Tea, Spices and Milk

And I was sitting at the Starbucks

on that busy Parisian boulevard

full of honks and delivery trucks

when nothing but the roads is barred,

my chai tea latte steaming my glasses up

'Cuthbert' warily scribbled on the cup.

And I watched that student

through the window

rushing across the street,

and that old widow

overly prudent,

and that ragged beat

limping his way unashamed

to his morning flagon of red,

amid the wet morning crowd

and suddenly thought how

we're supposed to be all

genetically identical,

and how quantum physics state

that all actions reverberate

into different frames of space and time.

And I thought that we might be

the echoes of a single, one-time

action sparked a long time ago,

and that all the possibilities

contained therein did grow,

fractaled in us in fulfilled probabilities

and which, detail after detail,

changed in each individual's tale

to give one complete set of turbulences,

yet one coherent whole,

all paralleled universes

crushed flat into one huge cinnamon roll.

And the thought made me heave such a sigh

that my napkin just flew over the tray

and off the table down on the ground to lie.

The pretty girl went her way,

the old widow cautiously hers,

amid the habitual city-wonders

and the old sot went with the flux

and I was sat at the Starbucks.

What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night - Part 5

It's been a long while. Not long enough I can hear some say. Well, sure right you are, I haven't missed you either. Yet for all I know, you might very well have been craving my refractory, longitudinal diatribes for longer than you'd care to admit. So without further ado, here it comes, Ladies, Gentlemen and Poodles...

What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night - Part 5

I know for a fact that many of you have wondered, in this festive period, if you could push your depravity to the point of asking for a pair of crutches for Christmas. In the school I'm in, Oh boy they've become trendy, like the latest, must-have accessory in any respectable fashionista garderobe.

So, to my cross-grained mind comes a question: How to casually use a pair of crutches, and why? Perhaps, say, to attract pathos, eyes, attention? Mayhap you want people to open up doors for you? Here's some of the postures I've witnessed, which might be of some help to the newbies (because obviously owning the crutches isn't enough, you've got to have style). Step on your heavily-bandaged foot, your elbows akimbo on your crutches, back slightly bent over and crooked. Or, you can roll skull-printed bandanas around the handles, with matching handbag and tee-shirt. You can also remain the kind, helpful person who you've always been and point to a direction to someone while still holding a crutch. Or hold them diagonally so that people have to avoid any potential shin-breaking crutch in a 4-metre radius. But I'm being sarcastic there, for next to no reason, really. One warning, though, in all this merriment: do not get too confident that nobody is there to see you when you walk without as much as a limp without the said crutches...there's always somebody, somewhere, to see you (much-revered Murphy's Law) walking straight. And as much as it pains me to admit it, I have seen this ridiculous tendency in women only. We men have yet to find the crutch in us.

These postures will enable your foot to take twice as long to mend, and it will actually mend twice as bad, leaving you more than ample time to attract more pathos...or boredom. And let me tell you this as straight as I can: people don't care a straw, for they won't open up doors for you and even though they may ask what in the world happened to you, it's only because the weather's been the same for weeks now and because it might be a great opportunity to snicker. Crutches trigger pathos in sensible people for about as long as a blind poodle would. Interesting, for about two and a half minutes. Right about the time it takes to realise that at some point you'll have to lug the dratted thing about (and for once, believe it or not, I'm not speaking about the poodle).

Speaking of which, where on Earth did all the poodles go? It's been a while since I last saw one alive. As if someone had decided to put them out of their misery, or as if their wanting genetic pool had finally hit them back in the end, as some late-coming retaliation. Perhaps they deserve a place of mention alongside the dodo now they're gone. IF they're gone. If you see one, can you please send a picture my way? That's for the obituary, thanks – or Part 6 of this series.

The other day, the leaves were falling hectic orange and frantic yellow all over the place, for Autumn had come. I like this season a lot, for the bright colours, the fantastic sceneries they show or evoke. It's also a tad dreary, by the same token, for you can now see the bare branches, the knots and scars on the bark, the general sorriness of the leafless tree. Slightly less majestuous without their shiny robe...somewhat like everyone else on this planet. We can also note the equally drab birds perching in there. All of this makes you less reluctant to park your car under trees during this season. No fruit, no bird dropping on your windscreen. So I parked confidently...and come evening I damned those birds who could still find fruits in them scrawny trees. Droppings of orange and red all over my car. And the ones parked on either side of mine. Luckily, it rained quite hard that night so my car was laved of their evil-doings. The next day I paid especial attention and chose a treeless spot. No tree, no bird; no bird, no dropping. When I saw what had happened to my car in the evening, I knew the world was making me pay for something. Bad karma attracts birds. For only my car had been Pearl-Harboured. And the consistency (I'm passing over the details) of these droppings excluded everything but fruits, or berries. How on Earth could they find fruits in November so far up north? For Pete's sake, even elderberries had been gone by then. Some mystery I'm still paying for as we speak...there's no avoiding trees in this world. Someone must pay.

And someone will pay, someday, for their bungling up a McFlurry (jumping from pillar to post, I know). Why is it that in McDonald's they always serve you a McFlurry which is never flurried, the hollowed spoon sticking out right from the centre, erect, ready to fit onto the flurrying machine? Perhaps it's just a French language thing where they don't care to see WHY it's called a McFlurry. In any case, this defies any structural and gustatory sense: you can't remove the spoon without actually taking half of the ice-cream out with it, along with half the M&Ms (my all-time favourite) and the caramel topping. While everything should be blended into one great flurry (hence the name) of flavours, everything is stacked into one one-taste-at-a-time, uninviting heap.

You feminists are waiting for me now to spit my venom at men, a vulture-like look about you, malice in your eyes. And while you could just look at us to find enough fuel for your warmongering, I'm going to disclose what happens in the Men's room. That should fuel it for a few days at least. While few of us know for certain what happens in the Ladies', you mightn't know either the delicacies that the observant can find in this hellish place. Graphic details ensueing (so if you've leaving us now, fare thee well dear reader, and may you find a safe path through this nightmarish jungle of poodles, pigeons and crutches!).

The smell. First thing to greet you. Ranging from ''just acrid'' to ''astounding blocked-due-to-cold nose opener''. Sticky feet. Usually around the wall urinals, but if you get lucky around, on or across the regular bogs. The walls themselves, the doors, handles and partition walls can be sticky too, so mind your fingers. Absolute absence of toilet paper, at all times. Don't count on a forgotten newspaper, or on that last leaf of drying paper – we've got airblades now.

There's many a different style to roam the johns, but I particularly like the blokes who come for the number one and either: 1- leave the johns altogether without washing their hands 2- re-arrange their hair in front of the mirror and then leave 3- don't wash their hands but still dry them in the airblade (to avoid a potential case of sticky fingers, while I think they're actually creating it) 4- start drying their hands but realise they don't have time to do so – so use the back of their jeans to wipe them clean. All before grabbing that door handle.

Differently, but not any less efficiently, the blokes who come for a number two and 1- leave the johns altogether without washing their hands (yeah, I know) 2- have to wash their hands but prefer to dry them in the airblades (remember my theory on sticky fingers?) 3- start drying their hands but realise they don't have time to do so – so use the back of their jeans to wipe them clean. I have also witnessed 4- the necessitous who had to come here for a bossy number two, knowing full well there'd be no TP and a faulty airblades, perhaps even no water at all. I can't tell you the rest of that story, I still wake up at night because of it.

I hope you had your fill of filth (and I carefully avoided the subject of pubes smudging the sink). As for me, I avoid public urinals like the plague.

 I'm about to hit the hay, and content though I be to have poured my bile over those and that which irritate me, I'll still hold an intractable grudge against poodles for not showing me the way to complete spleen. Godspeed.

picrate

La vieille fille aux litrons de picrate

traîne ses guêtres sans trop de hâte

vers ce dîner sans viande ni encens

où parce qu'elle aura un peu trop bu

racontera sa vie terne à ses enfants

ceux qu'elle n'aura jamais eu.

D'un large regard elle balaie sa cuisine

et de sa douceur porcine

lave lentement l'assiette de son repas

puis d'un sobre et triste pas

rejoint son lit de mousseline.

Le dernier litron nonchalamment en main

la bouteille posée sur ses flasques seins

elle fixe son plafond usé des regards

de cinquante années dénuées d'espoir.

Puis d'un geste inattendu de puissance

les yeux plongés dans le crucifix sur le mur en face

elle brise le fût du litron sur son chevet et lasse

Mais d'un mouvement plein d'innocence

Saturé de regrets mais sans haine ni rancoeur

Elle s'en va fourailler ses chairs à la recherche de son coeur.

 

Pipes and principles

"We must learn to honor excellence in every socially accepted human activity, however humble the activity, and to scorn shoddiness, however exalted the activity. An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."

John W. Gardner, author (1912-2002)
 

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

William Pitt, British prime minister (28 May 1759-1806)

"I'm sometimes asked "Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?" I answer: "I am working at the roots."

George T. Angell, reformer (5 Jun 1823-1909)
 

Inconvenience store

"If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference."

Robert Fulghum, author (b. 4 Jun 1937)
  

Forest fire

Today, another forest was burnt down.

It's the third or fourth this month.

I've often wondered that if you were to catch

All this smoke and recuperate those ashes,

Would they account for all of the matter

This forest once boasted of? Or would some matter

Be utterly lost, as the shape and name are lost?

Nothing can be whole again once it's rent, or burnt.

Though some folk say all the particles are still there,

Hovering, going somewhere to find a fuller end,

Though to where or for which purpose no one said.

As if every particle ought to be accounted for.

My hunch is that though the entity be gone,

With the memories of the place and its components,

The shadow of it lies still in the memories of men,

Till this too is gone. And that long after its departure

Something other will be here, city, wasteland, forest perchance.

Make room for the new, kill the splendour,

Perhaps these were the thoughts of this pyromaniac.

Whatever crossed his mind, like that of the others,

Whole valleys grey with ash and rank with smoke

run the eye as far as the sunset and its black cloak.

Who said the mind was like a forest? I can't remember.

But I now say that the mind is like a forest on fire,

And the best trees are spent on some mad altar,

and their ashes fuel the sombreness inside.

Perhaps forests are meant to burn, like the mind.

But I might be wrong. All I know is that there are holes,

holes the size of forests, now, where those minds were.

Loss

Never have I seen such a lost generation.

Never a generation so lost.

With all the means to know,

where they are, why they are, when they are.

They don't know who they are,

where they are, why they are.

Such an absence of care for what's to come.

Such an absence of care for who's to become.

Such is the way of the teens I've taught this year.

Apathy meaning an absence of path,

reluctance an absence of luck.

Following whoever's footsteps are doomed.

Following whatever's the least useful to them.

Smiling wryly at their own purposelessness.

Smiling earnestly at others' failures.

Allurement of easy money and easy pleasures

blinds them, leads them to restlessness.

Never sadder nor happier than ever before.

Never had so little interest in themselves,

never had been so focused on their selves.

So lost to reality and its codes.

Coding their own ethereal kingdoms.

So hopeful, so hopeless.

No dreams, no boundaries

in a world which forsook and strengthened its frontiers.

Both prisoners and wardens of society.

Escapist strategies of the dominator

landing off-target rockets in the landscape –

none ever beheld such avoided butchery.

But the worst, warded off by school walls,

is yet to come.

When they will realise what's to come

when they will realise what's in for them

when they will compute time and money

and add two and two and marvel

that it makes three, and not four,

never again, and smile wryly,

the unfairness of the world suddenly made visible,

suddenly a constant, an exact exfoliator of rest.

Yes, they will think back, and smile –

even then they knew, had feigned ignorance,

had trudged on, secretly hoping for the best.

 

Restlessness

Whenever I get some good news
I always feel this restlessness
This unfulfillable envy that I lose
Only when I realise it's just mum's absence.