Poetry And Prose, Story, Writing

Josh (A Story)

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In the acreage of his heart, Josh had not been a cultivator until the day he turned forty-seven. He considered life to be infinite and people more or less replaceable, an indictment of discernment of which most people are guilty.

On the day of his birthday, he mentally cursed as he assembled the attire necessary for his job. For six years, he volunteered for every additional duty and shift, and dutifully learned far beyond his job title. The day prior, his manager casually informed him that he would not be getting a promotion.

The divorce he suffered six months before still perched on his chest at night. A reminder of his absence at home was being repaid with a bitter loneliness. Although he had done something right, he also committed the sin of deflecting his priorities.

“Choose wisely. Every decision has a consequence,” he told himself.

After downing his quick cup of coffee, Josh went to his car and plopped inside. He tried to summon the enthusiasm for a day at a job that had become his executioner.

As he neared the antiquated convenience store, he was startled by Mr. Shazam running from the opposite side of the street. Mr. Shazam was a gloriously intelligent homeless man of indeterminate age. Josh, on multiple occasions, bought Mr. Shazam food or cigarettes.

Josh had never seen him run. As Mr. Shazam reached the north wall of the convenience store, he leaned against it with his right arm, bending over and breathing hard.

Josh pulled in the parking lot and stopped. The shrill siren of a police car echoed behind him. As he turned to look, a black and white sped into the parking lot and stopped in front of him.

The policeman who exited the vehicle looked older, much too old to be a patrolman. He flipped open the holster on his right side and pulled out his service pistol.

“Don’t move!” Instead of keeping his pistol pointed down, the policeman aimed it at Mr. Shazam, who still gasped for breath.

Josh didn’t consider himself to be rash. A primal instinct of protection flared in him. Before he even realized he was doing it, he quickly exited his car and stepped forward, putting himself almost directly in the line of fire.

“Hey! What’s going on?”

The policeman didn’t bother looking at Josh. “Step back and get back into your car!”

Josh did involuntarily take one step back but moved no further. “This must be some kind of mistake. Mr. Shazam isn’t a criminal. He’s not armed.” Josh looked at the police officer, his focus on the gun that trembled in the officer’s hand.

“Someone called in a break-in down the street. When I arrived on scene, he was getting out of a car parked on the street and holding a weapon, which he held up toward me.”

Everything the policeman got wrong flashed through Josh’s mind. While he didn’t know what Mr. Shazam held in his hand, he knew that the owner of the non-working vehicle let him sleep in it anytime he wanted to. Mr. Shazam had run toward one of the few places he felt safe.

“You’re not understanding…” The rest of whatever Josh was going to say dried up on his lips as the officer briefly pointed his pistol at Josh.

“Back in the car! Now!”

Mr. Shazam stood up and turned toward the officer. He waved like he did with everyone. “Sorry about that.”

Mr. Shazam took a step toward the officer.

“Stop!”

On the front side of the store, the convenience store clerk froze as she looked around the side of the building. In my brief encounters with her, Susan was polite, no matter how unruly or argumentative the customers became with her.

For reasons Josh couldn’t understand, Susan took two steps forward.

The policeman swung his pistol in her direction. I could see anger flare in the officer’s face as he realized two people were interfering.

Mr. Shazam turned his head to look at Susan and smiled. He took another step as he refocused on the police officer.

Josh wasn’t thinking as he stepped toward Mr. Shazam. His intention was to get close enough to make eye contact with him. This tactic had worked well many times.

Josh watched in detached disbelief as the pavement rushed at his face. He felt his nose crack as he blacked out.

Josh felt like he was shaken awake almost immediately.

“What’s your name? Can you hear me?”

Josh couldn’t focus on the person’s face above his.

“Open it wide,” another voice said.

Josh rapidly blinked several times and turned his head to the left. He could barely make out the silhouette of someone kneeling on Mr. Shazam’s back. He realized it was the police officer, who had his head bent to the right, rapidly barking words into his shoulder as he held his left hand there.

“It’s my birthday,” Josh said.

The person kneeling over him put their hands on both sides of his face. His fingers were wet. “This is some kind of birthday. Try not to move your head. You’ve been shot.”

“Was Mr. Shazam shot?”

“Right arm,” the person above him said. “No. He’s okay.”

The police officer’s face appeared above John.

“Cuff him for interference.”

There was a wild squabble of voices above Josh.

“Eff off. We don’t know whether the bullet passed through his head. Move away and let us treat him.”

Josh’s eyes locked and focused. For some reason, the EMTs face looked indistinct.

“I’m sorry you’re having to deal with this.” Josh spoke clearly, as if he had stumbled and fallen.

“It’s my job. Are you feeling any pain?”

Josh shook his head.

“The bullet did not go through,” Josh said.

“You were shot in the head. You have a wound above your right ear.”

The EMT later told the shooting investigation team that Josh looked up at him and smiled.

“There’s an exit wound on the top of my head,” Josh said.

“How you know that?”

“I can see it. Push your finger right on top under my hair.”

Josh felt the EMTs wet fingers slide up and push. At the time, he didn’t think much about Josh saying he could see it. People in trauma said all sorts of things.

“I’ll be damned,” the EMT said. “You’re right.”

“It’s my birthday,” Josh repeated. “And now I don’t have to go to work.”

…

A year later to the day, Josh looked across the table at his ex-wife. Soon to be wife again. Mr. Shazam sat to his right, happily eating from what amounted to a quarter of the entire birthday cake in the middle of the table.

Mr. Shazam stopped eating and spoke, even though blue frosting lined his mouth like badly applied lipstick.

“Tell it again, Josh!”

Josh, laughed and shrugged. “It was the best thing that could have happened to me. I could see the other five police cars arrive rapidly one by one. The second ambulance. Susan going back inside the convenience store and crying. And I could see myself on the dirty pavement with blood everywhere around my head. It was peaceful. I felt happy when I saw the police officer pull Mr. Shazam up to his feet. I saw it all from a distance. This sounds crazy, I know. Officer Corbin lost his job, but at least we kept him from being prosecuted. And then of course you, Cindy, came and picked me up from the hospital the next morning. And I don’t even hate my job anymore. It pays the bills and that’s more than enough. Oh, and Mr. Shazam got a great place to live after all of that.”

“Shall we toast?” Cindy raised her glass of wine.

Josh raised his glass to meet hers. Mr. Shazam, instead of toasting with them, downed the rest of his in a big gulp. Cindy laughed with Josh as they clinked glasses.

Sometimes, you need to get shot in the head to be awakened.

Sometimes, all it takes is to stop whatever it is you’re doing and do something different. The universe provides its reminders both gently and forcibly.
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Personal, Poetry And Prose, Writing

From Theo To Marjay

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Ma chère Marjay:

Words are not the aperitif; they are entrée. Words rendered poetic, chosen and distilled, are the fuel that lifts the corners of your mouth and swells your heart. It’s unquestionable that the portrait in question captured you in the midst of both interaction and wit, because the best teachers are listeners.

The beguiling simplicity of your portrait also demonstrates the complexity of rendering three dimensions as two, much in the way that labels such as “teacher” or “mother” confine you to roles of commerce and utility. Description is reduction, unintentionally stripping individuality.

Your depiction rendered easily, morphing complexity into simplicity while amplifying your presence. Theo would indeed be studying your portrait – and more than delighted to sit near the fountain and devour a morning talking with you. He would, of course, take immediate note of your grace, but his focus would drift away to words, ideas, and experiences. Everyone has a biography, but few are armed to express it in a way that evokes both magic and data. Beauty often fades, but curiosity, intellect, and compassion amplify with age. The jovial and observant among us find home in things invisible.

Your brilliant eyes focus on the world, seeing all its warts without losing sight of its beauty. You are one of the few who observe with an oblique periphery and still choose a smile over a grimace.

As of late, perhaps, just perhaps, you jettisoned a bit of cherubic in exchange for lean. The smile invariably remains, reshaped by the architecture of adjustment, yet immalleable.

Theo would no doubt remind you that you are both battery and source, even though your humility would propel you to delightfully laugh.

Where shall a portrait such as yours hang? It holds hall and quarter in the hearts and minds of your husband, children, and an immeasurable repertoire of students, each of whom now carries a piece of you in their memories. Were your portrait in a sunlit hallway, Theo would pause in the lengthening shadows, studying nuance and meaning. He would find it in the lines that demarcate your portrait.

Context: Marjay recently gifted me a book, one that unlocked something in me and gave me permission again to write like the way I like to. She gave me permission to pay her homage. I made a picture, one that took me over 20 layers. I needed a portrait at least minimally comparable to what the protagonist Theo might have gazed upon during his mission. The words are tinged with admiration. But they are also a reminder to her because good people need at least infrequent reminders that people do see them.

X

Personal, Social Rules

Framed

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Framed

It wasn’t until I read Theo’s internal monologue that I realized I had noticed the same thing as I’ve grown older.

Our society suffers from a lack of framing. Pictures now are mostly snapped and stored digitally. Yes, some are posted to social media where they might occasionally be revealed by accident from scrolling through the uncurated mass of someone’s pictures.

By and large, however, they asphyxiate by inattention. Our phones have replaced shoeboxes shoved under beds or on top of closets. Unlike a person’s phone, a shoebox can be discovered and rifled through when one needs recollection and memory’s touch.

We’ve lost something. We’ve stopped selecting and picking pictures to enlarge and frame on our walls. Portraiture has, in some ways, become gauche, as if personalization violates a decided-upon but unwritten rule of our homes.

Our psyche needs framed pictures to bind us and to declare ownership and presence where we reside. We need the timestamp of cemented memory, which most makes us remember fondly and wonder who we once were.

The clothes we once wore become amusing. The hairstyles often develop a ridicule all their own. But each picture is us, captured, frozen, and encapsulated under glass in a frame that declares its territory where it’s placed. Someone possessing our picture in their space has declared an interest in, if not a love for, us.

Framing requires deliberate use of both resources and space. Endless digital storage encourages archiving without regard and memory.

Framed.

Behavior, New Word

Until

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People move in the manner to which they are accustomed. 

Silence is not stability. A river’s turbulence conceals obstacles. 

The merest word or the most slight of tone often pushes a lever past its fulcrum. 

“The last drop makes the cup run over” matches the thesis of the picture.

Book, Lemon Moment, Opinion, Personal, Writing

Theo Of Thought

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After considerable internal revelation, it occurred to me incrementally and then as a hammer upon anvil. Greater even than the aroma of bitter coffee on a cold morning, the glimpse of unadorned physical beauty, and even the prickly skin of a glimmer produced by unfathomable music.

It is murmuration of thought.

Much like the massive flocks of birds that exhibit a murmuration, I feel most alive and myself when the zone of previously disconnected ideas becomes a force majeure of a new idea, thought, or joke derived from the deceptive simplicity of words for action.

Too much time raced past me before I realized I did not need to summon or conjure this feeling by force. It is the ‘me’ that needs no provocation.

The click of words and ideas slithering into their proper places makes me as happy as damn near anything.

Reading a book that provokes the same reaction as the first time I read Pat Conroy has honed my pursuit of imperfectionism. None of us are maestros where words or grammar reside. We are mimics. When I find a truly unanchored display of expression, I find myself rereading it, feeling the unnatural groove somehow resonate.

I’ve squandered my delight.

You shouldn’t reduce or amplify because of an imagined audience. A shotgun should be your funnel for expression. Filtering is at best misguided self-censorship, almost certainly propelled by the fear that only ego can bring.

In a perverse display of contradiction, society shuns outliers. But it also capriciously rewards some and there is no discernible reason that separates the criticized from the praised. It must be familiar enough to feel personal, while simultaneously pushing the fringes to generate the feeling of newness.

Ecclesiastes may have been right stating that there is nothing new under the sun, but it is the metamorphosis and recombination of the old that can bring the delight of discovery.

Humor

Joke #3,387

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I took my car to the dealership for electrical work.

The technician had me get in and test everything.

When I pressed the steering wheel to test the horn, a loud voice said, “OUI.”

“What the hell is that?”

“We installed a French horn.”
.

Behavior, Government, Opinion, Politics, Trump

Susurrus

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The weary and tested among us felt the skitter of the susurrus in the early morning. Unlike two years ago, we didn’t stare vacantly into the nothing.

Him.
Again.
F***.

This susurrus brought the most dangerous of things. A possible lifting of dread, the merest reflection of a glimmer of hope. Its whisper derives from the collective disquiet of those who’ve recently benefited from the usurper summoning all manner of power. And it only happened because the inevitable consequence of the unqualified with a blunt hammer ripping their pocketbooks.

We’ve been kicked with entropy. No matter what progress is made, it can be wrenched from us and stained. Entropy in nature describes the inevitability of order to disorder. In information theory, it describes the amount of uncertainty or hidden information inside a system. People can be fickle, guided by enrichment, and distracted by the loudest and dumbest voice in the room.

We cannot easily slip comfortably back to assuming that the absence of visible snarls equates to kindness or benevolence. Chaos sits behind us, unseen, ready to justify all manner of things we label as heinous.

He who knocks once shall knock again. If we drop our guard, there will always be another “he.”

Those who would say, “It was another election, one among many, bearing no particular significance,” are wrong. The rise of an unqualified power monger gave similar license for people to put aside the veneer of civility and embrace the chaos. He brought frailty to the balance of power, and he did so willingly. Using the shield of adopted and false faith, he pushed the banner of infringement. His interests, his money, his power – all in a way that surpassed even the most brazen of predecessors. Erode the media, implode the infrastructure of government, vilify with intent to subvert, and cash in.

The danger was not his presence. It was the lack of systemic controls to hinder such a person. His most ardent supporters were not created by him; they were revealed. Those who stayed silent through benefit declared their allegiance toward economy over people resoundingly.

This election is largely a referendum on direction and economy.

But those who shake their heads in denial that it was also a rebuke of such men are attempting to deviate the narrative toward normalcy. Taking time to understand your complicity in his emergence and dominance will cost you a sliver of your humanity.

This was not normal, not even by the standard of a country once warring with itself over its existence.

The susurrus of yesterday might well swell to a crescendo of change. It might easily falter and evaporate, too, creating more apathy in some and cynicism in others.

Taken as a whole, this election was a “No.”

As strongly as you might continue to object, this election was either a way station on the road to democracy’s ongoing erosion, or a slap to those responsible to remind them what governance must look like.

Assuming we manage to extricate ourselves from the lunacy of this type of governance, he will be forever remembered as failure personified.

This election came away with orange-stained fingers, after having slapped its rebuke.

Humor, Personal

Firsts

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I just put myself down for two genius points. 

I went to Harps to buy a few things. (Because that’s what I normally do there.) I popped out of my car for a second to say hello to someone I knew. When I came out with my bags of groceries, I realized my car was running and the keys were locked in it. 

After updating my payment information and battling the glare of my phone, I ordered an Uber. The driver was there immediately and that confused to me. Since I usually park at the end of the lot, I looked up to see him waiting for me at the entrance, as if he had teleported. He drove a Tesla, so I couldn’t be sure this wasn’t just more crazy technology they threw in there recently.

As soon as I got to my apartment, promptly ordered a return Uber to Harps. It immediately indicated that another Tesla was less than a minute away. By the time I walked down the stairs, he pulled in. 

I assumed it was the same driver. It wasn’t. Just another Tesla. 

So I rode in a Tesla for the first time and the second time technically within 3 minutes of each other. I’d always imagined my first Tesla ride would be in a high-speed pursuit. 

{ I stopped on the way home for gas. One reason I stopped was that it’s difficult to put gas in while still driving. The other reason is in case I try to earn another genius point and duplicate my feat of stupidity for the second time in one day. It’s almost worth it, just to test the theory that my next Uber will be another Tesla. }

Lemon Moment, Personal

Before The Storm

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The bad stormfront hasn’t reached here quite yet. But the winds are intermittently powerful. 

I’m used to seeing some strange things in the dead of the night. 

Had the balloons been red when they flew across, I would have looked around for Pennywise. I had no idea what was floating and caught in a wind vortex in the gap  valley between the big buildings.

It was only spitting a little rain, so I stopped and watched the arch of balloons float around and finally land.