Los Angeles: A Month In Review

Just in case there's any hoopla to be had, let me say it now: palm trees are for the strong.  Like any ordinary kid growing up in the North East, where pea coats run the show and children parade past bunkers and airline hangars repeating the etherial mantra, "Lilah Tov, K'Tanim", here, I have become a complainer.  Up in the cornfields of New York, bodies upon bodies would huddle into bunches to keep the cold from licking off their feet.  Those were hard years for shoe salesmen.  But now, in my own self-imposed internment camp, I try to make the best of the unbearable constant sunshine.  Shielded only by dirt particles in the air, I grow browner with each drive to the supermarket.  The only time when I can take refuge is in the exhaust of the evening.  At night, I like to look at the star.  I pretend it shines for me.  I thank it for showing me the way.  I close one eye and block its light with my thumb -- There.  Now the women are tolerable to look at.

This is what I get for never doing my homework.

My Kingdom

"My kingdom for a horse!"

"You don't have a kingdom."

"I don't?"

"No.  But that's okay.  We don't have any horses, either."

"A stalemate!" 

Garage

The garage is his zen garden.  When my mother and I discreetly throw away empty boxes and broken chairs, it disturbs his chi. 

Briefcases For Equality

The briefcase rang my doorbell. Since my doorbell is made of bacon fat and Mediterranean chest hair, it took me a few minutes before I could hear it. Finally, in the split second's calm between two Irish military marches blaring from my radiator, I heard the soft ringing sound I'd grown all too familiar with. I got up from sorting through my colored golf ball collection and answered the door.

"Briefcases For Equality. Would you like to sign a petition?" asked the briefcase.

His leather coating was genuine, but something in the tone of his voice suggested there were other things on his mind. The quicker I respond, the more respect he'll offer me, I thought.

"What's a petition? I've heard the word before, but no one's ever specified it for me and I'm allergic to dictionaries," I responded smugly.

He went on to say a great many things about what petitions are -- things I must've been too bored to listen to. Suddenly he started leaking blood. I asked him if he was all right. He wasn't.

"It's hard to feel all right in a world as rough as this one. And if you think it's any easier being a briefcase than it is being a human, or whatever you are, then let me be the first to tell you that it's not. Do you know what it's like being handled day after day, opened, closed, stuffed with papers and files, being picked up, placed down, roughed around by people who don't remember the lock's combination number? It's 5-2-7! Is that so hard to remember?"

He had no idea about the blood. I figured he couldn't see the blood because he didn't have any eyes. But then how would this explain his ease finding my apartment, I wondered? He continued:

"Some people see me coming to their door saying 'This must be some sort of joke', but they just don't understand. And that's what this petition is all about: understanding."

There was that word again, 'petition'. What was it? What did it mean?

"Can you imagine a world without briefcases? A world where a backpack is your only option?"

Backpack! That's an interesting word. I never heard that one before. It made me laugh out loud. I snorted, too.

"You think this is funny? You think I'm here to play games?"

"I'm sorry, I was just laughing at that word you said -- backpack."

"Huh? Oh, yeah. I guess that is a funny word."

We both laughed out loud. It was a tender moment. Blood was everywhere.

"Do you know that you're bleeding? A lot?"

"I'm too sad to take notice of such trivial things. If you'd just sign here, I won't take up any more of your time."

I signed my name. It was the least I could do. I went back inside and sorted through my golf balls. Upon my return, I discovered that I was missing a purple one.

Swindled again!

Jigsaw Puzzle

Communicating with you is like solving a jigsaw puzzle. In our case, every piece exists, but not all of them are in the box. You have taken a handful of pieces, and hid them around the house.

One puzzle piece is under your mattress. Another puzzle piece is in the drawer of your nightstand. Another puzzle piece is in the pocket of a blazer you never wear anymore, tucked away in the closet. Another puzzle piece is buried in your jar of loose change. Another puzzle piece is taped to the drain pipe underneath the bathroom sink.

Why would I look there?

Even you lost track of the last puzzle piece (it fell behind your dresser -- the one that's too heavy to move by yourself).

I'd give up if it weren't for the pretty picture on the box promising me a rural landscape with a barn and two ponies.

Basketball

In some ways, you are like a basketball.

Repudiation Of An Earlier Post/Wizard Poem

I skimmed over "Too Much Time", and found little good about it.  Rather than delete it from my canon of posts, I'll publicly disassociate it from myself and replace it with this:

The wizard flipping burgers detects that his robe has caught fire.

He will quell the damage by casting a water spell.

Nobody notices.