“Well…” the salesgirl winces trying to figure out a nice way to say, “no.”  I spot blond summer-weight suits on deep clearance, winter is setting in.

“Are these suits on clearance?” I ask hoping to draw her attention more to the notion that I am fingering the goods than that I am ignoring the ENORMOUS sign overhead stating the fact.  Anyway, my ruse works.  She issues a “store credit”, and I buy a suit; the alterations of which cost more than the shirt.  (right.)

Last Friday night, Hal Holbrook played Mark Twain: Tonight! at the Aronoff, this town’s nod to Robert Venturi Post-Modernism including all the gimmicks but sans the sense of humor.

“Better get tickets.” I suggest to Dale, “it is benchmark Teatro Americano.  He is not getting any younger.  I’ve never seen him live.”  I dressed the part.  (blond suit.)

Being crammed in an auditorium full of conservatism where every quip in favor of our legislative system and every snarl against those who execute it meet with vociferous applause wears me down.

“Mercy!  I’m hungry.”  I mention on our way out of the theater.  ”I could do with a small salad or cup of soup,” lying against the fact that I could have eaten five courses plus soup plus nuts plus friandises.  The hour presses upon Midnight when all good princesses ought to be in their carriages speeding away from the palace.

In spite of the waitress who is more interested in her iPhone than our nutrition, we manage to order minced chicken wrapped in crisp lettuce, flatbread which anywhere else would be “quesadillas”, and edamame for the table.  Were I swilling a tall glass (I mean TALL glass) of vodka-no ice-no lemon-no straw (double+) I could mistake myself for thirty years younger.  Can naked and flagrant be far behind?

“Temps perdus” wistful, a friend of mine says.  ”Temps perdus.”

Saturday morning AA features four emotional break-downs, three “grateful to be here’s” and a newcomer all before lunch, nap, and Aroldis Chapman’s giving away J. J. Hoover’s near-perfect game in the bottom of the ninth, (“really?”).  Sunday services and an organ concert in the afternoon precede Monday Morning Writer’s Group yet another place where “call your sponsor” does not apply.  Another emotional meltdown suspends any reading.

“Pass the tissues, please.”  (Is that mean?)

The clouds which swallow up Oklahoma City in tornadic calamity fall softly here on the river as afternoon thundershowers.  The lingering wet puts earthworms and snails on the move compelling them to cross the road.

Jump Rope

“Cinderella dressed in yella

“Went to school to kill some fellas

“Debate was a fake

“They chose Eve’s Snake

“How many children will it take

“One, two, three, four…”

‘thout no letters to write nor bills to pay

Only to do as I choose and to do as I may.

***

I sorted and named all the mental commotion

Assigning it verb per my Muse’s notion.

Fantasy and Lust composed a sum po’tion.

***

At the end of this day where I did as I may

Solitude is Indigo —  storm on its way.

Tomorrow springs forth green upon gray.

]]> http://alexanderthegreatwatson.com/2013/05/08/quiet/feed/ 1 alexanderthegreatwatson Pramela by evening curly bulby thing http://alexanderthegreatwatson.com/2013/04/21/waking-betty-jane/ http://alexanderthegreatwatson.com/2013/04/21/waking-betty-jane/#comments Sun, 21 Apr 2013 17:53:40 +0000 alexanderthegreatwatson http://alexanderthegreatwatson.com/?p=3330 Continue reading »

It would be a typical March Day on the Ohio River.  Sustained winds strafe the water at 25 miles per hour, gusting to 30.  It’s 40 degrees (F.) under sunless skies.  Trees force timid leaves out into the cold.  Tulips and daffodils lay prostrate against the new grass.  The locals would call it “seasonable” for March except that it is late April going on May.

Dale and I, in a fit of optimism for warmer weather, are aboard our boat.

We winterized Betty Jane last November.  Winterizing is nothing but time and attention to detail.  We drain water out and pour anti-freeze in.  We snap clamps trying to loosen them.  We split hoses wrestling them off their nipples.  We origami ourselves into the engine room so that we cannot get out.  After three days, we’re done.  The holidays come and go.  Freeze sets in.  Betty Jane sleeps.

De-winterizing is three easy steps:

• Check to make sure it’s all put back together.
• Enable system.
• Enjoy.

We chase leaks.

Kohl monitors geese.

A turn of the key will tell us how well we did five months ago and dictate our future.

Let Summertime begin!

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MusicNOW concert at Memorial Hall. Cincinnati, OH. 12 Ap 13

Too far into the first minute to do anything about it, the competitor realizes that his train has left the station, the bridge is out, and the brake line is cut.  His comparisons are too far drawn, his supporting points do not apply, and his thesis is just plain wrong.

Body and voice forge on bravely.   His ears cannot believe what he is saying.  His brain scans for exit.

Halfway through, his eyes pop open wide in unseeing fear.  Voice falters.  Panic sets in.   The reality of the situation overcomes him.  Fifty year old men get this look:  The parade passes by–They’re not in it.

However, the contestant is not fifty nor curbside.  He is fifteen.  In the last seconds of his five-minute talk prepared on the spot about a topic picked at random, he relents and closes calmly confidently.

“Thank you for judging.”

He exits the room into the hallway, a melee of Fathers’ suits and Mothers’ pearls, other home-schoolers preparing for their Big Strut.  Girls wring each other’s hands.  Boys punch each other in the shoulder.

Ducking into another door, the kid I just evaluated competes in another round, another heat, another event with another judge.  It all goes down that fast.

I judge the NCFCA Region 6 Debate and Speech Finals because the children teach me so much.

The first week of Easter has had its challenges.  My raiment is not white.  The Cincinnati Reds lost on Opening Day.  My eggs dyed gray.  Concern for a friend became an obstacle course.  Peeps half dipped in chocolate appeared to suffer from a bowel ailment.  Not even lunching on roasted clown could lift my spirits (the head was hard, tough, and overdone.)

Ticket sales restricted to season subscribers barred our admission to Renée Fleming’s portrayal of Blanche DuBois in Chicago Lyric Opera’s production of Streetcar Named Desire.  The title does not draw like Aida, Boheme, or Carmen, so is not performed.  When the understudies agreed to an encore performance, we jumped into our Chevrolet “Tom” Cruze and made for Rivers Restaurant across from the hall for supper before the show.

$50 dollar seats afforded us the only opportunity ever to sit on the floor so we booked Row U on the aisle in front of an open proscenium.  The orchestra fanned out behind a shallow raised stage minimal and black in dire sympathy with the action.  Two tables, one square side the other round dining; ten straight back dining chairs; a bed stead; a steamer trunk, a radio compose the set.  A bare bulb hung down from the wings.

Eight buff Stanley Kowalskis came out dressed in jeans and wife-beaters.  They lounged, preened, and perched among the furniture, their torsos ripped and rippled like the Chicago River busting to come out of their shirts which, in time, they did.  The house lights went down.  The orchestra came up.  Blanche DuBois arriving off the bus from Laurel looks for Stan and Stella’s blue-collar flat, New Orleans, 1920.  Three-plus hours later, Blanche is being hauled off to an asylum.  I consider my own recovery from alcohol.

Driving home in the middle of the night, the windmill farm near LaFayette, IN, normally acres of white whirling dervishes or flying nuns, is net of red beacons hovering over a dark land.  Their synchonized blinking looks extra-terrestial against the stars.  On…Off…On…Off.

Back home, after sun’s up, we brunch at the Half-Day Cafe in Wyoming where the pansies sit in the window all in a row and advice on spinach, stuck to the door, is free.

The Cincinnati Reds trailed the Anaheim Angels until we arrived in the middle of the 6th.  Their deficit became a tie only to end defeated in extra innings.  University of Cincinnati Cats fared no better against to the Louisville Cards in the game that followed, but we had better seats.

By Easter II, we are exhausted.

I needed some bistecca (sirloin) for a dinner party so I walked into the butcher’s about 10 am on a Wednesday.  A tiny little storefront no wider than a shoebox.  The case ran just off center the length of the shop and perpendicular to the street.  The butcher stood behind.  In the remaining space, three cadres of Italian mamas stood in a mob which in Italy constitutes a queue.  By the door, the cashier perched in a booth smaller than a card table.

“Buon Giorno!” I said according to the local custom while squeezing into a place between the door and the wall.

The Signoras ceased their cackle and gossip.  The Butcher looked up from his work.  The cashier removed her glasses.  In one voice, they answered, “Buon Giorno!” according to the local custom.  Everyone went back to their conversations but with subdued reserve.  (“Sotto voce“.  They say.)

When the butcher finished the order, his eyes found me, a skinny American college student, contrasted against a sea of familiar faces atop matronly figures of big bosoms and fat ankles holding unsettlingly similar black leather Cosa Nostra purses.

“Signore?” his eyebrows arched across his brow.

I demurred to the platoon of ladies who were ahead of me in line.

He insisted.  All the women turned to me and with smile and gesture insisted.  The cashier insisted that I step up in front of everyone else waiting.

“Signore?” the butcher’s kind, patient tone again beckoned me to the counter.

Cheerfully, he cut my order.  The Signoras smiled.  He wrapped my order.  The Signoras seemed amused.   I paid the cashier and turned to offer everyone again a cheery, “Buon Giorno!” according to the local custom to which they responded, “Buon Giorno!” according to the local custom.

When the screen door closed behind me, the cacophony of female gossip and camaraderie which I had interrupted resumed.

In those days, a young Florentine man lived with his mother until he married; after which, his wife took over the shopping.

20 years later, at Lake Texoma, we needed simple muslin for a project on the boat.  We found a fabric shop in a local strip mall.  Jo Ann’s is not the kind of place I want to browse so I approached the first woman I saw wearing an employee badge:  ”Gladys”.

“Hello, Gladys, we need some muslin.”

Upon turning around, she saw a man.  Not a man, two men.  Standing bold as brass in her shop calling her by her Christian name and demanding to know where the muslin was.  She was flabbergasted.  Fumbling for something to say she managed to choke out, “What color?”

“Unbleached.  Drip dry.”

Reinforcements appeared from behind bolts of fabric to offer encouragement and make sure we didn’t grub up the merchandise with our rampant masculinity.  Some of them had actually raised sons.

“What are you going to do with it?” another clerk asked prefering to believe we were sewing up sacks to drown cats than replacing the dust shield on a bunk.

In a moment, Gladys cut our yardage, produced a chit, processed the credit card, bagged the merchandise, and handed us a receipt.  Before she knew it, she had bid us, “Come back real soon, ‘hear?.” out of habit and clamped both hands over her mouth realizing what she had done.

Yesterday, I was in Hyde Park needing some yarn for a needlepoint placemat I’m working on.  I introduce myself to “Hank: A Yarn Boutique” on the corner of Observatory and Edwards.

The Frau behind the counter iced over and was careful not to initiate anything.

“I need some yarn.”  I thought was obvious enough to calve the glacier.

She remained immovable.

I pulled out my unfinished needlepoint to establish some credibility.

She glanced up from her cards to say, “We don’t have needlepoint yarn.” and returned to sorting.

When I asked for a recommendation she said, “Do you know Cincinnati at all?”

I left.

Today, my search for a 20 yards of warm gray and a 100 yards of white takes me to Madeira, the kind of suburb Republicans enjoy.  Neat 3-2′s with a lawn and a drive.

I step into a shop.

Three ladies stood behind the counter and assessed my presence.

“I need some yarn.”  worked so well at Hanks, I thought I would try it again.

Nothing.

“I’m working on a project, and I am a little short.”  I push the transaction along like Sisyphus against the Rock.  Hanks and hanks of suitable yarns fill the walls from floor to ceiling.  ”Surely there is something here that will do.”  I coax.

One approaches.  I pull the half-worked canvas out of my bag along with my chart which specifies amounts.  ”I need white.”  Thinking that would be the easier of the two colors.

Was it the frame?  The chart?  Or some other evidence of skill and commitment?  I do not know.  However, shortly, I found myself entertaining the three marms with yardage calculations, estimating costs for rug in a book I had brought, and fending off invitations to learn a few tricks on beading.

“You can always come in for a free trick.”  One suggests hostess-like but oblivious to what that means to a same-sexer.

“Canvas is sold by the inch.”  ”How do you propose to finish the edge.” and “We don’t get calls for that sort of thing very often.”  They had warmed up.

No, they don’t get customs like mine very often.  My $8.00 purchase entitled me to a fully guided tour of yarns, books, patterns, and all those canvases your grandmother sat around the house.   Designs and colors keep up with today’s fashion, but you know what I mean.  That stuff my niece, an avid knitter, calls, “Needlepoint for needlepoint’s sake.”

No one questions a man touring the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY where I bought my friends a new car.  

(“We love it!” They say.)

Or, why some hill-billy is dragging trailer-load of bicycles north on I-71/75 into Cincinnati.

But put a man in a woman’s world and the Communists are marching across the Aleutians.

“Send” I press and my draft shoots into the air across the living room ceiling, gets sucked into a box plugged into the wall next to the TV, and shot down a wire cross-country to Texas.

I wait.

“Hmmmmm.” the Slasher writes back.  I can see her saying “Hmmmmm.” across a thousand miles, too.

She pulls her mouth over to one corner of her face and she says, “Hmmmm.”   If she still smoked she’d light a cigarette and inhale deeply before exhaling and add, “It is not your best writing.”  If it really sucked she’d finish with, “…, you know.” like I’m guilty of trying to put something over on my reader.

In this particular case, I forgot to tell the reader why the anecdote is relevant.  I abandonned a lot of humor.  AND!  ”You tend to start in the middle of a thought,” Slash says.

Duh!  Why does she think that writing is so fucking hard!  Who has ever heard of starting a thought from the goddam beginning?

However, Slasher is right.

She’s always right.  Whenever she says, “Hmmmm.”, I can see with fresh eyes that my grammar school teacher has stifled my muse or that my precious little story has no bearing on anything whatsoever.  Which is sometimes too bad because they are such lovely stories, too.  I think so.

In answering her question, “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”  I have to cut out the kaleidoscopic bits of color which don’t advance the plot and concentrate on the nuts and bolts of MESSAGE.

What she wore when the mosquito bit her, where she was sitting, what she saw, what she was thinking, how she cried “Ouch!” when it did, how he looked longingly into her eyes at the precise moment it happened, who did her hair, and the mosquito itself; all fall victim to my “Delete” key.  The MESSAGE is registering a boat in a banjo-picking backwater of Oklahoma.

Life goes on.

Spring fights Winter.  Blazing sun between blizzards of snow showers, plummeting temperatures and howling winds.  Tomorrow’s Hi:  60.  The daffodils have adopted a “damn the torpedoes” attitude after three false starts.  The tulips say, “Nothing Doing.”.  The cardinals burn an unnaturally bright red hole into the still barren landscape.

Parks Department mulch replaces the Street Department’s salt trough behind my apartment.  Soon, pansies will pave the streets, and Cincinnati will smell of Kentucky’s horse shit.

My brother and I had a lovely visit.

Playing ice hockey by the house on Mirror Lake, Cincinnati, OH

A subscriber e-mails, ” ‘Sup?”  She misses my sometimes-weekly postings.

The truth of the matter?  Nothing.

Contrary to what my profile insists, my book is not writing itself.  God knows I’ve tried being patient, but it just won’t budge.  I’ve spent a lot of time, not to mention money, thinking up ways to divert myself (I’ve been to Florida) in order to leave it in peace so that it can get its writing done.  It does nothing.  No folders created, no chapters filed, no .jpg’s captioned.

Spanish Moss in Florida

So, I guess I’m going to have to do it. Fortunately, I belong to a writer’s group which meets on Monday mornings.  Unlike other groups I’ve attended where members vie to out writer each other with their debates concerning parts of speech, syntax, and punctuation; Monday Morning critique often falls under the heading of “That’s lovely.”

Lighthouse at Daytona Beach Shores

On the other hand, and this is where the group is invaluable, I’ve discovered that if I introduce my writing with a concern or insecurity, the feedback is concise and honest.

Watertower at The Villages, FL

Two weeks ago, I read a chapter tracing the history of Lake Texoma in general and Highport Marina specifically back to the dinosaurs à la James Michener.  It didn’t work.  As I read aloud, I could tell I was falling deeper and deeper into the morass of specificity pulled down by ennui.  That I eventually finished relieved everyone including me.

Kohl Learning to Bird Watch In Florida

Their reaction was unanimous:  Nothing.  Eighteen faces spanning all demographics looked up at me with an identical expression, “Who cares?”

“What’s wrong with it?”  I prompt.

Three items only truly honest and experienced writers can know to say:

1. “You are off story.  Way off story.”
2. “Your story is on the river.  Get us on the river.”
3. “Everything you have written is invaluable.  Bury these details in the course of the narrative rather than making the reader endure a history lesson before allowing him/her any fun.”

Separately, I have a “Slasher”, an anonymous reader, a thousand miles away, my fervent supporter, an ardent booster, and biggest fan who when armed with red pencil kills my babies and calls me out on crap with comments like:  ”Huh?”,  ”Not here.”, “Really?”, and “Is this a word?”

To prevent from being totally compulsive about allowing totally verbose and over-written adverbial phrases opening every one of my run-on sentences, to not splitting infinitives, and from mistaking a semi-colon for a comma and a period for a semi-colon; I’ve taken needlepoint up.

A needlepointed placemat

This is no paint-by-number endeavor.  My neighbor says, “Needlepoint is simply ‘see a color stitch a color’.  Any idiot can do it.”  Not being any idiot, my work is transfer from chart in a library book to blank canvas by marking off the mesh into a ten-stitich grid.  The permutations of counting from one to ten and back again become Life.

The answer to my subscriber was that my book was forcing me to write it.

“Oh!  I have closets full of unfinished paintings that won’t paint themselves.” she commiserated, “Some of them are quite good…or will be.”

“DUH!”  Jon says.

I loved Hyde Park on Hudson for a various reasons:  Merchant & Ivory come to America.   Bill Murray was a not-ready-for-prime-time player on SNL when I first met him.  I romance myself with recollections of a time when the public did not “deserve” to know everything about their leaders.

“Pray to God they do not see us as we really are.”  the character FDR says to the character George VI.  “They only see us as they want to.”

I do not want to see Oprah as fat or thin.  I do not want to see Prince Harry naked.  The Secretary of State has more invested in Bill Clinton’s sexual gratification than I.  And, the choices athletes and expectant mothers make about their bodies are no one’s business.

Did Lance confess because the wolf is at the door?  Does “hearth and home” really trump “Fame and Fortune?”  Does the Devil exact too much?  Who cares?

The miracle is that Oprah becomes Confessor to the Stars.  Where Barbara Walters stops at juicy tidbits of innuendo, Winfrey brings home the bacon.  Penance comes from being the butt of Tweets, Facebook posts, and jabs on morning talk shows.  But, Her honorarium salves the sting.

“I want to compete again,”  Armstrong asserts much like the abdicated King Edward VIII of England, the Duke of Windsor, who answered, ”I’ll get a job somewhere, I suppose.”

Where?  At What?  With whom?