A long time ago I had the idea of writing a short story about a future time in America when everyone's grocery store purchases would be instantly fed into a state-managed computer database, so that the government could keep track of the nutritional quality of citizens' food choices. And even while you were standing in line at the checkout, the conveyor belt could stop and your transaction could be suspended if the computer noticed that you had already bought your quota of fat or sweets for the week.
It may not be in the health care bill, but then again, who knows? Can I get points for prescience?
Showing posts with label "creative non-fiction". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "creative non-fiction". Show all posts
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Le domicile du Pressing: the diary
Such excitement. All are waiting with bated breath to hear what it was like to feel "the wrath of Sarah." I made a few major mistakes in one day, and they have warned me that my time will come. They have warned me to brace myself for that phone call.
The call came, and Sarah was quite pleasant. "That mistake is so easy to make, just be more careful," etc. Certainly. And as for the instructions on how to deal with high-fashion, expensive garments, well, simply hit the double-charge, High Fashion button on the computer screen, "and walk away. If they can afford $1500 St. John knits, they can afford the dry cleaning upcharge."
Certainly. Only as soon as I got off the phone with Sarah -- who signs the paychecks, let us not forget -- and answered Jorie's eager questions about the conversation, Jorie opened her large round pretty brown eyes and said, "Oh my God, don't ever do that. Sarah doesn't know what we do here. We never double charge customers for that. Just have them sign a release and treat the stuff like everything else. They don't want to pay that kind of money."
Really. "Oh yes. And if you do what she says, the next day you'll get a phone call screaming at you for that. That happened to me once."
Well. What a minefield. Shall I call Sarah again and tell her 'your employees here say you don't know what you're doing'? And then yesterday, another angry customer on the phone. "You never do a good job with our things. I come in and I joke about it with Marge and Joann. We get along great, but it's a joke. We all say, well, what special requests have been ignored now, and what designer clothes have they ruined now?" I called Sarah to tell her of the dissatisfied customer, but left out the details about how the employees joke with the customers about what a lousy operation the entire business is.
These women, I begin to think, have created their own little world here, and it's quite pleasant for them and especially for the favored customers who like to come in and visit and talk with Marge and Joann about their health problems. My position is peculiar as newcomer, as incognita potential manager, and as recent trainee fresh from the plant, where everything is done by the book and video cameras carry pictures and sound from the front desk area back to Sarah's office. No kidding. She makes it her business, literally, to hear and see everything.
She is the center of these women's world, even in a separate physical building miles away, without video cameras. Everybody was agog, half the week, to know what Sarah said to Nancy about those two Major Mistakes. It so happened that only Jorie was present when I received the phone call, and I never brought up the subject with any of the others. But they all knew it was coming. Marge forewarned me, in fact explaining all one afternoon as soon as I arrived and saying, purring, "Oh my God, get ready, this is like the worst thing you can do. I'm surprised she hasn't called already. Maybe she isn't there."
And they'll hear the details tomorrow, from another source. Pam asked me frankly about it yesterday. "Oh, it was fine," I answered, truthfully. "She just said it was an easy mistake to make, and to be more careful next time." Pam looked at me. "Oh, that's interesting," she said. "I'm sure it's because it was your first time." Yes, it probably was. And Joann was present to hear this brief little explanation. So tomorrow, Marge will hear about it. And the salivating and backbiting and eyerolling will continue, and the instructions "never" to do what Sarah says, because she thinks she knows what goes on, but she really doesn't.
Yes. Beware.
The call came, and Sarah was quite pleasant. "That mistake is so easy to make, just be more careful," etc. Certainly. And as for the instructions on how to deal with high-fashion, expensive garments, well, simply hit the double-charge, High Fashion button on the computer screen, "and walk away. If they can afford $1500 St. John knits, they can afford the dry cleaning upcharge."
Certainly. Only as soon as I got off the phone with Sarah -- who signs the paychecks, let us not forget -- and answered Jorie's eager questions about the conversation, Jorie opened her large round pretty brown eyes and said, "Oh my God, don't ever do that. Sarah doesn't know what we do here. We never double charge customers for that. Just have them sign a release and treat the stuff like everything else. They don't want to pay that kind of money."
Really. "Oh yes. And if you do what she says, the next day you'll get a phone call screaming at you for that. That happened to me once."
Well. What a minefield. Shall I call Sarah again and tell her 'your employees here say you don't know what you're doing'? And then yesterday, another angry customer on the phone. "You never do a good job with our things. I come in and I joke about it with Marge and Joann. We get along great, but it's a joke. We all say, well, what special requests have been ignored now, and what designer clothes have they ruined now?" I called Sarah to tell her of the dissatisfied customer, but left out the details about how the employees joke with the customers about what a lousy operation the entire business is.
These women, I begin to think, have created their own little world here, and it's quite pleasant for them and especially for the favored customers who like to come in and visit and talk with Marge and Joann about their health problems. My position is peculiar as newcomer, as incognita potential manager, and as recent trainee fresh from the plant, where everything is done by the book and video cameras carry pictures and sound from the front desk area back to Sarah's office. No kidding. She makes it her business, literally, to hear and see everything.
She is the center of these women's world, even in a separate physical building miles away, without video cameras. Everybody was agog, half the week, to know what Sarah said to Nancy about those two Major Mistakes. It so happened that only Jorie was present when I received the phone call, and I never brought up the subject with any of the others. But they all knew it was coming. Marge forewarned me, in fact explaining all one afternoon as soon as I arrived and saying, purring, "Oh my God, get ready, this is like the worst thing you can do. I'm surprised she hasn't called already. Maybe she isn't there."
And they'll hear the details tomorrow, from another source. Pam asked me frankly about it yesterday. "Oh, it was fine," I answered, truthfully. "She just said it was an easy mistake to make, and to be more careful next time." Pam looked at me. "Oh, that's interesting," she said. "I'm sure it's because it was your first time." Yes, it probably was. And Joann was present to hear this brief little explanation. So tomorrow, Marge will hear about it. And the salivating and backbiting and eyerolling will continue, and the instructions "never" to do what Sarah says, because she thinks she knows what goes on, but she really doesn't.
Yes. Beware.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Le domicile du Pressing: diary
So I come home from work. So I've had an annoying day. My schedule was changed, not once but twice, to accomodate two teenaged girls who had to serve detentions at school today, and who could not therefore work the evening shift they usually do.
So I work from noon to six, with responsibility for closing up, at which task I am still a tad new and unpracticed. Fine.
So I arrive for work at noon. Having already had this schedule changed, too. I was due to come in at 11:00 am. So I've lost an hour's pay. Fine.
So I arrive, and yes, I am wearing my loud necklace of colored beads and my new gray sweater and my lipstick, while my coworker Joann wears a ponytail and apricot-colored fleece jackets with the "Columbia" logo on them, every day. She looks as though she's on the crew of a space shuttle. So, fine.
So I am ready to work. I punch in, go up front to make myself useful, and Joann says, Oh why don't you just go back and bag those few things, real quick, and then come up here and help us.
Fine. Mom raised me to be agreeable. The fact that I was hired for this job as the incoming manager is not something that veteran Joann or anyone else, including the teen girls who will leave at the end of the summer anyway, need to know. Just yet.
So I go back to the back room, and "bag." It seems to me that it frequently works out this way: I end up doing some kind of necessary work alone, while the other two or three staff happen to end up doing some other kind of necessary work, together. Fine.
Life at a dry cleaner's is hugely complex, more so than one could ever appreciate without working at one. Bagging clean clothes for pickup is one of the tasks that I do least. Therefore I am slow. When I delint those clothes, by golly, I delint them. I was trained at the main plant by "Bictoria," who spoke Spanish, wore two colors of lipstick at once, had a blond perm, and could spot a millimeter of lint at ten paces. She obviously took pride in her job, and made it look like the ballet. Who knows what the customer might see and be offended at, in a hand-finished garment? Victoria knew.
You sign your name to every single invoice after you have finished. Men's suits are treated differently than women's suits. Four pairs of trousers are acceptable under one paper cape, but only two shirts. Tissue paper in the sleeves. Every other button buttoned. Wool coats are delinted with a rake, charcoal, rough brush, soft brush, and then sticky tape. Ties, sweaters, trousers (crease or no crease?) all have their own protocols. Add drapes, leathers, formal gowns, scarves, down coats, comforters. Bag it, take it off the bagging stand, hang it on its own order hook. Sign off. Tie the items of one order together. One item? Wrap a glaring orange "1 item" sticker around the hanger. If anything is wrong, you'll hear about it.
So I bag. There is a clock directly in front of me. I know perfectly well that the young girls who bag are as quick as lightning about it, almost. To Joann -- who is my age -- and to them, five or six orders, such as I have been directed to take care of, would be done "real quick."
Alas, I am not quick. I concentrate on being quick and develop butterfingers. I forget basic things. Papers and tissues slip from my dry winter-stressed fingertips, big clothes hooks swing and catch each other on the "line" and fall to the floor. Twenty minutes pass. Then another twenty. I could vow that every time I look at this pair of black pants, I see three more dog hairs. Yes, Joann would be done by now. But she's also the one who has comments "in her file" in the boss's office, such that she cannot be manager of this store. Ever.
I have worked long enough with these women to know that their hugest entertainment is talking eagerly about people -- each other, customers, the boss, in fact anyone not present in the room. If you are out of earshot, you are fair game. All right, fair enough. There is human nature, in all its glory, and I do the same myself. But I know without fail that under the circumstances, my three coworkers are now discussing me. What is taking her so long. Half the stuff is sweaters and they're already bagged!
After forty-five minutes, the young girl who is routinely in the most trouble -- everyone thinks she's so cute, although that staple through the customer's silk blouse almost got her fired last week -- wanders back and asks me, "how ya doin', Nance?"
"I'm good, how are you?"
"Good. I get to leave at 2:00."
"Cool!"
After an hour and ten minutes, I am done. I must telephone one customer, as per instructions on the invoice, and am compelled therefore to venture into the front of the store to get a phone number from the computer. It is quite awkward. I am perfectly aware of stifled laughter, and it's not paranoia, it's stifled laughter. Especially from Joann, with the blue circles under her eyes and that unfortunate overbite.
I rejoin the group, and they chatter on as usual. Women brood, which is what gives them such fuel for gossip, which I don't like. Nevertheless I brood. There is something annoying about having been distinctly treated as a twelve-year-old by people who -- well, who should be gracious enough to know that one isn't twelve.
The day passes. The manager later attempts to give me quickie instructions in the closing and money-counting procedures that she has done practically in her sleep for fourteen years. "It would have been such an easy transition," she said to me not long after I was hired, if only Joann or Marge could have taken on the manager's job she is leaving. I fantasize about firing Joann.
I close up properly, and go home.
At home, I have a half-box of angel hair pasta on hand, plus some leftover broccoli cooked with garlic and fresh basil leaves in the fridge. I cook the pasta, drain it, dump in the cold smushy broccoli, and add a pat of butter and some milk. I heat it all up, put it in a bowl, and add salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese. It looks like such a lot. Good grief, my eyes were bigger than my stomach.
I inhale three bowls of it. And I wash it down with my ultimate comfort wine, Frontera Rose from Chile ($4.99, and the jewel-like color and juicy taste of red grapefruit). As I vent, now, I am at the bottom of my second glass of that, but it is a very small, antique sort of glass, so don't worry.
Next, some chocolate, and maybe a glass of warm milk. Then maybe a movie, or a book? Then bed. And a firm vow never, never to wear apricot colored fleece jackets. Yes, yes, she's very nice and helps me a great deal with my newbie's questions. I appreciate that. Don't we all.
And how was your day?
So I work from noon to six, with responsibility for closing up, at which task I am still a tad new and unpracticed. Fine.
So I arrive for work at noon. Having already had this schedule changed, too. I was due to come in at 11:00 am. So I've lost an hour's pay. Fine.
So I arrive, and yes, I am wearing my loud necklace of colored beads and my new gray sweater and my lipstick, while my coworker Joann wears a ponytail and apricot-colored fleece jackets with the "Columbia" logo on them, every day. She looks as though she's on the crew of a space shuttle. So, fine.
So I am ready to work. I punch in, go up front to make myself useful, and Joann says, Oh why don't you just go back and bag those few things, real quick, and then come up here and help us.
Fine. Mom raised me to be agreeable. The fact that I was hired for this job as the incoming manager is not something that veteran Joann or anyone else, including the teen girls who will leave at the end of the summer anyway, need to know. Just yet.
So I go back to the back room, and "bag." It seems to me that it frequently works out this way: I end up doing some kind of necessary work alone, while the other two or three staff happen to end up doing some other kind of necessary work, together. Fine.
Life at a dry cleaner's is hugely complex, more so than one could ever appreciate without working at one. Bagging clean clothes for pickup is one of the tasks that I do least. Therefore I am slow. When I delint those clothes, by golly, I delint them. I was trained at the main plant by "Bictoria," who spoke Spanish, wore two colors of lipstick at once, had a blond perm, and could spot a millimeter of lint at ten paces. She obviously took pride in her job, and made it look like the ballet. Who knows what the customer might see and be offended at, in a hand-finished garment? Victoria knew.
You sign your name to every single invoice after you have finished. Men's suits are treated differently than women's suits. Four pairs of trousers are acceptable under one paper cape, but only two shirts. Tissue paper in the sleeves. Every other button buttoned. Wool coats are delinted with a rake, charcoal, rough brush, soft brush, and then sticky tape. Ties, sweaters, trousers (crease or no crease?) all have their own protocols. Add drapes, leathers, formal gowns, scarves, down coats, comforters. Bag it, take it off the bagging stand, hang it on its own order hook. Sign off. Tie the items of one order together. One item? Wrap a glaring orange "1 item" sticker around the hanger. If anything is wrong, you'll hear about it.
So I bag. There is a clock directly in front of me. I know perfectly well that the young girls who bag are as quick as lightning about it, almost. To Joann -- who is my age -- and to them, five or six orders, such as I have been directed to take care of, would be done "real quick."
Alas, I am not quick. I concentrate on being quick and develop butterfingers. I forget basic things. Papers and tissues slip from my dry winter-stressed fingertips, big clothes hooks swing and catch each other on the "line" and fall to the floor. Twenty minutes pass. Then another twenty. I could vow that every time I look at this pair of black pants, I see three more dog hairs. Yes, Joann would be done by now. But she's also the one who has comments "in her file" in the boss's office, such that she cannot be manager of this store. Ever.
I have worked long enough with these women to know that their hugest entertainment is talking eagerly about people -- each other, customers, the boss, in fact anyone not present in the room. If you are out of earshot, you are fair game. All right, fair enough. There is human nature, in all its glory, and I do the same myself. But I know without fail that under the circumstances, my three coworkers are now discussing me. What is taking her so long. Half the stuff is sweaters and they're already bagged!
After forty-five minutes, the young girl who is routinely in the most trouble -- everyone thinks she's so cute, although that staple through the customer's silk blouse almost got her fired last week -- wanders back and asks me, "how ya doin', Nance?"
"I'm good, how are you?"
"Good. I get to leave at 2:00."
"Cool!"
After an hour and ten minutes, I am done. I must telephone one customer, as per instructions on the invoice, and am compelled therefore to venture into the front of the store to get a phone number from the computer. It is quite awkward. I am perfectly aware of stifled laughter, and it's not paranoia, it's stifled laughter. Especially from Joann, with the blue circles under her eyes and that unfortunate overbite.
I rejoin the group, and they chatter on as usual. Women brood, which is what gives them such fuel for gossip, which I don't like. Nevertheless I brood. There is something annoying about having been distinctly treated as a twelve-year-old by people who -- well, who should be gracious enough to know that one isn't twelve.
The day passes. The manager later attempts to give me quickie instructions in the closing and money-counting procedures that she has done practically in her sleep for fourteen years. "It would have been such an easy transition," she said to me not long after I was hired, if only Joann or Marge could have taken on the manager's job she is leaving. I fantasize about firing Joann.
I close up properly, and go home.
At home, I have a half-box of angel hair pasta on hand, plus some leftover broccoli cooked with garlic and fresh basil leaves in the fridge. I cook the pasta, drain it, dump in the cold smushy broccoli, and add a pat of butter and some milk. I heat it all up, put it in a bowl, and add salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese. It looks like such a lot. Good grief, my eyes were bigger than my stomach.
I inhale three bowls of it. And I wash it down with my ultimate comfort wine, Frontera Rose from Chile ($4.99, and the jewel-like color and juicy taste of red grapefruit). As I vent, now, I am at the bottom of my second glass of that, but it is a very small, antique sort of glass, so don't worry.
Next, some chocolate, and maybe a glass of warm milk. Then maybe a movie, or a book? Then bed. And a firm vow never, never to wear apricot colored fleece jackets. Yes, yes, she's very nice and helps me a great deal with my newbie's questions. I appreciate that. Don't we all.
And how was your day?
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Best friends
Friendship, it strikes me, is a very odd thing. I suppose I had better take the hint, and leave Melissa alone. She has not responded to a list of dates I gave her for potential meetings (just like Lucia and Mr. Somerset Maugham) and now, I would imagine, she is suffering her famous and socially paralyzing "guilt." Far be it from me to add to it. How odd to think that this could be the end of contact between us.
Of course I am not surprised that after twenty-five years, old school chums should have little in common, but I am always perplexed as to what makes friendships work. We are very much alike, she and I. Maybe that's a problem.
I went out Friday night with Nina, and Debbi and Debi, and Maria, who is not quite the cipher in the group that I am. It's a little like watching a live sitcom for four hours. They just talk and talk. I almost literally cannot get a word in edgewise. They are beginning to repeat stories of colonoscopies and mammograms, and Debbi must have forgotten that she has already told us of the two hundred and fourteen cortisone injections to her head, to combat the stress-induced hair loss she suffered when her eldest was preparing to go away to school. We got that tale again. Five bald spots, each the size of a dime, four thousand hairs per spot, the doctor said. When I stayed quiet long enough, they said "poor Nancy" in that tone reserved for young people bored by their ill elders. But I am their contemporary.
And they still eagerly share stories about arguing with their teen daughters over clothing choices and hairstyles, and about following their teen daughters' friends' Facebook pages and putative sex lives. Debi told of marching to the town hall to ask what she could do to help while the town was flooding. The men filling sandbags were not impressed with her, so she went to rescue her aunt instead. Then she made her daughters go fill sandbags the next day. Last time we got together, she had stories of badgering some authority figure in a bank to compel him to offer her a discount rate that had expired but that she wanted anyway. "I beat them at their own game," she said, "I just kept on asking to see a higher manager." And her beautiful bell-like laugh rang out, then, too. "I got through three levels of authority."
It seems that people who are capable of holding the floor and talking endlessly are also the ones most capable of friendships. And yet that personality type would seem to be the one not interested in people, and therefore unfriendly. The four of them are planning, again, to go to Nina's condo in Florida for a weekend. (They have never yet actually gone.) On the one hand, I'm tempted to go. On the other, I would not dream of going. Two and a half days of listening to them talk. No. But I'll bet they'll have fun.
There are people with whom I have broken contact, or not maintained contact, people who, once again, would seem obviously compatible with me. The sweet country mouse types, though I loathe thinking of myself in that light. So I know (back to the top of the page) what it is to do what Melissa is essentially doing. Breaking contact, and no ill will intended. "I'm just not that into you." But I do also keep reaching out -- I think -- to incompatible women, because they are there and they are my most recent associations, and without them I would know no one except my family and my in-laws. Yet I would not dream of closing the deal, so to speak, of sharing some sort of heart-to-heart with Nina, or Debbi or Debi or Maria. I wonder if they do that with one another?
Then there is Sandra, my ex-boss. The one who always clapped her hand over her mouth whenever she swore in front of me, giggling that she feared to corrupt me. "I don't want to lose your friendship," she said. Fine. We are not compatible at all, but I was the last one to, once again, offer her a possible lunch date when she asked for one. She has not responded. That's perfectly fine, natural. (What on earth would we talk about? Ex-work? Cuss words?) The last time I saw her, she came into the store talking on her cell phone, in the midst of planning a drinking date with a girlfriend. Her voice was so easy, warm, and happy. It made me wonder, as always, what do people see in each other? What do they say? I know, talking of old school chums, that Melissa has always maintained a friendship with Janet and with Linda, too, come to think of it. Across and through the twenty-five years. Calls them on the phone and visits them, visited Linda and stayed with her at her house while Linda was going through a divorce, no less. Melissa actually witnessed some of the fights, and silently took the husband's part. Incredible. What are they giving and receiving?
I know full well that I have puzzled over this since I was a teenager, when friends like Melissa used to ask casually "what I was doing this week" and I would respond with instinctive wariness, fearful that they were laying a trap and wanted me to go do some wild thing. I know full well that the answer to my friendship questions has always been directly under my nose. I am a writer and a reader, and if I wanted a huge and bubbly circle of friends I would have had one many times over by now. It can just seem, sometimes, that all the women in the world who have friends pass one by, smiling, and caress one's head absently like a pet, before attending to their real interests and to the wonderful rich secret-code joys of their friendships.
Rain. An e-mail pops up. If it's from Melissa, to arrange a dinner date, then all the above is negated, and one starts over.
Of course I am not surprised that after twenty-five years, old school chums should have little in common, but I am always perplexed as to what makes friendships work. We are very much alike, she and I. Maybe that's a problem.
I went out Friday night with Nina, and Debbi and Debi, and Maria, who is not quite the cipher in the group that I am. It's a little like watching a live sitcom for four hours. They just talk and talk. I almost literally cannot get a word in edgewise. They are beginning to repeat stories of colonoscopies and mammograms, and Debbi must have forgotten that she has already told us of the two hundred and fourteen cortisone injections to her head, to combat the stress-induced hair loss she suffered when her eldest was preparing to go away to school. We got that tale again. Five bald spots, each the size of a dime, four thousand hairs per spot, the doctor said. When I stayed quiet long enough, they said "poor Nancy" in that tone reserved for young people bored by their ill elders. But I am their contemporary.
And they still eagerly share stories about arguing with their teen daughters over clothing choices and hairstyles, and about following their teen daughters' friends' Facebook pages and putative sex lives. Debi told of marching to the town hall to ask what she could do to help while the town was flooding. The men filling sandbags were not impressed with her, so she went to rescue her aunt instead. Then she made her daughters go fill sandbags the next day. Last time we got together, she had stories of badgering some authority figure in a bank to compel him to offer her a discount rate that had expired but that she wanted anyway. "I beat them at their own game," she said, "I just kept on asking to see a higher manager." And her beautiful bell-like laugh rang out, then, too. "I got through three levels of authority."
It seems that people who are capable of holding the floor and talking endlessly are also the ones most capable of friendships. And yet that personality type would seem to be the one not interested in people, and therefore unfriendly. The four of them are planning, again, to go to Nina's condo in Florida for a weekend. (They have never yet actually gone.) On the one hand, I'm tempted to go. On the other, I would not dream of going. Two and a half days of listening to them talk. No. But I'll bet they'll have fun.
There are people with whom I have broken contact, or not maintained contact, people who, once again, would seem obviously compatible with me. The sweet country mouse types, though I loathe thinking of myself in that light. So I know (back to the top of the page) what it is to do what Melissa is essentially doing. Breaking contact, and no ill will intended. "I'm just not that into you." But I do also keep reaching out -- I think -- to incompatible women, because they are there and they are my most recent associations, and without them I would know no one except my family and my in-laws. Yet I would not dream of closing the deal, so to speak, of sharing some sort of heart-to-heart with Nina, or Debbi or Debi or Maria. I wonder if they do that with one another?
Then there is Sandra, my ex-boss. The one who always clapped her hand over her mouth whenever she swore in front of me, giggling that she feared to corrupt me. "I don't want to lose your friendship," she said. Fine. We are not compatible at all, but I was the last one to, once again, offer her a possible lunch date when she asked for one. She has not responded. That's perfectly fine, natural. (What on earth would we talk about? Ex-work? Cuss words?) The last time I saw her, she came into the store talking on her cell phone, in the midst of planning a drinking date with a girlfriend. Her voice was so easy, warm, and happy. It made me wonder, as always, what do people see in each other? What do they say? I know, talking of old school chums, that Melissa has always maintained a friendship with Janet and with Linda, too, come to think of it. Across and through the twenty-five years. Calls them on the phone and visits them, visited Linda and stayed with her at her house while Linda was going through a divorce, no less. Melissa actually witnessed some of the fights, and silently took the husband's part. Incredible. What are they giving and receiving?
I know full well that I have puzzled over this since I was a teenager, when friends like Melissa used to ask casually "what I was doing this week" and I would respond with instinctive wariness, fearful that they were laying a trap and wanted me to go do some wild thing. I know full well that the answer to my friendship questions has always been directly under my nose. I am a writer and a reader, and if I wanted a huge and bubbly circle of friends I would have had one many times over by now. It can just seem, sometimes, that all the women in the world who have friends pass one by, smiling, and caress one's head absently like a pet, before attending to their real interests and to the wonderful rich secret-code joys of their friendships.
Rain. An e-mail pops up. If it's from Melissa, to arrange a dinner date, then all the above is negated, and one starts over.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Diary with Hero
Sunday. Only twenty years on, I have discovered the iconic Die Hard movies. One sits through a festival of gore and profanity, in order to arrive at the scenes of heroic rescue at the end, especially the ends of the first two movies, in which the hero rescues his wife. Probably equally a male as a female fantasy, especially in movie number 1, at the end of which the hero, in shock from all the killing, hands her down like a queen from the rubble -- and then protects her again. All the while covered in his own and other men's blood. A kind of Christ figure? No; Odysseus perhaps.
Anyway, extremely pleasurable. The strong, decent man going through hell for justice and for his woman. It's ridiculous of course -- if he turned green and immense and hollered "Hulk smash!" I would have no patience with him, but he may as well do that -- but one waits for solitude the next day for a chance to slip the movie back into the DVD player, and fast forward to the scenes of rescue. He staggers, weak and bloodied, through the snow, calling his wife's name, and weeps when he finds her. He -- Bruce Willis -- proved himself a pretty believable cry-er in the first film, and so a poorer set of scriptwriters gave him more crying scenes in the second.
Tuesday. Alas, can't get the DVD player to work. It pixelates at that scene. Proof of over-use perhaps? A few hundred other human beings have also wanted to see just that, just one more time?
Friday. It's funny how the appetite for hero worship never goes away -- human nature, I suppose -- and one is really almost disappointed to learn that the actor, not necessarily this one but any one, is just another human being, who dates starlets or gets thrown out of nightclubs or whatever. And when one particular fictional crush wears off, you wonder what was inadequate about you that you needed to fall for that. In reality, there wasn't anything wrong with you, you're just a human being and you like heroes and gods. I have no doubt that plenty of the great figures of history, especially the religious figures, were handsome men. Only that first draws the human eye, and introduces the theme of -- I was going to say godliness. No; god-likeness.
Anyway. Great fun. And will be again.
Sunday. Didn't I say so? Twenty years on: Nights in Rodanthe. One sits through a festival of beautifully coiffed people dealing with fake problems. "You weren't there for me"/"I wasn't there for him," etc. The beach. Richard Gere -- and I have always meant to see Days of Heaven, it's said to be marvelous -- in whose face I can faintly see the cute-as-a-button old man he is going to become. Watch the movie: there's got to be a rescue soon, because that is tantamount to permission to make love, especially between two characters who have just argued. Ah, yes, here it comes! The hurricane. The crashing china cabinet. She is about to be crushed. He leaps and pushes her out of the way. Perfect. I still think I prefer the fantasy full-blown, a la Die Hard, guns blazing and the hero facing far more formidable foes than toppling furniture.
Great fun, and will be again. Haven't I said so?
Anyway, extremely pleasurable. The strong, decent man going through hell for justice and for his woman. It's ridiculous of course -- if he turned green and immense and hollered "Hulk smash!" I would have no patience with him, but he may as well do that -- but one waits for solitude the next day for a chance to slip the movie back into the DVD player, and fast forward to the scenes of rescue. He staggers, weak and bloodied, through the snow, calling his wife's name, and weeps when he finds her. He -- Bruce Willis -- proved himself a pretty believable cry-er in the first film, and so a poorer set of scriptwriters gave him more crying scenes in the second.
Tuesday. Alas, can't get the DVD player to work. It pixelates at that scene. Proof of over-use perhaps? A few hundred other human beings have also wanted to see just that, just one more time?
Friday. It's funny how the appetite for hero worship never goes away -- human nature, I suppose -- and one is really almost disappointed to learn that the actor, not necessarily this one but any one, is just another human being, who dates starlets or gets thrown out of nightclubs or whatever. And when one particular fictional crush wears off, you wonder what was inadequate about you that you needed to fall for that. In reality, there wasn't anything wrong with you, you're just a human being and you like heroes and gods. I have no doubt that plenty of the great figures of history, especially the religious figures, were handsome men. Only that first draws the human eye, and introduces the theme of -- I was going to say godliness. No; god-likeness.
Anyway. Great fun. And will be again.
Sunday. Didn't I say so? Twenty years on: Nights in Rodanthe. One sits through a festival of beautifully coiffed people dealing with fake problems. "You weren't there for me"/"I wasn't there for him," etc. The beach. Richard Gere -- and I have always meant to see Days of Heaven, it's said to be marvelous -- in whose face I can faintly see the cute-as-a-button old man he is going to become. Watch the movie: there's got to be a rescue soon, because that is tantamount to permission to make love, especially between two characters who have just argued. Ah, yes, here it comes! The hurricane. The crashing china cabinet. She is about to be crushed. He leaps and pushes her out of the way. Perfect. I still think I prefer the fantasy full-blown, a la Die Hard, guns blazing and the hero facing far more formidable foes than toppling furniture.
Great fun, and will be again. Haven't I said so?
Sunday, March 16, 2008
A Pearl of Time
We try to imagine what it must mean for a man to throw over everything, the world, his life, for a woman. How on earth does a governor meet a nun? No matter. He met her. It was the year 827 AD, in Sicily. The Greek Byzantine governor was named Euthymius.
Picture 827. Charlemagne, dead these thirteen years, founded the Holy Roman Empire of the west twenty-seven years before, a scandal and affront to the truly and anciently Roman east, Byzantium. The people are at least nominally Christian in Sicily, in Italy, in France, in England, in Ireland. They are no longer Christian in North Africa or the middle or near East (the Muslims have arrived), nor are they in Germany, the Slavic lands, or the Baltic. In those cold wild forests the tribesmen are all still pagan, worshipping Thor until the missionaries come. They sing Beowulf there. All Spain except the north has been conquered by the Muslims. The Vikings prey upon Britain and Ireland, and will begin to prey upon France, Germany, and Russia in another generation or so. Magyars, Avars, and Slavs will throw their own weights into the scales of power. Perhaps the chaos and darkness of the time -- at least, as later times judged it -- can best be illustrated by pointing out that here, in Rome the former center of the world, we are in the era to which legend assigns the woman Pope, Joan. What could be more awful?
Look in a book of Western fashions: men and women at this time dress in a kind of half-way style between the togas, smocks, and veils of antiquity, and the trousered, skirted, and belted styles of the modern age. Look at the world through their eyes: if they are literate, they will read the church Fathers and some of the Bible. Dante has not yet lived, and medieval epics like Parsifal or The Song of Roland have not been set down. If they go for a walk, they will not see or venture into the great Gothic cathedrals or the gray, round-walled castles which we tourists still flock to now. They have not yet been built. Charlemagne's palace chapel at Aachen is there; in Sicily, the remains of the old Greek temples are there, and in better shape than we are privileged to see.
In the middle of all this, smack in the middle of the Mediterranean, Euthymius the governor met a woman, a nun. How? Did he catch a glimpse of her singing in the choir at a cathedral – Palermo, Syracuse, Messina – as he attended mass on some state occasion? Did she retreat, bowing humbly before him, as he inspected her charges at a leper hospital? Did she, at forty perhaps, brazenly tempt a gouty old man, or was he a warped predator who violated a devout teen? Was he a splendid man, made defiant by the sublimity of love (and she worthy of him), or was he a fat idiot, pressed on by a shrew, who looked in a quivering burnished steel mirror and stupidly thought he could win?
History says only that in 827 the governor of Sicily proclaimed his independence from the Empire of Byzanium - from Byzantium! – to detract attention from the scandal of his eloping with a nun. Then he called in the Aglabi Saracens from North Africa – Muslims, Arabs, infidels, the anti-Christ – to help him maintain his new independence. It would be as if the governor of Florida seceded from the United States and called in Cuban troops for help, all to deflect attention from the scandal of his elopement with a nun – or the scandal of elopement with someone, the spiriting of whom out of accustomed life would have caused a commensurate outcry. To deflect attention from that.
"I cannot be seen to be dissipating myself at a convent. We must marry."
"The penalty ... my father and uncles – "
"I’ll take Sicily into rebellion. When I am king I’ll make the law."
"My darling. You could be in chains in a month."
"Not if I have allies. Powerful ones."
Yes, all this to deflect attention from that. We see where the attentions, horror-stricken, of the people really lay. Some things were worse than rebellion and foreign religious alliances. Or do we know anything about history, about the likelihood of human motive, at all?
*
After years and years of looks and longing they were finally together, facing each other, clothed and upright beside the bed. Their fingers intertwined, the backs of their hands touched. They could not look at each other. All vows were broken, all loyalties shredded. Byzantium defied. They hovered outside the world in a pearl of time, the two of them, like the moon above a medieval Sicilian night, perfect, enclosed, unreachable. The Emperor himself, far off in his palaces on the Golden Horn, master of all Romans, did not yet know. With their new vows tonight he had lost Sicily – Sicily! – and the wild African Saracens were to help see that he never regained it. He, her lover, with his skin as tawny as mustard, would be King Euthymius, and she, his beautiful one, would be queen. She must take a Greek name, something pious and perfect. Helen.
A few lamps around the room flared purls of ochre light on the walls. The air seemed thick and chill, heavy with the scent of the sea and thyme. He felt a shiver run from her fingers up her arms and into her body. It made her long robes tremble. She smiled up at him, a little; and he stepped closer, gripped her hands tighter, and drew her arms around his back. They kissed. It was for this they had waited, for this they had prayed, of this they had dreamed and dreaded and begged forgiveness for. They felt as though they were four people, themselves as they had so long been, yet watching this silent couple they were now, private, utterly knowing, and deservedly melted into one. And then the watching couple seemed to fade away, and there was only one – themselves. Time stopped; it was everlasting night; they had been created by God for each other; this was all that mattered in the whole universe. Whatever would follow would follow.
Later, and as ridiculous as he felt about it at his age, he lay there and silently wept from happiness. She saw it and quickly raised herself up and bent over him.
Suddenly she was the elder, the pursuer. She touched his broad face with her fingers and kept her mouth close to him. "Shall I tell you a story?" she asked.
"Years ago," she began to whisper slowly, staccato, the cloistered nun trained to silence. "I had seen you, years before. I knew all your movements. Every procession. I knew every bit of gossip, and I said nothing but everyone knew I knew. I could recognize you from a mile away, did you know that?" He smiled, and she kissed him.
"And one day, your guards went by, in the street just outside our walls. Your outriders. A sedan chair. I watched and watched. I knew it was you. I stood at the window. I knew you would look for me.
"And you weren’t there. They all passed by. And do you know what? My knees shook. I thought I would fall down. My knees went weak at the sight of your people, even your chair. Just like in poetry. That is how much I loved you."
He rose up in his turn and pressed her down beneath him and covered her mouth with his. She put her arms around him. Perfect, after years of waiting and poetry about other people. The night was still dark. Sicily still floated in the sea. They were still the only man and woman in creation.
*
History says the Saracens were only too glad to come and invade more Christian land. They "got rid of" Euthymius, and in the next dozen or so years sailed at will up the Adriatic along Italy’s east coast, sacking the Byzantine towns of Bari, Ortronto, and Brindisi. They meted out the same treatment to Ancona, very close to Venice.
This is serious. "Sacking" means houses burned, citizens killed, women raped, shops and libraries destroyed, precious things stolen. We have never seen this happen. Our ancestors lived it. Then in 841, a Saracen fleet met a combined navy of the Byzantine and Venetian states, out to defend the coast and punish the sackings. And the Saracens destroyed it. The flower of Venice’s young manhood, the flower of Byzantium’s, gone. Years of suffering crowned by defeat, and the infidel predator triumphant. A generation, spoiled.
One would think that after such a terrifying victory there would be no reason why Italy today would not be a Muslim country, and St. Mark’s, in Venice, a mosque. It happened to Byzantium – Constantinople – itself, centuries later; it happened to the church of the Hagia Sophia. Italy escaped. But to return to our purpose. We have traveled in time only fourteen years, from 827 to 841. What happened to Euthymius, and to the nun, his wife?
We can only presume that their end was tragic. He beheaded, and she sent to the slave markets of Tripoli, are the most logical and least horrible conclusions to their story. What fascinates is what came before, for when people throw the world over for the sake of a perfect pearl of time, it is so very important that it was worth it. The pearls themselves seem twice-wasted, infinitely wasted, if they are not hunted out, polished, and preserved.
The moon still rises. Sicily still floats in the sea. Palermo was one of the most glorious of European capitals centuries later, during the Normans’ time in the 1100s, though the island seems to have become only a byword for wretchedness and then the Mafia’s haunt in later ages. One wonders if the governor and the nun would recognize any of it – a dusty road, the site of the leper hospital. One wonders how they would explain themselves, after all these years.
The End
Picture 827. Charlemagne, dead these thirteen years, founded the Holy Roman Empire of the west twenty-seven years before, a scandal and affront to the truly and anciently Roman east, Byzantium. The people are at least nominally Christian in Sicily, in Italy, in France, in England, in Ireland. They are no longer Christian in North Africa or the middle or near East (the Muslims have arrived), nor are they in Germany, the Slavic lands, or the Baltic. In those cold wild forests the tribesmen are all still pagan, worshipping Thor until the missionaries come. They sing Beowulf there. All Spain except the north has been conquered by the Muslims. The Vikings prey upon Britain and Ireland, and will begin to prey upon France, Germany, and Russia in another generation or so. Magyars, Avars, and Slavs will throw their own weights into the scales of power. Perhaps the chaos and darkness of the time -- at least, as later times judged it -- can best be illustrated by pointing out that here, in Rome the former center of the world, we are in the era to which legend assigns the woman Pope, Joan. What could be more awful?
Look in a book of Western fashions: men and women at this time dress in a kind of half-way style between the togas, smocks, and veils of antiquity, and the trousered, skirted, and belted styles of the modern age. Look at the world through their eyes: if they are literate, they will read the church Fathers and some of the Bible. Dante has not yet lived, and medieval epics like Parsifal or The Song of Roland have not been set down. If they go for a walk, they will not see or venture into the great Gothic cathedrals or the gray, round-walled castles which we tourists still flock to now. They have not yet been built. Charlemagne's palace chapel at Aachen is there; in Sicily, the remains of the old Greek temples are there, and in better shape than we are privileged to see.
In the middle of all this, smack in the middle of the Mediterranean, Euthymius the governor met a woman, a nun. How? Did he catch a glimpse of her singing in the choir at a cathedral – Palermo, Syracuse, Messina – as he attended mass on some state occasion? Did she retreat, bowing humbly before him, as he inspected her charges at a leper hospital? Did she, at forty perhaps, brazenly tempt a gouty old man, or was he a warped predator who violated a devout teen? Was he a splendid man, made defiant by the sublimity of love (and she worthy of him), or was he a fat idiot, pressed on by a shrew, who looked in a quivering burnished steel mirror and stupidly thought he could win?
History says only that in 827 the governor of Sicily proclaimed his independence from the Empire of Byzanium - from Byzantium! – to detract attention from the scandal of his eloping with a nun. Then he called in the Aglabi Saracens from North Africa – Muslims, Arabs, infidels, the anti-Christ – to help him maintain his new independence. It would be as if the governor of Florida seceded from the United States and called in Cuban troops for help, all to deflect attention from the scandal of his elopement with a nun – or the scandal of elopement with someone, the spiriting of whom out of accustomed life would have caused a commensurate outcry. To deflect attention from that.
"I cannot be seen to be dissipating myself at a convent. We must marry."
"The penalty ... my father and uncles – "
"I’ll take Sicily into rebellion. When I am king I’ll make the law."
"My darling. You could be in chains in a month."
"Not if I have allies. Powerful ones."
Yes, all this to deflect attention from that. We see where the attentions, horror-stricken, of the people really lay. Some things were worse than rebellion and foreign religious alliances. Or do we know anything about history, about the likelihood of human motive, at all?
*
After years and years of looks and longing they were finally together, facing each other, clothed and upright beside the bed. Their fingers intertwined, the backs of their hands touched. They could not look at each other. All vows were broken, all loyalties shredded. Byzantium defied. They hovered outside the world in a pearl of time, the two of them, like the moon above a medieval Sicilian night, perfect, enclosed, unreachable. The Emperor himself, far off in his palaces on the Golden Horn, master of all Romans, did not yet know. With their new vows tonight he had lost Sicily – Sicily! – and the wild African Saracens were to help see that he never regained it. He, her lover, with his skin as tawny as mustard, would be King Euthymius, and she, his beautiful one, would be queen. She must take a Greek name, something pious and perfect. Helen.
A few lamps around the room flared purls of ochre light on the walls. The air seemed thick and chill, heavy with the scent of the sea and thyme. He felt a shiver run from her fingers up her arms and into her body. It made her long robes tremble. She smiled up at him, a little; and he stepped closer, gripped her hands tighter, and drew her arms around his back. They kissed. It was for this they had waited, for this they had prayed, of this they had dreamed and dreaded and begged forgiveness for. They felt as though they were four people, themselves as they had so long been, yet watching this silent couple they were now, private, utterly knowing, and deservedly melted into one. And then the watching couple seemed to fade away, and there was only one – themselves. Time stopped; it was everlasting night; they had been created by God for each other; this was all that mattered in the whole universe. Whatever would follow would follow.
Later, and as ridiculous as he felt about it at his age, he lay there and silently wept from happiness. She saw it and quickly raised herself up and bent over him.
Suddenly she was the elder, the pursuer. She touched his broad face with her fingers and kept her mouth close to him. "Shall I tell you a story?" she asked.
"Years ago," she began to whisper slowly, staccato, the cloistered nun trained to silence. "I had seen you, years before. I knew all your movements. Every procession. I knew every bit of gossip, and I said nothing but everyone knew I knew. I could recognize you from a mile away, did you know that?" He smiled, and she kissed him.
"And one day, your guards went by, in the street just outside our walls. Your outriders. A sedan chair. I watched and watched. I knew it was you. I stood at the window. I knew you would look for me.
"And you weren’t there. They all passed by. And do you know what? My knees shook. I thought I would fall down. My knees went weak at the sight of your people, even your chair. Just like in poetry. That is how much I loved you."
He rose up in his turn and pressed her down beneath him and covered her mouth with his. She put her arms around him. Perfect, after years of waiting and poetry about other people. The night was still dark. Sicily still floated in the sea. They were still the only man and woman in creation.
*
History says the Saracens were only too glad to come and invade more Christian land. They "got rid of" Euthymius, and in the next dozen or so years sailed at will up the Adriatic along Italy’s east coast, sacking the Byzantine towns of Bari, Ortronto, and Brindisi. They meted out the same treatment to Ancona, very close to Venice.
This is serious. "Sacking" means houses burned, citizens killed, women raped, shops and libraries destroyed, precious things stolen. We have never seen this happen. Our ancestors lived it. Then in 841, a Saracen fleet met a combined navy of the Byzantine and Venetian states, out to defend the coast and punish the sackings. And the Saracens destroyed it. The flower of Venice’s young manhood, the flower of Byzantium’s, gone. Years of suffering crowned by defeat, and the infidel predator triumphant. A generation, spoiled.
One would think that after such a terrifying victory there would be no reason why Italy today would not be a Muslim country, and St. Mark’s, in Venice, a mosque. It happened to Byzantium – Constantinople – itself, centuries later; it happened to the church of the Hagia Sophia. Italy escaped. But to return to our purpose. We have traveled in time only fourteen years, from 827 to 841. What happened to Euthymius, and to the nun, his wife?
We can only presume that their end was tragic. He beheaded, and she sent to the slave markets of Tripoli, are the most logical and least horrible conclusions to their story. What fascinates is what came before, for when people throw the world over for the sake of a perfect pearl of time, it is so very important that it was worth it. The pearls themselves seem twice-wasted, infinitely wasted, if they are not hunted out, polished, and preserved.
The moon still rises. Sicily still floats in the sea. Palermo was one of the most glorious of European capitals centuries later, during the Normans’ time in the 1100s, though the island seems to have become only a byword for wretchedness and then the Mafia’s haunt in later ages. One wonders if the governor and the nun would recognize any of it – a dusty road, the site of the leper hospital. One wonders how they would explain themselves, after all these years.
The End
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