Straight News

Straight News

 

Henry and June lived in Pastrami-on-Wye, near the municipal museum. One day they go to thinking and agreed it was about time for them to look to the inevitable and settle up on their wills. Obviously, Henry would leave everything to June and June would leave everything to Henry. That's reciprocity. That's fair. They filed the documents with the same lawyer. Signed on the dotted line.

As they were leaving the lawyerdom, June queried about a mutual demise. If we board the same omnibus, and it crashes, all we've done's for naught, innit? Henry saw the beauty of the logic immediately. They could no longer be together.

They separately moved away from the house near the municipal museum on separate days. Henry moved to Calling-on-Avon and June moved to Stallion-on-Mare. Distant communication was allowed, but they could never be in the same zone, earthquaky or otherwise.

Strangely, they grew apart. Phone calls grew infrequent. Soon, they were essentially strangers.

In December, two airplanes hit one another mid-air. June was on one, and Henry was on the other. It is sad to note an additional 213 people had to die, for this inevitable nemesis by the gods to occur.

 

*

 

"That's the thing about these Russians. What's up with their names? I don't mean they've all got their fathers' names in their names. That's easy enough. But what about having so many Tolstoys? So there's the War and Peace guy, whose name was Tolstoy, and there's his son who wrote stuff, and he's also named Tolstoy. That's two Tolstoys. Now, can you imagine being in a house with two people with the same name? Wouldn't that be awful confusing? Think about the poor woman who was the wife of one of them and the mother of the other. She had to be awful careful about bedtime not to wind up being incestuous. "Oh Tolstoy, oh Tolstoy!" "Yes, mother?" "Sorry, not you!" They didn't have the sense to go like that guy Cato the Elder who everything knew was going to have a big-deal son one day so they all called him Cato the Elder. And they should have been like the years, you know, in 372 BC New Year's Eve they're all: "Goodbye, 372! Hello, 371!" The Brits had the good sense to crown an Elizabeth I. I confuse her with her daughter all the time. I'm getting off topic."

 

*

 

Satchel: An Introduction

 

I met a new girl this morning at about 5:45.

When exactly I first laid eyes upon her is fuzzy; she may be the daughter of a man I saw wearing a big brown pea coat which had its left sleeve mysteriously covered in blood. (I'm pretty sure I missed some details, or that details were supposed to follow but didn't.) I crossed the campus, past the naked Frisbee throwers, and found her in my bookstore.

She seems to be about nineteen and thin and awkward and a bit zitty. I was taking a nap and she said, when I woke up exposed, that she didn't mean it. "I didn't mean for her to die. I just wanted to steal stuff."

I told her I'd teach her how to steal stuff safely.

She asked me: "What's a savadosa? It's a kind of a book."

We tried a few dictionaries, but the word was in neither.

Then I had to go, to go across the shopping centre to where I'd left my knapsack. She was sad to see me go. I told her: "I'll try to see you tonight. I'll really try."

I've decided to call her Satchel.

 

*

 

I'm pretty mad right now. I was coming home from work, from the streetcar, along Riverdale, and my timing was just right to run into an older guy with a walker as he was trying to get across the snow up to his front door. He said: "Can you help me with this?" I got in front of the walker and pulled the front wheels over the snow. We were at the bottom of the steps leading up to his front door. "Can you help me with this?" I got the walked up all the steps as he asked me if I wanted a beer. I said no. He was fumbling with his keys, so I took them and opened his from door then I lifted his walker into his front hallway. He asked what kind of harder stuff I liked. He proposed: "Rum?"; I said I was more of a scotch man. He asked me to de-ice his driveway; out I went with two cups of the blue stuff and tossed it all over the driveway. I gave him back the cup, said I had to get going, and left. Why the hell can't I be a nicer guy?

 

*

 

-So, Mr. ... 'Bond'.... Let us see how smart you are. Here is the box. You have three minutes to open it; otherwise, the world may end.

-Let's see. Mahogany, with sections in ... cedar?

-Two minutes forty-four.

-Yes. So. This looks pressable. A-ha! It clicked! I daresay I'm halfway there! Am I?

-Two twenty-one.

-It won't budge! I suppose I must press two, or perhaps three, points at once. No. No. No. Am I to burn it?

-That would trigger the failsafe, Mr. 'Bond.'

-Then I'll avoid that. Oh, it seems this part slides laterally, at around 115 degrees. The design is quite ingenious. Hand-made?

-One minute and fourteen seconds.

-It only slides so far. This is difficult! I fixed a VCR once. It took two hours.

-The clock, Mr. 'Bond.'

-Ingenious, truly ingenious. I beg of you, a hint!

-Forty-nine seconds.

-I don't even know where to begin!

-Concentrate on the box.

-It's a solid piece of wood!

-It's mahogany and cedar.

-And glue! Plenty of glue!

-Twelve seconds left.

I looked at the walls. I looked beyond the walls. I could not see her anywhere. I cried:

-Oh, Satchel! Where are you when I need you most?!

 

*

 

2019 02 12

 

"Yes, hello, Montreal, I'm calling from Ottawa. Yes, that's right. Now, you are one of the higher-ups in charge of building that Light Rapid Transit line? Right. Is this a secure connection? Well, anyway. I've got a little job for some good guys in your organization. It's a delivery job. Yes, a delivery job. Well, I'm looking to have a rizzoto delivered to Ottawa. You heard me right, R I Z Z O T O. Well, I can't give you her, the, address right now; she's kind of in transit at the moment. But I'm sure your guys can find her for the delivery. This line is really secure? Let's put it this way: I'm calling from Ottawa, and I understand you have some kind of arrangement with SNC-Lavelin. And I'm sure you read the papers today. Are you putting two and two together? Right! Yes, I'd like a quick delivery of this, you understand? Sure, a hundred thousand, my group can handle that. So, we'll have delivery tonight? Do it right, and a big tip. Oh, one last thing: is your concrete sustainable and environmentally friendly? Good. The boss insists. It's in some directives and everything."

 

*

 

Having heard one morning six months ago the mountain nearby was in fact an incipient volcano which could literally erupt any day in literally the next four hundred years, I knew that I could do but one thing and that was to purchase a classic wooden chair in which to sit atop the mountain and await the end.

The climb was steep to the three known peaks but that number reduced to a singularity when with surveying tools I discovered the northernmost peak to be an inch and a half taller than the penultimately highest peak. So thereupon on the northernmost peak I set my chair seat to await the end.

Upon setting the seat down upon the peak I noticed (putting my posterior down) that I wobbled atop the mountain that was to explode someday. I'd failed to realize three is superior to four in terms of legs for chairs, yet rather than start from square one I rather sent my trusty factotum Satchel down to fetch a handsaw, and a measuring tape since I was quick to discover that my surveying tools collected no straightedge.

To that end I patiently waited with chair upturned, awaiting my Satchel's return.

 

*

 

NOSTALGIA

 

There are ridges of dead skin on my baby toes, since they've been shoved against my ring toes in socks and shoes for years now. Meanwhile, under my big toes, it's all dead cells by the millions. I could scrape with pumice these places to make them look decent again, but it's so hard to reach down to my feet these days.

I remember, a long time ago, I had beautiful feet. They were barely an inch from heel to toe, and pink with blood vessels still forming. They hadn't been used for walking, yet; they were almost always in the air, moving crazily from place to place. You could have put wedding rings easily around my ankles, and I would not have minded. My head was big and heavy, with giant eyes that were still learning to focus on my mother's face and breasts. I had hands no bigger than matchbooks, but I could still grasp my father's pinky tightly. My mind was a pre-black pink, and I was getting used to the higher registers.

Why won't the death on my feet simply shed away anymore? Why am I daily becoming more and more dead--heel to toe?

 

*

 

Sunup was approaching more quickly than we'd realized. We'd managed overnight to make some fill for him during the one moment he'd awakened and opened his eyes; we'd sprung into action to create the room for him, and the clock on the chair, and the window and its night lights behind, in time enough. Of course there'd been a moment of inchoateness for him, but that's how waking up in the middle of the night works. But now that dawn was approaching, we had to put our backs into it. Light is hard to work with.

 We made him a more solid set of sheets and we danced dusty motes in the air. We made the walls for him, and the ceiling and the floor. We built for him a door and a good amount of stuff behind the door, namely a hall and a washroom and a working toilet with water coming in and a way for him to let it out. We got the stairs downstairs done and we built a tree outside his window and we put a couple birds there.

He woke up and we watched him look at the world we'd created for him. Nice!

 

*

 

We love our flowers. A field's the pleasantest place to lie supine, what with big blossoms at both ears to listen closely to, with the sky's empty endlessness nigh unto the sensate horizon giving up no buzzy distraction. It's May, maybe, with the wet wild daisies dancing like Carmen Mirandian mermaids. They move in unison unconsciously as caused by a second party of the wind, with their dainty daisy petals (remember believing in the prescience of daisies?) fluttering aslant their sideways planes.

Number in pen the numerous petals and odds are you'll find a prime, and circle the fifths and you'll return to where you started, but now enlightened and an octave higher.

You're looking through the nothing of the sky and peripherally at the superabundant flowering dancing daisies, thinking there are well more than a hundred adjectives one could add to them. They're aflame these lovely flowers with a billion shades from russet red to callous yellow and they're indifferent to your ears and eyes for they're happy just being what they are. They don't need you to smell them; they are a pure gift, nothing ventured nothing gained, so love them for what they are, in an unconditional.

 

*

 

"So okay I'm using double quotes instead of single quotes but that don't make me American. Berlin Alexanderplatz I'm reading again, on page 98 or something. This is literary criticism. I'm barefoot now because my feet stink otherwise. It's complained by the translator that Döblin's other stuff pales by comparison--which it does, as I found myself, because his novel called November 1918 sucked balls. There's other stuff in the world. You seen this, stud? Russkie TV show called The Road to Calvary, for me the mystery was why the Russian Federation paid to have these Stalin Prize novels made into a TV show, an' it was all because the show was about the unified spirit of the Russkies, something Stalin and Putin could agree upon. I have to get up early Tuesday. I'll have to be setting the alarm for 4:30. I got a grip on Henry James now, having learned there was a book written about his errors. I read a bit about it in the TLS, which means my mentioning it qualifies me for NB's tally of the TLS mentioned in Literature. It don't make me American, these double quotes, but I like their looks, and so."

 

*

 

An old god creaked down from reality's rafters

to give forth volume two of Sylvia Plath's letters

(ISBN-13 978-0062

(740588) who

returned to heaven then, leaving us to

once again uselessly attempt to

make her immortal mortality a thing to eat

like any other smelly prof of lit;

for sure she had an acceptable enough weight

and yup she probably was an average 1932-born height;

yet she's a silvered myth, like Klytemnestra,

Cleopatra, Catherine Wuthering, Medea,

consumed by love and resentment, plus a cold oven;

apparently Ted Hughes wasn't interested in children

but Syl could think of little else, so the story

goes; and now a monument of mind's been gloried

that travels fast as thought; the woman scorned,

the biting lip, the children reluctantly born,

some little writer for Good Housekeeping dwarfed

by a Cornish cock of the chalk believed

to be the next thing in more Anglo than Saxon

raw blood spilled on the ground versification;

and she, so small you could hold her waist in two fists,

living by trying to rely on her womanly wits;

and now she's know more by her death than by her lines‑

for her poems aren't that much better than mine.

 

*

 

We've finally come to the end of 2018! It took an extra fifty days, but it's now officially 2019. The year got extended, as you know, by a couple deaths and funerals in December and January, but those times are done now.

It was an eventful year, especially at the end. However, this New Year can't statistically be as eventful, all things considered. Firstly, 2018 had 415 days while 2019 will only have 315: that's about 75% fewer days. Secondly, those two deaths could have happened but once, and they both happened in 2018.

So here's to 2019! Cross fingers!