Nobody writes letters anymore, including me. I just send out emails to family and friends. Here's the latest one to go out, today:
I wrote a very nice haiku today, which I sent to the precednet of the new nited snakes of amackula. (I’ve decided not to correct anything in this letter. It’s Sunday -- day of rest -- day of slacking off and letting serendipity run its course -- day of soaking my feet in a tub of brine scented with lavender.) Anywho -- here’s the haiku:
Melted golden light
Poured over the green chestnuts
Finches are panting
Now I gotta go down the hall to the mail slot in the lobby and drop it in. I’ll be right back . . .
Hey, you’ll never guess what I saw in the lobby just now --
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
This place is so dead on a Sunday it makes a cemetery look like the World Cup soccer game.
My fantasy -- the one I most often think about when going to sleep -- is that the New York Times editors contact me to offer a fantastic salary for a daily topical poem, and once the mazuma is rolling in I move out of this dump, not to Hawaii, not to Thailand, but to a nice 2 bedroom condo here in Utah Valley with an indoor swimming pool -- and then Sarah and Adam and their kids will come over all the time for pool parties and I’ll treat ‘em all to Costco Pizza -- and I start collecting Italian glass clown sculptures to display on my mahogany shelves -- so at last I’ll have a classy place and I’ll dress classy with clothes not from DI and I’ll get a smartphone and use Uber to take me places. But then I get to thinking about how good poverty and slovenliness have been to me these past twenty years -- why shake the hammock when I’m already so comfortable in it? I just wish there was a little life in the lobby -- some interesting people to talk to or listen to. The old buzzards in this building tell each other news that was stale when the pharaohs built the Pyramids and repeat the same old dreary axioms and diatribes inherited from their interbreeding ancestors. Thank goodness for Bruce & Margaret Young, teachers at BYU, who I got to know from swimming at the Rec Center -- they come over for dinner about once a month and are always learning me stuff about Shakespeare and the Democratic Republic of Congo. I really need to seek out more college professors to pal around with -- the only problem being why would any of them want anything to do with a guy who eats canned beans for breakfast and is growing a luxuriant crop of nose hair? Besides, I’m beginning to suspect that my own conversational skills are so decayed that all anyone hears from me is ‘winner winner chicken dinner’ and ‘it’s hotter than a Texas pistol.’ Original thought has fled me like a cat flees a bath. And if I had classier smarter companionship I wouldn’t have such a good excuse to complain -- and there’s nothing half as fun as complaining. Except eating.
Which reminds me of today’s Sacrament meeting here in the building. In the Community Room right off the lobby. Actually, there’s no reason eating should remind me of what happened except that I’m starting to think about a late lunch, and -- oh, bother . . . here’s what happened today:
So we meet at 11 a.m. in the Community Room to take the Sacrament. It’s not really a meeting at all; it only lasts 20 minutes. There’s usually about a dozen old ladies attending and one old guy, Johnny, and me. Today several of the old ladies walked in and immediately smelled perfume in the air. I couldn’t smell anything. But they claimed it was very strong and cloying and they couldn’t stay in the room because of it. So they went out in the lobby to sit. So when the bishop showed up we did the Sacrament with just 3 people in the room -- the rest were out in the lobby, because a few old ladies said they were allergic to perfume in the air and the other old ladies had to troop along with them. Must be peer pressure or something. Anyway, that was a strange thing -- I took the Sacrament out to them at the direction of the bishop, but I could tell he was coming to a slow boil with such foolishness. He’ll probably take it out on his tithing clerk later today.
I plan a vegetarian lunch today, cuz I had some pork sausage with my butter beans this morning (which I ate with green onions and a dill pickle.)
I stopped writing for a minute to look out my patio window at the birds feeding on sunflower seeds and black thistles, and I began to wonder if animals know when it’s Sunday. I don’t think they do. I also wonder why the heck my fount size just went from 10 to 12. I didn’t do anything that I know of. Oh well, heck with it. Too lazy to change it back. It’s probably an artistic touch that will garner admiring remarks in the years to come when all my emails are published by Harvard Press.
2:33 p.m. So I took a break to have lunch -- I had microwave basmati rice and microwave Indian vegetable curry. Tasted pretty dang good. I can’t ever seem to make a good pot of rice myself anymore -- it always comes out either mushy or grainy. But the microwave kind, though expensive, always comes out just the way I like it, like at a restaurant. The curry was only so-so, so I splashed it with Tabasco sauce and fish sauce. That did the trick. and now I’ve room enough left for a good hearty snack this evening when I watch Netflix. I’ll fix up a bowl of Slim Jims, mozzarella sticks, mixed nuts (no peanuts), Chicken in a Biscuit crackers, and a handful of green olives stuffed with pimentos. Washed down with club soda.
It’s been hot here, in the mid-90’s each day, and I notice the birds on my patio now keep their little beaks open all the time -- I guess they must be panting. I remember long ago when I was on the road I stopped at a motel in Missouri during one of their terrible heat spells; I was in the parking lot getting something out of the glove compartment of my car when I noticed a tiny bird sprawled on the asphalt, beak open wide and panting away in desperation. As I watched the poor creature it gave one last gasp and died in front of me. I felt so shaken that I vowed I would never let such a thing happen in front of me again, so anytime I see a bird on my patio that looks like it’s not going to make it I close the blinds and go get some ice cream out of the freezer -- and I feel much better. A cat or something always takes away the dead birds before I have to deal with them.
Isn’t that a spiritual and moving anecdote? I should send it to the Ensign.
Tomorrow I babysit for Sarah again. I’ll do it all week while she goes into some chiropractor's office and gets a fifty dollars an hour for bending a few arms and legs. Last week I set up a lemonade stand with Ohen, Lance, and Brooke -- providing the lemon juice, sugar, cups, and ice. They made twenty dollars in four hours -- the mailman came by 3 times, and brought other mailmen with him. We charged 25 cents per cup. And a neighbor drove by to give Ohen a five dollar bill but didn’t want any lemonade. So this time we’re going to make root beer. I have the extract and cups, so all we need on Monday will be the dry ice and sugar. I also bought a gallon thermos jug. If it works out we’ll keep selling cold drinks the rest of the week, so the grand kids can make some money for themselves. I don’t mind buying the stuff for them -- Adam has been real good to me this past week, giving me a ton of easy rewrite assignments, so there’s extra money in the bank. I’ll also probably buy a Winco chicken dinner for them at the deli tomorrow. It’s a good deal -- you get ten pieces of fried/baked chicken, eight King’s Hawaiin rolls, and a pound of fried potato wedges (which we always called them jo-jos when I was a kid.) All for 13 bucks. That way Sarah doesn't have to cook anything for lunch and the kids can snack on chicken and jo-jos for the rest of the day -- I’ve never seen creatures with such appetites before. They snarl over scraps of gristle and shards of bones like hyenas.
Well, I think I’ll end this literary folly and check Amazon Kindle for a good book to read the rest of this afternoon. I’ve got about twenty books on my Kindle right now. I just finished one about Norse Mythology; interesting and depressing. Those Swedes were a morbid bunch when it comes to their ancient gods. I could go for a good murder mystery . . .
