Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Buzzed


 
     A rather large bumblebee buzzed its way into the apartment today, along with a small band of other normal flies.  The buzz of its wings fills the room and my ears.  It has not landed.  The flies clear a flight path for the more dominant bee.  It must feel so lost and unable to find its way back into the sunny openness of today's clear blue sky.  I think it thinks there is no escape.  The structure of the apartment must be perplexing the bumblebee.    



     Wait, I heard a pause in the buzz.  The bee has landed.  O wait, I hear the buzzing again.  The bee has taken flight.  I like bee.  It is refreshing to have a daytime funemployment insect visitor.  It landed again!  It buzzes again.  This incessant buzzing is salting my game!  The bumblebee funemployment visitor has worn out my ears and its welcome.  Time to escort bee out the door.  Goodbye, buzzing bumblebee.



German Bratwurst do's and don'ts


     On my way home from Europe earlier this month, I had a one hour layover at Frankfurt airport.  I was hungry when I walked off the plane, so I immediately went searching for food.  Right outside the gate, I looked up and to my great joy saw a German sausage stand.  I thought that would be perfect to have a sausage and a beer in Germany, since I was technically in Germany, so I bought this one pictured above.  I know it generally looks strange and comical to Americans to see a dog served up in this way, with a bun that seems much too small for the size of the dog.  We are used to our buns being the same size as the weiner.  The Swedes serve their "korvs" as the Germans do, but with a longer, thinner sausage, and an even more meager bun.  It really looks cartoonish.  But both forms suited me just fine coming off of a long flight.  So after buying the above sausage, a went to the ketchup dispenser and pressed down its pump, thinking that the ketchup stream would be slow and easy.  
     To my utter dismay, the ketchup shot out like water from a garden hose set on jet, and splattered all over my hand as well as on the dog.  Unacceptable.  Totally unacceptable, I thought.  Why in the world would you need that kind of pressure for dispensing ketchup?  I turned on my heels and walked to the nearest seat, shaking my head and really questioning the legendary German rationality praised by philosophers of old.  I sat down and commenced eating my bludgeoned dog.  After a few bites (in which I took in all dog and no bread, mind you), I looked over to my left and noticed a woman sitting and eating the same kind of sausage.  She looked calm, reserved, and respectably dressed.  I believe she was German.  I watched her eat her dog.  In one hand, wrapped in a napkin, she held just the sausage, and in the other hand she held just the bread.  On a plate before her I saw a serving of ketchup and a serving of mustard.  She first dipped the end of her sausage into the ketchup followed by the mustard, bit into it, then lifted the bread up and bit into that.  Dual hand usage.  All very neat and clean.  All utterly rational.


Monday, September 26, 2011

The fellow who bogarted my tax shelter



     I shot this JPG this morning through the western window of Walter Street-the window facing the street.  You can see a pile of donations on the curbside along with a kick stood kid size bicycle.   A computer tower, a cast iron fajita pan, two plastic garbage bags, one filled with old clothes and the other filled with old kitchen items.  Also, a deflated soccer ball that I am certain can no longer hold air.   The old clothes were once worn by myself, and the used kitchen items were once used by both myself and Julie.  The bicycle, on the other hand, is owned by the a stranger who, it turns out, came along through Walter Street to bogart all of the donated items that he thought was of value for himself.  Through no timing of my own, I was able to see him do this and to take JPGs of the said bogarting.







     Who is this man?  Why is he a stranger?  What will he do with all the stuff he's bogarting on Walter Street?  I watch him through our western facing window.  I stand in the shadow of our black out drapes, watching him quietly, thoughtlessly.  I watch events unfold.  What I know is that I do not know this man.  What I know is that he was born of mother.  What is know is not what I am thinking about, however, as I watch him return to grab my bag of donations.  I was thinking about all of the pants and shirts that I had stuffed into that bag.  I had to choose each article from among the rest of my clothes hanging in the closet.  The oldest were the ones to go, of course, and I thought about how long I had owned each one, where and when I had first purchased them, the time I had spent in them, the life I had lived.  Memories, really.  Each article of owned clothing has shared a certain segment of my life, holds a specific amount of my own personal history in its thread and weave.  If I were to take each pant, shirt, jacket, sock, belt, t-shirt, boxer short, set it before me and think about each one, I would be able to lay out a map out my adult life in cloth form.  I wonder what kind of pattern that would create.  




    




     I don't think this fellow has any idea what individual history he bogarts with that white plastic bag he so nonchalantly picked off the curb and wheeled away with.  Or does he?  Does he know more than that?  He could be someone who understands himself as a salvager of forgotten memories, someone who trades lives in the same way that people trade cards, or hats, or ferns.  I don't know him.  But even with that, I like to think that he is taking the History of Roland in that white plastic garbage bag and reincarnating it into another perhaps higher, more exalted state of existence.  I like to think that the lives my frayed and holy pants and shirts will soon be revived on the backs of kings.