The Right Charade

—–Before any of these paragraphs are trotted out for anyone to read, they will undergo serious editorial scrutiny, if not downright transmutation, by their author–but what I end up thinking about, often, is that there are people who, if they could get ahold of my original notebooks, well–they would eagerly feast on them, for signs of the initial flickering of thought, or whatever it is . . .  You flatter yourself, says one of my jailers.
—–No, I am just saying people are more bothered by the existence of such a thing as literature than they are interested in it what it turns out to be, in the end, when it is handed to them, the poor unfortunates, as like . . .  a study assignment. So to get their hands on a writers’ first jottings is like to get their hands on his brain, like coming up behind him while he is at work.  This is truly exciting, and furthermore it puts the average reader, or scavenger, sort of synergistically in the same boat, beginning his interest as the writer begins his writing, almost as his equal, almost interchangeable with him. People want to know why they never feel creative themselves, at least with the same urgency–that would cause a person to scribble their thoughts and then develop them systematically into a marvelous artistic whole that can be held up for admiration and endless debate, dissection, and even critical acclaim.  Surely critical acclaim is an achievement any diligent writer can and will attain!  And once that has been attained, interest will be taken in the whole process he used.  An insatiable public will naturally look for and want to devour even the earliest evidences of his unaccountable genius. Especially the earliest evidences!
—–Often I feel a presence standing behind me as I work, but that, I prefer to think, is a watcher of a different order, and stature. The same who dogs my steps, and cautions my every reflection, the shadowy conscience, who supplies me with alternative explanations for . . . everything. And often does a theme in one’s thoughts find the very setting, and the very characters, to play the right charade.
—–At the Little Theater Cafe, sitting at a front table with the others, I was flaunting my brand new Gold Fibre notebook, which had yet to be darkened with a single, tentative sentence, but was bulging, at full strength with all its blank pages, and it’s cover still unblemished, as I blissfully maundered over what author’s name I should give myself this season. Should I do another stint as Lloyd Mintern, or perhaps boldly paste the label of my still endless and unresolved work, FAME AND FORTUNE, on the cardboard brow of this ship still in portage? Or should I rekindle the poet, set fire to his kindle wood of images, lurking in the fibre of the language, in the vernacular, the diction?
—–But I wasn’t saying that, I was talking about the physical notebook itself, and how the very first entry you make is so important, crucial–it has to be right, to set the tone. Well, everyone could see I was exaggerating, typically.  And it was counterpoint to the present scene–to be talking about the preparations one makes. It was Scott Cole,  Phil Marshall, going over the set list, with Annie Wells–for in a few minutes Annie Wells would play that grand piano and sing, that’s what we were gathered here for; and later Phil would join in during the first set with his guitar. So these rushing considerations are not out of context here! Far from it, and my joking about how my notebook and my mechanical pencil, which I could twirl and brandish in my hand, were like my fiddle and my bow, well that is just charming. Musicians like Annie and Phil don’t present their original songs and their dexterity without alot of practice, just like I don’t let people read the first rough drafts in pencil in my notebook, you see.
—–The point is, I keep having to say, it’s about how audiences are in fact desperate to find out how we do it, or where it comes from. So we’re a kind of exclusive group here at the head table at the Little Theater Cafe, and other people regard us like we have mysterious powers and ways of being especially happy with ourselves, and our creative society with one another, even. I am not joking.
—–So I’ve got license, I am focused on the subject of my newly purchased notebook, and talking about how after I do make notes I transfer them to my computer, they are going into the manuscript, rewritten and expanded in the process, of course, and I crossi them off with diagonal lines in my spiral notebook. “So if you saw one of my old notebooks–this here is about the sixth one I have had in the last three years–you would see all these crossed off entries and think they were rejected, and the ones left, the paragraphs untouched were being saved.”
—–“Yeah, I guess we would,” Phil said, glancing around at the others–Scott Cole, who is keeping so quiet I feel like is about to barge in on my fragile riff, I mean monologue.
—–“But with me, it is the opposite,” I say. “I cross things out because I have saved them; what is left is really what is left out, maybe verging on hopeless . . . you see.”
—–“We get it,” Phil says.
—–Right, I think, they get it. So I screech to a halt, swerve direction, and deal with how I can remove pages, either just cleanly take pages out by the perforated edge, or I can rip them totally out. For this I would like to demonstrate. Clearly, I think to myself, now I am running out of material.
—–Then Phil Marhall says, “so, do you have a paper shredder?”
—–“What?” I said, “do I have a what?”
—–“A paper shredder,” he says. “You know, in your office.”
—–I looked at him, and he was implacable.  He is a stoic guy, this Phil Marshall.  And I could tell he was improvising, he was playing on my vanity, which is endless, and so I said, “see what I do is, sir, is I just crunch them up into a ball, these pages that were embryo paragraphs, and I toss them in the wire basket right there next to my computer.” And I simulated the crunching motion right there with my left hand. “Those embryo paragraphs,” I repeated, “eventually they must go out in the trash with other crumpled up stuff, grocery store receipts . . .utility bills, paid or unpaid . . . ”
—–“You mean you put this writing out in the trash?” Phil said.
—–“Well, yeah,” I said. “It’s been, um, processed.”  And this is where we all become free to start making things up.
—–“Right on the curb?” Phil says, looking around at the others.
—–“Sure,” I say, “but my second floor office window looks out there, and I am up all night, so I can see if anyone comes by and starts going through the trash.”
—–I paused to see if this was getting through. There were murmurs of approval. So I said, “I mean Scott Cole has come by and I’ve seen him paw through a couple times. But other than that.”  Technically, this was imaginable, since Scott lives down the street; he is married to Annie, and sometimes we meet at Montys Krown, or just Scott and I hammer out our differences . . .
—–“You flatter yourself,” Scott said.  Hey, it was like Scott saw this coming, even before I said the bit about looking out my office window.  Sometimes an angel gives a cue just slightly ahead of the action, and causes people to blow their timing. I mean I set myself up. He felt in advance the ringing of my impending satire. Everything is made backwards. The guy is sharp, intuitive, he is the devil of a fellow, I always tell him. A valuable friend! And a big fan. Watch out for those big fans, they might want your original notebooks! He’s a nemesis, actually stockpiled my work, copies of old books and tape recordings of early Stage Poetry practice sessions. One of my jailers. A necessary friend to the historical author, I think.
—–And you have to like these scenes that turn into set piece dialogues, the ones where we’re famously clever, particularly when out in public, and the ones where all one has to do is glance over their shoulder and someone else is joining in. People were sitting down at other tables.
—–Now Annie Wells, the beautiful singer, sits down at the grand piano at the Little Theater Cafe. She takes us into a reverie of life, even as we are watching her hands glide, and hear her voice strive to cast up the scene where . . . she is taking us. Always into shadows and moonlight . . . echoes, whispers. For this is an intimate singer, and her audience is far away, as far away as her voice is traveling . . . Though a few of us are in fact right here, nailed down. Here is also where I realize, as I recreate the barest of references to my life, that whoever is reading this must be far off, either in another scene, or indeed in the far future. The transfer of thought through handwritten scrawl to official script and typeset marvel is hardly so step-by-step, or poetic, and never is it anecdotal. But it is more like the accomplishment here, the text supplanting music, has risked its own fortunes, and created the memory! The phrases demand the setting be rigged up again, and the language be loud enough to echo, be immortal, and stay pounded out–as if ready for judgment.

909 Park Avenue

—–There are certain behaviors and actions that appear to be obsessive on a person’s part, they keep repeating and indulging them, and generally get themselves identified as having a chronic attachment to them, an unending interest. One would think that this is what a person would get remembered for, for their affiliations, their hobbies, their accessories in dress and choices of culture even. You buy a gift for that person that flatters this obsession which over the years they have steadily revealed, and which you then flatter and supply them with reminders of, so they, so to speak, are surrounded with themselves.  In the hothouse of their own desires and drawn out storylines, their forced confessions of ultimate personality.
—–Or, during a person’s life there can be a pale, nearly invisible thread of singular involvements, leading them now and again, but not often, to rare actions they seem to be ideally capable of, suited for but hardly ever called to. Because opportunities don’t present themselves, because the right circumstances don’t combine, for them to perceive and act as they might, otherwise, naturally act, to step forward as just the man for the occasion, these people therefore don’t get to perpetually shine, in that exact capacity that, given a different fate, they might have been the perfect knight, hero or foil, or even be known as one who could. One who could lead an army, for the right arriving cause.
—–Oh, yes, let me ply this terrain, with this scythe.
—–There are certain shared events that in fact are rare occurrences, but retain a character or quality of having happened quite often.  Years later one says, “remember when we used to . . . “,  and this reminiscence is cast over a whole era. In fact it was only three or four times, and certainly only once that the memory was pinned down . . .  Thus we remember that we used to drink Spaten at The Orchidia with Ellen and Joel on 2nd Ave. In fact, I think we did this maybe twice; but it was so quietly momentous, we were so centered there and the universe then was, I can say with all confidence, based around our thoughts and fervent conversation. Consciously beheld memory, actual prideful referral is the key, whole careers are built out of the idolatry of ones past that ensues, when some small band of friends gets the idea that they are the ones in and for a present hour.  While merely slovenly habitual behavior, stamped out day after day, even though apparently characteristic, or indulged in to the hilt, will never amount to anything  . . . but dissipation and an erasure.
—–I was always pausing in front of my grandparents house at 909 Park Avenue, I would take side streets coming back from shopping at Wegmans, cutting over to Monroe Avenue deliberately so as to go past this distinctive beige colored stucco duplex where we had so many Thanksgiving dinners . . . as if I could actually revisit the memory by coming closer to the old location, as if the setting would mesmerize me into a state where the secret of that old reality would come clean . . .  More than once I even found myself patrolling the sidewalk, having parked my car maybe a block away and trying to reenact a sort of casual walk-by, like a stranger coming across this peculiarly charmed block, relapsing below the locust trees. Park Avenue has a mood of a rural winding lane, a respite in the thick of the city. I saw myself climbing the front steps, like coming back from a long journey, and trying to peer into the large front windows, which were laid horizontally like a wide movie screen. They were  inviting me to look in, as if to see scenes of a Thanksgiving dinner still going on in the past.
—–One time recently I paused for so long outside 909 Park Ave that a man came out the front door and shouted at me, “what are you doing?”  He didn’t even say, “can I help you?”, but gave me no slack, and challenged me. I immediately saw that I must appear to him as an intruder. Or one of those harmless lunatics, who are always confused to where they are, but aren’t so harmless, really, for they can create a kind of magnetic field around themselves, attracting others to look where they have paused, an and stare at what is now not such a seamless reality, for it has cracks in it!  So you have to shoo these fellow away, and let them congregate on other streetcorners. The gentleman thinks I am crazy, I thought. Fair enough.
—–“What am I doing?” I calmly said, “well, I am trying to summon up memories! You see, my grandparents used to live here and I am trying to explain to myself how time can pass and people die and things just on.”
—–I said all that just staring at the stucco, and then I looked this guy in the face to see if he was listening. I couldn’t tell if he was, as I just said, “you know, with new people moving into their house, you know. That is what I am doing.”
—–Then I blurted out, “my grandfather using to sit there on the porch with his radio and listen to Yankee games.”
—–Truly I was back there now. I felt like an adolescent, I went right back to my clumsy self, to when I was in fact the teenager who once, I think it was only once actually, made an erratic visit and found his grandfather on the porch with a radio next to him on a little wicker table. The scratchy voice of the sports announcer– I recall that as if it was the old man himself (is this my grandfather, I was asking myself!). Well, not really, how could I remember that?  I will tell you my recollection is permanently skewed from bad habits formed when I was trying to write short stories; what a futile racket that is! I wrote one called The Complete Household, that purports to be about 909 Park Avenue, and what a travesty ! What is worse than carefully wrought fiction, made out of one’s life! Still standing on the sidewalk, I think I assumed the poor gentleman who had come out of his house could hear me think through all these distinctions.
—–“I am sure you understand,” I said to him.
—–“How utterly fascinating,” he said sarcastically, I mean I heard him say, this gentleman in his vivid sweater vest, though he didn’t actually say it, I just heard him say it like I heard the wind in the trees, bidding me to hurry it up. Or maybe it was saying, take your time. I didn’t actually utter the bit about the radio, either.  I just recovered from that drenching memory of my adolescence, it just took time (a different sort of time); and I looked around for my car. The point is here is an action taken once but which had such preparation, and such repercussion, that it amounts to a final enactment, of its own thematic obsession. And is built into the career of the writer, who’s banking on the power and potential fame of these very episodes, equivalent to his own, personal salvation.

Bobble-a-go-go

—–This is the assemblage atop our television. From the left: a trophy given to my father for his Hole-in-One at Oak Hill Country Club in 2000; Joba Chamberlain’s rookie bobblehead; Barack Obama Action Figure;  and Tiger Woods in happier days of bobbledom. “Bobble-a-go-go!”  a  friend writes, “That picture is a view into a political sporting alternate reality. Where the streets are lined with slogans, steroids, and waffle hut waitresses.”  That is certainly one way to look it at, I say.

Snowbirds of Memory

—–I fail to write from memory . . .  but the same memories can be encountered within an already flowing text, tripped upon by association with words, combinations of words that create phrases that are like . . . empty vessels. Maybe it is just innuendos in the rhythm of a sentence in the making. But, what I mean is, if I start with a memory, held in mind, and try to faithfully record it, language rebels and laughs at the effort. On the other hand, when I write anything at all, memories are there, all over the place, and in pristine condition, waiting to be run into in the course of the writing; helpful memories, suggesting things and places to go in the development of whatever I had chosen as the task. And I can glancingly deal with them, they aren’t going anywhere, they are like in eternity, for the grabbing, and without violating the sacrosanct mystery of their origins. Without maligning them, in the course of my writing, I can visit and stay in the visit for some time, with these memories; and consider how to plug them into the topic that I, the writer, has set himself upon. And it will lend to the topic an an air of authenticity, even–if I can back up my thoughts with what sound like experience of life. How funny!  If  I start with memories, though, I am going to become a fiction writer, there is no escaping this fate. They are just grist, and will serve another scheme which, God help me, I have to hope is also sincere. Or approaching sincere. But I am saying that what is really interesting, in my work, is that if I start with the impulse to simply invent, be inventive, be charming, write fiction, or what is equivalent in my book, be speculative, write my thoughts directly– talk about my ideas, then words and phrases and the very flow of the text will summon memories. As if to defend my existence! Satisfaction can ensue when I manage to refer to, and save in some fashion memories in that way. But I cannot simply save you fledglings, you snowbirds, hopping along, tagging along, I cannot use you directly.

NIGHT AND DAY

—-There are certain lines of thought that cannot even be pursued, and the further ideas likely encountered in that pursuit given a chance to exist, much less be articulated, unless one writes them down and deals with them in the act of writing. I am constantly having to put off the inquiry into this or that, something glimpsed, something brushed up against, something tugging at me, because I can see right away that it is impossible to explore, except by thinking it out right on the page, performing it, so to speak, exploring and subduing and refining all at once in order to pound out  just the  semblance of a rough, but promising beginning. And the thing is, I don’t feel like doing that at the moment. In spite of my inspiration, I am accosted by lethargy and even dread. In fact, I rarely feel like immediately working on them, it seems, at the time when these ideas occur.  It seems I spend very little time actually doggedly working out these all important themes which, I reckon, could easily break through into realms so far hidden from any investigator . . . such as myself–who, in spite of my incompetence, remains on constant alert.  What I do is refer them to later, and then lurch at them again.
—–Of course this, this instant fatigue in the face of a foreboding task, is another subject which has its own difficulty! The subject of why I don’t feel like pursuing, most of the time, exactly what it appears I should be pursuing . . . ah, this too is making me wince, and look for a way to escape. I shouldn’t have mentioned it! It is like a spiral . . .
—–But the initial point was not this cowardice, but the real clash of milieus, or moods. It is the fact that there are certain topics which one cannot just tamely and rationally sort out–but one must perform them on the page. One must be an orator, in order to shout down objections,  get through confusions, and reach the ecstatic plateau, to see and describe the vista.  One must get creative with the language, wrestle with the sentences, get tangled up in the grammar, etc.  And what I am saying is that I am rarely, hardly ever, in the mood, because it is daytime and this is a thought for the night, or vice versa! And if I was wrong about that, because here is the day and it still seems implausible and difficult, well at least I jotted it down. Night and day, that will keep you spinning.

Soliloquy of My Inner Gorilla

—–I have this fear I am going to be told it is all over, before I have even gotten started. That is the emotion. It is deep, and irrational. It is not worrying about not being able to finish what I am already well into, being cut off before a deserved ending. It is not based on any assessment I have of myself, being rendered unfortunate, or treated unfairly. This is a outrage, a calling on the carpet,  an indictment that says I never got started, a cold encounter with the unknown, difficult to grasp–but, just so, provable as such because it happens at all. It is the worse kernel of doubt, that I never met existence at all.  Even I, who have been courting solitude!  I, who have never heard this expressed, this wrenching fear of never having lived, I who listened to people and divined their secret thoughts, and read books for what their author intended; even I have failed to express this–but of course!, since it is my own, deep, abiding, inexpressible fear. The razor sharp fear that I never did anything, but instead stood, or cowered, in fear itself, of being told it is too late, you can’t make a beginning now. You fumbled, and then stalled. Being told I am a dead man, and realizing I have been cut off, consistently from the beginning–which is so far away now I don’t know what happened to it, I must have been very negligent, never bothering to figure out how to properly note it . . . that beginning.
—–And this seems like my fear alone, and becomes the worry attendant on the foreseeable future, that somebody will come along and condemn me, before I have had a chance to begin, begin what should be an unfettered stretch of accomplishment. Why have I not gotten on that path, into that wheelhouse, already? It is like I have never had that space, my whole life, to be unfettered, to train in the preliminary workout, the run-up, to catch the real people, now outdistancing me on the stretch run. I have only managed to stumble, make a few notes,  and distractedly patch together the semblance of a career, nearly great. But I have not really done anything in a spirit of a clean beginning. And the consistency of a dedicated pursuit. In the spirit of a clean beginning one cannot in fact be stopped at all.
—–Well, but hold on, I quibble, if I can’t even grasp this fear, how can I face it? Well–in the low thunder I get the reply–it is just there, that is all, and that is all you need for proof. It is admitted, the drawling tenor, the tension. You are afraid that something will happen that will cripple your ability to do anything ever again, because even if you temporarily survive the accident, or the accusation that levels your morality, or the sickness that shocks your body, in whatever form it will appear, you will be so devastated that you  won’t be able to concentrate, and thus begin your true work. Which somehow you have put off to this point. Why have you never gotten down to work? Lord, what a reprobate.  From a certain point of view (perhaps an audience of some accomplished theater-goers!), your plight is actually funny. Instructive!
—–I see myself in a kind of catch up role, making a best effort, now that the game is lost.  I shall have to start saying, well I am glad I did as much as I did, in the time I did have, acknowledging in just that ironic sentiment that life, or what could have been life, is really over. This is sort of burlesque, I get to vaguely reflect. Yeah, it will be just waiting for the end from this point on.  The story is in,  I am afraid something is going to happen that will inform me that there is nothing left but the end. That’s the fear. Is that the fear? Having gotten my death warrant, though I never got to resolve what death was, and a couple times even denounced such a thing, trying out all its forms in my imagination, in past earthly times of leisure, now futile . . .  having finally heard, gotten the shape of an insurmountable burden, felt weak beyond repair, by any means my feeble mind has put in reserve, yes, yes!, all these ways of putting it that are too late, because . . . that is the fear, that ii is all too little too late! Is that what was I saying? I thought it was more elevated than that.
—–More dangerous to my great sense of myself, and central to that off-kilter identity I have, always had. It was paradoxical, how one always felt in those days. I know what it was; actually  I can make it sound dramatic. It is like now is going to be the final framing of the stakes of a real serious beginning. It was to say, that I have this fear that I will be informed that it is between now, right now, and the end that will be all there is, to reconcile. No more unlimited time to accomplish whatever I want, by whatever means I so choose. Now there will be a gun to my head. I am afraid somebody is going to put a gun to my head. This would be a new experience, for up to this point I have been cavalier about my existence, I guess.
—–I shrink back. I don’t know if I am ready for this . . . it’s like I am losing my grip, what happened to that grip I had?

APPROBATION! (JUST ANOTHER PARTY)

—–I hadn’t heard of this person who had just come in the living room, as we were all milling about, but someone was saying they were famous, and then I thought I saw people were looking over at this person and gazing at him, rather more intently than you would someone who was just, well, anybody. Well, so I went into the kitchen and I heard someone say, “did you see who just came in?” excitedly to another one of our friends, and I felt this tremendous tiredness suddenly, it was just a totally lethargy seized me. So I went upstairs, though our house was crawling with people, and I was the host–but I just felt I had to think about this way it appeared people were reacting to the presence of this famous person. I didn’t even know him, and when I went upstairs I felt like I was holding this persons fame in the balance, as I was considering it so assidulously, like it was up to me to confirm that, yes, it was alright to fawn over him and make him the center of attention; for I know, fame is attractive, that is unavoidable, and I am all for it as long as we make our own judgments, of course, in each case. But let he who deserves fame receive it, and let him receive it gladly, and pay back his fans by acknowledging them graciously. I was thinking along those lines. And meanwhile, downstairs apparently there were enough people who did know of this person’s accomplishments, just how famous he deservedly was, so that a general acclamation was underway. When I came back down they were already cheering this guy like he had won an award right there, or just given a speech. I thought for a wild moment it was me that was receiving this sudden recognition, as the cheering grew louder just as I descended. But I wasn’t even in the sights of these people, who all had their backs turned to me and were on their tip-toes, craning their necks to get the experience and actually be a part of this famous person’s new moment of . . . approbation!
—–But vicariously I felt it, what it would have been like, and I accepted that feeling with . . . approbation myself. Received and accepted, I said to myself, and approved of the possibility of such a transaction, myself to myself.

Cell Phone, Calling 1825!

—–Cell phone in use! The question is, though, where is this man?  The answer is, he is inside the Broad Street Aqueduct that goes over the Genesse River. He is directly under the street, or maybe the Rundel Memorial Library.  More stunning than that even, he is standing in the bed of the original Erie Canal! The canal was built in 1825, and needed this massive aqueduct to take it over the Genesee River.  Canal barges loaded flour from the mills along the river here, when Rochester was known as “the Young Lion of the West”. The same bed became the Rochester subway, when this downtown section of the canal was abandoned in the 1920’s.  Outside that half-moon window we can one of modern glass buildings of downtown Rochester. Another question is; what is all that . . .  artwork?  Well, some people, notably homeless people and renegade artists, know how to go through the fence two blocks up South Ave, and traverse this tunnel. The aqueduct walls are completely covered with spectacular graffiti. That answers many questions, or begins to.  Now, we should say, the person himself is Thomas Grasso, of the Canal Society of NY, and we’re taking a tour as part of a project for the World Canal Conference next year. And I am thinking, as I snap this flash photo with my digital camera . . . well!  I am not sure what I am thinking! It is something poetic, though. Something complex enough to contain these clashing images.  Some form of thought in which the impossible past is summoned, and can stand side by side, like in a reverie, with the super-real, though highly ambiguous present moment.  The present moment, in which we are equipped with all these devices, to capture and discuss . . .

EXERCISE IN TRUTH TELLING

—–I was headed across the back parking lot at Grana’s Restaurant, in the driving rain about 9:30, taking the back alley to the unmarked rear entrance, and I got there right at the same time as Kurt, a regular patron at the bar.  “Not everybody knows about this door,” I said to him, as we sidestepped the wind and rain, which can really pick up in that alley, and got ourselves standing at the bar.  I was just escaping my office for an hour and the sight of my notebooks spread out like, well, account books, on my desk, so I was pretty wordless, I even neglected to pour the beer in the glass, but I just stood there, hoping nobody would even start a conversation.
—–But Billy Grana, the bartender, came over and leaned his elbows on the bar like to talk with me, and I suddenly remembered the incident earlier in the day at the Lilac Laundromat.  I remembered it like it was a movie I had seen recently, the whole episode and it was like burning to be told. Well, you have to tell stories at the bar with dispatch, they have to be about as short as jokes, or seem like they are going to turn into jokes, and you should use quick short sentences and cast things off, with an air of joviality–though you best be criticizing the crazy world.  Like when you are in the bar you’re not in the world out there, but you report on how crazy it is out there.  Anyway, I gave the shortest possible version of the episode at Lilac Laundromat, more properly the parking lot outside there, to Billy Grana, and it went over so well he was saying like, “wow, that is really incredible!”  So I turned then to Kurt, a bigger challenge,  for he doesn’t talk much at all, or listen to much; and  I told the story of this incident identically to him—although he was fidgety and got distracted just a few sentences in, and I had to do like three stop and restarts to finally get to the pay-off ending.

—–Okay, I said, what happened was I out on an errand, and I parked my car in the lot beside Lilac Laundromat, which was completely empty, I mean so empty I could choose, absurdly, any space at all to occupy, and I went into the hardware store a few doors down the block.  I was in the hardware store only a few minutes when a frantic old man came running in and said, “they’re towing your car away, you better get out there!”  Well I said,  “what? that’s impossible, I just came in here! ” But I could see how concerned the guy was, and I charged out, ran back up the block, and it was true; there was already a tow truck hooked to my car, and these two highly sarcastic, unfriendly goons were grinning at me, triumphantly. And then when I protested, they said, “too late, buddy, you’re illegally parked.”  So I said, “you can’t do this!”  And they said, “yes we can!”  Stubbornly, I said, “I’m standing here, this is theft.”  But they just said, “you parked the car, and went into the wrong store, we’re taking it, stand out of the way.”
—–So, I told Billy–who was leaning close–I said, “no, you’re wrong, I never got out of the car!”  Then, I opened the drivers side door and climbed in behind the wheel.  So, yeah, the bigger guy comes over and he says, “what are you doing?”  And I said, “go ahead, tow it–  I’d like to see you tow a car with the driver in it.”
—–“Pretty funny,” the guy said.  And I retorted, “you’re the one who’s being funny.”  Then, I started the motor.
—–So now the one goon says to the other, who’d come over to see what the delay was, “Ah, he beat us, let’s get out of here.”  And I thought . . . hell, maybe these guys are almost human.  And then I watched them sympathetically, as they unhooked the tow truck; and I drove home. I never finished my errand at the hardware store, I told Billy Grana, and if the truth be told, I arrived home with my knees shaking—for that was a pretty bold maneuver!
—–Of course they are famous at the Lilac Laundromat for towing cars;  they actually watch the place, surely.  It’s a subject for discussion, it’s an example of the crazy world. I would like to say that when I got home, after this episode, I called them and complained, said they were terrorizing the neighborhood.  That I said, “you’re really creating the impression the world has gone to hell”, with these unruly tactics.  Why do you hire these bullies who watch the parking lot, and charge such fees?  Who cares, I would hear the staff assistant mutter on the other end.

—–Okay, though, now I have to say, the really interesting thing is that the episode didn’t happen exactly like I narrated it at Grana’s Restaurant.  Actually, I didn’t pull that stunt of getting back in my car, but just argued with those guys for a while, and ended up giving them an exorbitant sum of cash to unhook the car.  They had me, was the way it looked—it was pay this right then, or twice as much if they took the car–and I had to go get it at their lot, God knows where, with no car to even get there! The truth is I completely caved in to these goons, that is the way it really went.  And after I got rid of them, the spritely man, who was not that old, actually, who had run into the store to fetch me, and who must have watched the whole scene (come to think of it), commiserated with me for some time on the sidewalk. He was highly energized as he called them “bastards” at least five times. I mean, this guy was another story. Eventually I moved my car onto the street, still sort of shaken from the contact with the twp brutish towing fellows, older myself now it seemed than the guy who had come running after me . . .   And I parked the car, the valuable car, there, and I did finish my errand which was, actually, if the truth be told,  not at the hardware store . . .
—–For it wasn’t any kind of hardware store I went into, but A-Plus Sports Cards, to pick up a surprise basketball card for my son’s collection.  But you see that actual errand seemed to be entirely too elaborate, or too interesting in itself, and therefore likely to create a tangent, so I just changed it—at Grana’s, in order to narrate the towing the car story.   The part about getting in the car and saying theatrically, “okay, tow it with me in then!”, well I guess I dreamt that up while driving home, or something. I certainly didn’t think of that on the spot in while talking to Billy Grana, but I must have imagined it, heroically, so to speak, at some point before then.  So it was waiting like as a possible version. Which when used was in fact impressive, and convincing, and I got away with it.
—–I guess the main story here is . . . the story of how I told the story. And continued to secure the reputation I have to this day, as someone who leads a life full of odd adventures that it seems could only happen to him.

Beauty in Disarray

—–The argument for God is not via harmony in nature, but meaning in your own life. Nothing proceeds from wondering on the profound, or the strangeness of this scene, and leaving out your own awareness.  I cannot prove the spiritual by an implication, it is instead spectacularly missing, in the very beauty of disarray. But I claim the tension, as if holding things together, and I can claim the miracle in the ordinary yard . . .

—–The argument is in the story and the sequence, both of which are invisible. Meaning is untraceable. But God exists in the arena that includes the person.  Say it again, try to make it absolutely poetic. The splendor taken apart is meaningless, just being awestruck by the silent yard, or afraid of the brittle season, won’t invoke a creator. Though clearly there is a creator, I have to think God backwards, witness it after I suffer it, recover it.  Step out the back door, inhale the rain-soaked air,  and . . . photograph it!