Tuesday’s blog is full of grace. Full of something anyway.
Saturday
I went to see the folks last weekend. While waiting in San Francisco for the bus to take me to Emeryville, where the train itself disembarks, I wandered around the Farmer’s Market, which now occupies the Ferry Building – greengrocers, coffee joints, delicatessens, cheese shops, fishmongers, etc.
All the shops were clean and spotless, and all the customers upscale and white. Trim women in white carrying wicker baskets with one baguette, couples in matching Patagonia vests squeezing pomegranates, young women with pony tails sticking out from the back of their baseball caps, lining up for lattes. It was all very…. designer-ish, and depressing. As if we now need artistic concepts – mission statements! – to buy or sell produce.
Adage
The less we have to say, the more in love with our voices we become.
Saturday 2
On the bench at the bus stop, a young woman was leaned over, talking on her cell phone, revealing the small of her back, and the cleft of her buttocks. She was wearing thongs. What’s the deal with thongs? I can’t imagine anything more uncomfortable. It’s like giving yourself a wedgie.
Boarding the bus, she was still on the cell phone. Talking loudly: “I told that fuckin’ bitch, you stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of yours. Yeah. My fuckin’ Mom wouldn’t let me. I said Fuck you Mom. All for fuckin’ two hundred dollars!..." Etc. For twenty minutes!
Finally some guy in the front of the bus turned around and said, “Enough with the fuckin’s! This isn’t your phone booth!”
The young woman immediately lowered her voice, but was still talking when we got off the bus.
Folks
The folks were fine. Dad’s getting more vague every time I see him, but he’s still alert. He can remember events from seventy years back, but can’t remember what happened five minutes ago. Mother is coping, but suspects this will be their last year in the double-wide. Managed care beckons.
Fetching the mail on the way to the double-wide, my mother found a magazine whose subscription she has cancelled twice. She was irked by its presence.
This prompted my father to mention a woman in North Dakota (where he grew up) named Mrs. Finscher. Whenever she got mail she did not want, she would write “Kiss my ass” on it, and drop it off at the post office. This was in the 1920’s.
She was a very tall woman, my father recalls, with a small husband, always trotting in her wake.
Duck’s Breath DVD
Bill is coming over tomorrow to discuss promotion ideas. A final schedule for its release is imminent! Imminent, I tell you!
I went to see the folks last weekend. While waiting in San Francisco for the bus to take me to Emeryville, where the train itself disembarks, I wandered around the Farmer’s Market, which now occupies the Ferry Building – greengrocers, coffee joints, delicatessens, cheese shops, fishmongers, etc.
All the shops were clean and spotless, and all the customers upscale and white. Trim women in white carrying wicker baskets with one baguette, couples in matching Patagonia vests squeezing pomegranates, young women with pony tails sticking out from the back of their baseball caps, lining up for lattes. It was all very…. designer-ish, and depressing. As if we now need artistic concepts – mission statements! – to buy or sell produce.
Adage
The less we have to say, the more in love with our voices we become.
Saturday 2
On the bench at the bus stop, a young woman was leaned over, talking on her cell phone, revealing the small of her back, and the cleft of her buttocks. She was wearing thongs. What’s the deal with thongs? I can’t imagine anything more uncomfortable. It’s like giving yourself a wedgie.
Boarding the bus, she was still on the cell phone. Talking loudly: “I told that fuckin’ bitch, you stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of yours. Yeah. My fuckin’ Mom wouldn’t let me. I said Fuck you Mom. All for fuckin’ two hundred dollars!..." Etc. For twenty minutes!
Finally some guy in the front of the bus turned around and said, “Enough with the fuckin’s! This isn’t your phone booth!”
The young woman immediately lowered her voice, but was still talking when we got off the bus.
Folks
The folks were fine. Dad’s getting more vague every time I see him, but he’s still alert. He can remember events from seventy years back, but can’t remember what happened five minutes ago. Mother is coping, but suspects this will be their last year in the double-wide. Managed care beckons.
Fetching the mail on the way to the double-wide, my mother found a magazine whose subscription she has cancelled twice. She was irked by its presence.
This prompted my father to mention a woman in North Dakota (where he grew up) named Mrs. Finscher. Whenever she got mail she did not want, she would write “Kiss my ass” on it, and drop it off at the post office. This was in the 1920’s.
She was a very tall woman, my father recalls, with a small husband, always trotting in her wake.
Duck’s Breath DVD
Bill is coming over tomorrow to discuss promotion ideas. A final schedule for its release is imminent! Imminent, I tell you!
posted by Merle Kessler at 5:16 PM
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