We sell no balls here

Jerry Crotti called and said to come to the gala ball. "You are one of everyone! You must."

I hung up and went to my clothes closet. Nothing. I went out to West Sixth Avenue and went into the first men's store. I was greeted, but coldly.

"Yes?"

"What have you got for a ball?"

"We sell no balls here."

"Oh, OK. I mean. What have you got here that would be suitable for someone like me to go to a ball, a formal dance, in the evening?"

"We have nothing suitable for someone like you. No, just kidding. Come on. Let's take a look over here."

He led me, off balance but relieved, to the far corner of the shop where there were tuxedos lined up, all alike but different sizes. I could see by the sleeve lengths first then the length of the jackets.

"Perhaps here is where you belong."

"I doubt it, I said not loud enough for him to hear."

"Eh?"

"Well, er, yes. Forty long and about 34 in the waist."

"We can come close to that. Would you like a conservative cut or something more dramatic, like tails."

"Having a tail, or more than one would be dramatic, wouldn't it?" I saw the look on his face and took it back. "Sorry."

"Yes, here are two possibilities. This is three hundred and fifty dollars plus tax. This is nine hundred."

"Do you have anything more modest? in price, that is?"

"This is the least expensive tux we have."

"That it may be, but I'm not sure I can afford that just for one evening. I don't go to these things often."

"Yes. Would you like to try it on?"

"Is it my size?"

"We will make it fit with some slight alterations. It is included in the price."

I went to the changing room and tried it on. I came out looking and feeling sheepish. The pants were too big around the waist and the legs were about a foot too long--each leg. The coat seemed about right, but the tails seemed a bit long.

"Are these supposed to be shorter?"

"No, that is about right. We can take the pants in and hem the legs. Let me just--"

At that he put his hand up to my crotch and I jumped. Actually my right nut took a jump and I jumped in reaction. "Hey, just a--"

He looked surprised and I composed myself. Perhaps he didn't mean it, but I was definitely put off. I didn't even think.

"This is not going to work."

"I'm sorry?"

"I changed my mind. I don't want to do this. Buy a tuxedo."

"Yes, sir. Is there something--"

"No, I have changed my mind. I didn't want to go to the gala anyway. In the first place."

"But there will be people there. Our customers love to see and be seen."

"I don't."

"Yes, well--"

"Yes. I am going to take these off." I went into the changing room and as I was removing the pants I heard at the door, "Sir? May I interest you in a tux without tails?"

"No. No. Thanks but no."

"Perhaps a sport coat and slacks?"

"No, really. I am not the type."

Silence. I guess I had thoroughly rebuffed him. Perhaps he walked away and was out of hearing range.

"Fuck. Shit. It always comes to this. I hate these social things. Why did I listen to Jerry? Waste of time." And I went on like this to myself for a few moments when I heard a tap, tap on the changing room door.

"Are you all right in there?"

"Yes, fine. Be right out."

I exited slowly thinking I might hit him in the nose if he was right there outside the door. He was standing at attention a few feet away, hand outstretched to receive the store's garments. I handed him the rejected black bundle.

"Thanks, I need to be going."

"If you change your mind, I will be here. My name is Chris, and I would be happy to assist you should you--"

"Thanks."

I walked out of the store and began thinking. Was it because I did not care for social affairs or something that the sales clerk said or did that? led me to invitation's end? I went over it all in my mind, convinced that what put me off was agreeing with Jerry's upbeat invitation and soft sell, which appealed to my ego, I have to admit. But I was wrong.

The sales clerk became my focus, and I thought that there must have been something. And then I had it. He was a chameleon. First, he stood off, formal like. then he tried to kid with me, and when he found I wasn't playing, he almost insulted me with his allusion to pop psychology. "Perhaps here is where you belong." Then he changed again, trying to probe my tastes. Finally, there was this choice of two. One way too expensive; the other at the lower end but still too pricey for me. Choosing that and having to appear in an ill-fitting pair of pants in front of him. Oh, and that upward jab into my crotch.

No. It was all too . . . too much to take. And it didn't matter that I didn't want to go anyway. Put me off. Put me off.

I can blame Jerry for starting all this. No, I just won't go. Won't say a thing. Avoid the whole thing altogether.

---

Funny sort. He looked like someone I could sell. But he danced around too much. I guess he really didn't want to buy. Kidding works with most people, but even when he kidded back, there was something reserved in his manner. I may have gone too far with what I said, but I don't think so. Maybe pleading with him in the end was going too far. But I had to try to salvage the thing. He jumped a bit when I tried to measure the inseam. I didn't touch him, but maybe he is hung low. I don't know. With some customers you can never tell. He was kind of dressed like a clown, but I didn't . . . I ignored that. I don't know what it is. But another customer will come soon.

Pack it in, pack it out

Indians walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds and squirrels, and their brush and bark huts last hardly longer than those of wood rats, while their more enduring monuments, excepting those wrought on the forests by the fires they made to improve their hunting grounds, vanish in a few centuries. --John Muir

I thought the quote was "walk softly in the woods." Anyway, I walked softly in the Indian Peaks Wilderness heading out from Eldora back from the early to late 70s. Registration was optional and based on the idea that if you were in the area, register at entry and exit so that if missing, someone would know where to look for you. I walked with my dog Niki, a Golden Retriever, and saw no one hike in or out in those days. My son accompanied me and our dog once or twice, and either alone or with this company we encountered snow we'd posthole through till exhausted, or be enchanted with the wildflowers till delirious with the colors and relief from built-world noise . . . high up, now and then, an airliner showed its tail heading west.

Backpacker ethics, which I picked up somewhere along the line in those days, was "pack it in, pack it out." I took it a step further, pack out stuff that I found that didn't belong, such as bottle caps, aluminum beer can tabs, bits of broken glass, foil wrappers for candies or chewing gum. And I, or we, did that, depositing same in some trash at the trailhead or at home in Nederland.

Seems to me backpacker ethics like those of (my) old days should apply to everyday living, although I know this is not realistic. But as applied to one's personal relations and effects, seems like a good rule of thumb. 

www.deskdrawerdrafts.com

One of my (uncountable) brilliant non-profit ideas a web site:

Brilliant words never before given to an audience for the appreciation they deserve--to wit . . .

OR

Excerpts of brilliance from my [unpublishable] canon.

The day before yesterday I was thinking about all the writers, unpublished, who have bits and larger bits and bytes of writing they are proud of. I thought of the writers, published, who have talked about  works from earlier years that they have put away in a drawer or filing cabinet, i.e., almost abandoned, shall we say. Then I thought about a web site to harvest these writings--the unpublished/under-appreciated bits and bytes in various genres and with varying volumes of words, and then  letting the unpublished if partial works speak for themselves. Let writers of whatever class place something they are proud of somewhere so that it can be read. This morning I got up and the idea of this site struck me again. I wonder(ed) if there was such a place on the web already that harvests this kind of stuff.

Consider the bower bird

Consider the bower bird as inspiration(?) for the scene Conchis paints for Nicholas, from _The Magus_ by John Fowles. I think a strong case can be made.

 

"When I was fifteen, I had what we would call today a nervous breakdown. Bruneau had been driving me too hard. I never had the least interest in games. I was a day boy, I had permission to concentrate on music. I never made any real friends at school. Perhaps because I was taken for a Jew. But the doctor said that when I recovered I would have to practice less and go out more often. I made a face. My father came back one day with an expensive book on birds. I could hardly tell the commonest birds apart, had never thought of doing so. But my father’s was an inspired guess. Lying in bed, looking at the stiff poses in the pictures, I began to want to see the living reality—and the only reality to begin with for me was the singing that I heard through my sickroom window. I came to birds through sound. Suddenly even the chirping of sparrows seemed mysterious. And the singing of birds I had heard a thousand times, thrushes, blackbirds in our garden, I heard as if I had never heard them before. Later in my life—ça sera pour un autre jour—birds led me into a very unusual experience.

"You see the child I was. Lazy, lonely, yes, very lonely. What is that word? A sissy. Talented in music, and in nothing else. And I was an only child, spoilt by my parents. As I entered my fourth luster, it became evident that I was not going to fulfill my early promise. Bruneau saw it first, and then I did. Though we tacitly agreed not to tell my parents, it was difficult for me to accept. Sixteen is a bad age at which to know one will never be a genius. But by then I was in love.

"I first saw Lily when she was fourteen, and I was a year older, soon after my breakdown. We lived in St. John’s Wood. In one of those small white mansions for successful merchants. You know them? A semi-circular drive. A portico. At the back was a long garden, at the end of it a little orchard, some six or seven overgrown apple and pear trees. Unkempt, but very green. Ombreux. I had a private 'house' under a lime tree. One day—June, a noble blue day, burning, clear, as they are here in Greece—I was reading a life of Chopin. I remember that exactly. You know at my age you recall the first twenty years far better than the second—or the third. I was reading and no doubt seeing myself as Chopin, and I had my new book on birds beside me. It is 1910.

"Suddenly I hear a noise on the other side of the brick wall which separates the garden of the next house from ours. This house is empty, so I am surprised. And then . . . a head appears. Cautiously. Like a mouse. It is the head of a young girl. I am half hidden in my bower, I am the last thing she sees, so I have time to examine her. Her head is in sunshine, a mass of pale blonde hair that falls behind her and out of sight. The sun is to the south, so that it is caught in her hair, in a cloud of light. I see her shadowed face, her dark eyes and her small half-opened inquisitive mouth. She is grave, timid, yet determined to be daring. She sees me. She stares at me for a moment in her shocked haze of light. She seems more erect, like a bird. I stand up in the entrance of my bower, still in shadow. We do not speak or smile. All the unspoken mysteries of puberty tremble in the air. I do not know why I cannot speak . . . and then a voice called. Li-ly! Li-ly!

"The spell was broken. And all my past was broken, too. Do you know that image from Seferis—'The broken pomegranate is full of stars'? It was like that. She disappeared, I sat down again, but to read was impossible."

Seems to me: The bower bird as creator of illusions to attract--tease and torment--Nicholas into becoming conscious of who he is, and who others are, in the drama of life and love on and off the island of Phraxos.

 

PS Art slips aside when confronted with the power of realities seen and felt?

And so forth

Regardless of the debates about the existence of a self or the self versus a construct we ourselves create in order to explain ourselves, we function as if there is such a thing, or person. I am aware that I am me and not someone else. On these foundations--a self that is me--including  traits or dispositions or thoughts or values, etc., we distinguish ourselves by working with the constellation of all these things to come up with decisions and actions, a life. 

Regardless of whether a particular synapse-connection occurs before or after conscious, that is intentional, choice, or will, we function with the illusion, if that is what it is, that we are in charge and making our own way in the world. The self stands ready or becomes identifiable at the moment of attending and following through on this or that. Have it either way. For everyday business in the living life that consensus reality holds and upholds our ego/self/person/personality/persuasions/perversions, etc. In short we get along, more or less well, in a my-/me-world.

My writings then are or seem to be evidence of my center of narrative gravity which I have manifested and promoted as a/my way to live in the world that I make and know. Is it really fair to inflict that "stuff" on readers as well as my complex of intentions (values?) I deem preferred?

Therefore, if only for this reason, I find my writing output more personal and not close to sometimes-clever much less artistic creations. I don't recommend. . . . It turns out that my efforts are more on the order of self-therapy and less other-oriented, regardless of prefaces or epilogues, other apologies, and so forth. And yours?

All is gossip

The only one who can know what you have done is you. Others will always and forever have partial information and faux-understanding. Let others talk about you. Gives 'em something to do, unless it comes to serious misinformation/-understanding. But even then, you can select which--actual or imagined--needs affirmation or correction.

In addition, do you fully know now or in reflection, perhaps years hence, everything about you and what you have done? This too often is an unrewarding pursuit, for what can you do now about all of that?

We believe we have the knowledge, the insight, the facts of the matter, and so we narrate based on partial info (such is as with any narrative) and subsequently believe that that settles matters related to that which we felt important enough to bother about.

Grasp now at some kind of certainty in this world in order to keep on keeping on, because living under illusions is practical if to a degree not full Truth.

Morality play

I was at the end of one hedge corridor and he, or was it she? the other. Although I could not discern in detail, I felt she had a menacing look: "Kill when I catch you." 

Whether or not to turn and run in her sight and enter or bypass the next corridor, I waited for her next move to pursue her prey. An eternity in the minute, and then she slowly advanced anticipating my defense. I had choices to make--my best bet to evade and escape. Or was it no exit no matter what?

It was with her determined, every advancing step, at the ready to alter course in order to gain her advantage, that I quickly thought to exit right and return to cross to the next corridor left. What if she ran forward in chase? or would she return to her end to exit left or right to meet me in the next lane? Either way I'd have a half length advantage if that, and how could I know if she advanced or retreated to anticipate my next position?

I exited left and quickly returned to see where she was. She stood where she'd stopped before I exited with a sinister smile aimed as if with a knowing, telescopic eye at my heart. I ran right then left up the next hedge corridor, the one leading to a door in the wall at the end. I was running fast and didn't know whether she was following. Half way up the corridor toward the door she appeared stepping slowly into view staring at me running toward her.

Must have wings, a spirit--now she was he. Escape from was hopeless and my heart beat the end was near. Survival said, "Keep trying to escape, or at a minimum prolong the chase." Reality's truth said, "Stand your ground. Let it come."

We both sang, "Fight to the end," with the refrain, "Time is, time was, but time shall be no more."