Oh, What a Night!

Dear Gangaroonies, et alii,

So there I was snuggled in my bed, Loki under my right arm, Sophia near my left as I took off my reading glasses, at 11:30 PM, Dec. 31, 2012, and placed Michael Grunwald's New New Deal in the night stand, turned off the light, and thought: This is the way for an old dude to spend New Year's Eve--quiet, sober, surrounded by his loved ones, and off to dreamland.

We wakened about 2:30 AM to the sound of a crash which at first I thought was just another avalanche of snow breaking free of my neighbor Mike's steel roof and sliding against my siding on its way to the ground (our houses are very close).  Loki had bolted from the bed in a great leaping and barking which was not to be suppressed however many times I advised him it was only the snow.  He ran to the front door and kept it up like a good watchdog.  I heard voices.  I popped the front door open and saw a Dodge Caravan about ten feet to my immediate right as if trying to get up the porch steps, grinding itself into the dirt where my beautiful Magnolia bush used to be, the chain link fence broken out of the ground, and the wooden fence which joined it at the corner of the property reduced to shards.

The driver, an inebriated Puerto Rican, was standing alongside the front bumper asking me if I could help him get his car back on the street.  Behind the car were the trails of the path on the clear street showing its swerve to the left, up Mike's walkway, over the snow piled on the tree lawn, and into the corner of my yard. Now I'm in my nightshirt trying to tell him I'll get some clothes on first while he digs out his insurance information.  I went back into the house to get dressed while they spun the front wheels which, though bald, were nonetheless remarkably good at spraying everywhere the fabulously soft loam in which my bush had heretofore nestled.

Back outside I found the front wheels now at least a foot deep, unable to rock back and forth. He was sloshed and aromatic, weeping about how I should not call the police, about how his baby--his nine-month old baby--was in the car and he needed to get him home.  "I had a few beers, I'm human," he slobbered.  "I'm human too, but I had a bush and two fences not all that long ago and I'm pissed," I replied.

"Oh God, I am so sorry, maybe I should die," he went on maudlinly.  "I think this has more to do with you and the beers than it has to do with God," I suggested.  "As for dying you can defer that until you get some incurable disease. Right now, you have a wife, a baby, and all sorts of responsibilities which will dawn on you once you sleep it off.  You shouldn't be driving."

His wife, also a little beer-breathy, was shuffling through a handful of papers trying to find the insurance information.  I went into the house to record pertinent stuff from the papers she presented.  Once outside again I heard her husband continue his profuse apologies mixed with promises to pay and urging me not to call the insurance agent. I told her to tell him to please knock it off and shut up which she proceeded to do in a spate of rapid fire Spanish.  She had called some friends in the meantime and soon the situation blossomed into an eleven person Puerto Rican festival (with one Anglo) trying to get the car out of the foxhole it had dug for itself.  To me it was quite clear that only a tow truck would do the trick. I told them they should get all the ladies and the baby home first, leave the car there, and call for a tow in the morning.  

My experience with calling for the Cleveland police on holidays in instances where blood was not flowing had been less than satisfactory so I decided against that. I took some pictures as evidence.

The ladies left.  Then the guys fiddled with shovels, boards from the broken fence, the steel posts from the chain link, and after an hour of wasted effort and more dirt sprayed even further agreed to call a truck.  A rusty white Ford Ranger (the lightest pickup Ford makes) showed up shortly with a nylon rope that snapped as soon as the truck was in gear.  Another call this time for a real tow service and another half hour and the Caravan was yanked like an impacted molar from my little garden.  Luis, one of the guy's friends, assured me they would be back later in the day to restore everything and thanked me for being so understanding.  My understanding was that they had all been at the same party and no one should light a cigarette near any of them. 

"Happy New Year," they waved as they drove off.  Happy for you; not so happy for me, I thought in my best Señor Wences imitation.

Love, Peace, and Hope,
James Manista

Fool's Introduction (Walter Mitty Lives!)

Dear Ms.  _________? March 30, 2013

I find you intriguing. I know it would be best if we were formally introduced but I can’t arrange that. You may have to accept the document below as my best introduction:

Go

And do not linger

Unfulfilled, my dream and hope.

Burst, bubble.

Burst

Or freeze and crackle.

Be a bauble I can hold and show

Without a fear

Of shattering.

c.1969 J. S. Manista

Perhaps we could meet over coffee at Le Petit Triangle after work someday if tonight isn’t available?

Whatever your decision, know I mean no offense.



[Epilogue:

Today, after numerous trips to the library this last week to pick up or return DVDs of various movies I had charted to see, having missed them the first time around, she was at the desk. Regrettably I had already placed La Strada and Get Carter in the section listed "Place Returns Here." Quickly I looked about among "Recent Arrivals" displays and nervously grabbed one on artificial intelligence and another on cyber-hacking.

I returned to the checkout desk only to find she had disappeared while my back was turned.  Behind the counter now was a young black man who offered to help me. I couldn't quite refuse--"No, I'll wait for the white girl," would have sent the wrong message entirely. She was nowhere in sight so I let him register my selections. Confounded and unable to forge Plan B, I left--which made it a short without a story.

Back home I went through the mail, trashed the waste, paid a bill, leashed Loki, and resigned to think it over as together we searched nearby Fairview Park for those precious golden nuggets of recycled dog food that were due. As we walked--Loki darting after chicken bones in the grass, me pulling him away--the lines from one of my earliest poems came to me as just the vehicle to engender in any woman sufficient curiosity about my intelligence, sensitivity, taste, and passion to--at a bare minimum--give me the time of day. I hoped at least to alter the paradigm of library procedure enough to get my rather miserable foot out of my mouth and into the door--so to speak.

Home again I crafted the letter and planned to place it into one the books I had so hastily chosen sticking out enough to merit its removal, hopefully, its examination. I wouldn't have had to say a word. I even considered including check-off boxes:

        Yes. Meet me at 6:15 PM tonight at the cafe.

        Not Tonight, but call me at (___)___-____ this weekend

        Never in a Million Years. Get out of my life, you filthy old sot.

But I really wanted her to keep the poem so I thought about putting the boxes below a tear line with advice "Keep the poem as a souvenir of this egregiously laughable event."

I went through a zillion apprehensive scenarios from the instant of conceiving this plan--each outcome getting grimmer--right up to the point of delivery:

       Nice poem, but I prefer women.

       Poem stinks; makes me prefer women.

       My boyfriend will meet you for a boilermaker, in the alley, behind the bar.

       If you're the best I can do on a Saturday night I should kill myself now.


Intermittently though I also imagined a few positive responses: 

       She reads the letter, winks, folds it carefully, tucks it into her bra, and tells me to wait
       in a chair in the reading room with the others.

       She reads the letter, bursts into uncontrolled laughter, agrees to meet saying,
      "I love weirdos."

       She reads the letter, tells her colleague to take her line as she is leaving early
       and to tell her boyfriend she has met the man of her dreams and will be sending for
       her clothes sometime over the weekend.

Between punishing myself with the thought that I would deserve everything I would get as no one but an old fool would even try this stunt and challenging myself with the thought I've always looked 'way younger than my age and that I wouldn't be able ever again to face a mirror if I chickened out, I hemmed and hawed but ultimately printed the letter, waited out the time just before closing, considered turning around as I ascended the library steps, peered through the glass to confirm her presence, opened the door now flying on automatic pilot.

Both she and the black clerk were checking books out. Each had a patron. I chose to wait in her line. Of course his patron finished first and again he offered to help me. I smiled and indicated with a hand gesture I really wanted to stay in her line. He got it, gave me a smile in return, and busied himself until other patrons came up.

As her patron walked away I stepped up and felt it necessary to say, "This is not a usual circumstance," as I looked her dead in the eye. She replied, "You're returning these?" as she observed the note stemming provocatively from the top book. "That's for you to read," I said diffidently.

She read it and smiled: "No." She took the books as returned. 

Again, I thought to speak: "I couldn't live with myself if I hadn't tried."

"No harm," she said. I felt people were watching us intently especially the nearby staff. I thought she blushed and smiled as I walked away.

I think she kept the poem. I hope she keeps the poem. I hope she Googles "J. S. Manista" and comes across this blog. If she finds and reads this I want to tell her, "You are admirably well-mannered for letting me down so graciously. It only adds to the 'intriguing' I first mentioned. I hope we still smile should we see each other again."


When I visited my daughter Emily in Manhattan last year she chided me about approaching young women and asking, "Do you date older men?" Would I want other men of my age so publicly lusting after her? "Emily,"I offered, "I'm not dead even though I am harmless." This wasn't enough; she wanted me wrong and to know I was wrong. I shut up and let her have the last word.

What I should have replied was, "To lust, you have to be capable of lust." I wouldn't have her offended by some coarse remark. She doesn't wear a ring and if some guy is drawn by her beauty (she is beautiful) and wants to get to know her further, she shouldn't be offended by the attention, especially if it's clever and respectful. It's a privilege of beauty and I can't think of a woman who wouldn't be flattered by an occasional appreciation.

But I think I would draw the line at nuns except so many don't wear habits anymore.]



       

Faith

From whose hands these whirling worlds first did spin

Before you set their course for endless space

With a final, friendly, curious flip

Impelled each undulating particle thereof,

And laughingly, as flinging Frisbees in-

To orbits guaranteed with rubber grace.

Reaching apices, they stall, start to slip,

And homeward fall to answer graver love.

As my life’s central year I now begin

I sense no gentle tug yet turn to face 

That end from which I set upon this trip,

Accelerate, and know I’ve time enough

For all my future, present, and my past,

Again within those loving arms to rest.

c. 1994

I Beg to Differ

     Tell me which, Doctor Krauss, are the atoms of evil

     Why would oxygen care even a whit

     Whether it’s air, fire, water, or earth?

     And just when did “better” enter the universe?

     After the nexus of Nothing decided

     To forego its formlessness--Big Bang and boil?

     Fling ever forward its super-hot plasma

     To cool and congeal to this present condition 

     Of me chiding you for not seeing how

     Science in all of its manifest wisdom

     Won’t favor one phase of matter over another,

     Or say with conviction why truth must be simple

     Or good should be chosen?  Then before you next

     Take religion to task for its history of physical

     Ignorance, ask if lives lived in love, courage,

     And hope were abjectly defective simply in that

     They wrongly regarded their world as flat.