. Then when I returned, after some
thirty years to have a cup of coffee at my favorite old soda fountain,
of course it was gone. Gone! Gone with the ice cream parlor across
the street. Gone with the little "Tokyo" cafe with all those
affordable little rice dishes that starving students like to (or have
to) eat. Gone with the movie theater and the little Italian
restaurant: everything was GONE, but the bookstore, among the shelves
of which so many of my dreaming hours were spent.
Of course, they would have been gone--but so surely as all those
places live in the favorite most part in my memory's heart they are
not gone. And it was a stab to my heart to see them so. It was WRONG.
It killed me. I couldn't stand it. To see that very lunch counter at
which Garrison Keillor and I used to share, not knowing one another
from Adam, with never a word between us over the chili, or the cherry
pie. STo see that gone was an OUTRAGE.
What can you say? You conclude: what was in the past cannot be
removed, not so long as we live, alive in memory. What is in the
present can be removed at the blink of an eye, and you do learn to
live, as Stanley Kubrick put it with Eyes Wide Shut -- and you can be
happy.
--
JM
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JP David McDonald
Aug 27, 2010, 10:48:48 PM8/27/10
to Original Fiction
I really hadn't the first notion that this girl had the hots for me,
no idea whatsoever, nor for that matter that I'd have the hots for
her. But on that lovely spring day when I heard my own name ringing
no idea whatsoever, nor for that matter that I'd have the hots for
her. But on that lovely spring day when I heard my own name ringing
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