“He brought out a yellow nickel tablet. He brought out a yellow Ticonderoga pencil. He opened the tablet. He licked the pencil… ‘I’m going to divide the summer up in two parts… First part of this tablet it titled: RITES AND CEREMONIES… Those are the things we do over and over and never think. Now here in back… DISCOVERIES AND REVELATIONS or maybe ILLUMINATIONS, that’s a swell word, or INTUITIONS, okay? In other words you do an old familiar thing… And then you think about it, and what you think, crazy or not, you put it under [there].'”
– Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine
Near office buildings’ dumpsters (especially when they view municipal parking lots, as they do near MauiTime) are a good place to hangout and people-watch; i.e. if you enjoy watching people and eau de drunk bum. I spend a few minutes every few hours doing just that (whilst attending to a bad habit), and today this is what I observed:
She stepped out of her car and smoothed her short skirt. Stork legs kinked like a hex key–no-thanks to an evil (but cute) pair of high-gloss stilettos–she managed to take 10 tenuous steps before her knees buckled when a heel got caught in a divot in the asphalt. Poor lady. I would’ve rushed to help her, but I was too busy worrying if that’s how I look when I attempt to strut in ill-fated shoes.
It used to be that I wore heels so often, I could break into a rapid trot befitting of award-winning equine–however it made me look like an ass. So I switched to rubbah slippahz–Locals brand, of course–which is cheaper and much more respectable when you’re an all-hours Wailuku wanderer.
But this got me thinking about my gait, so I took a stroll around the block to make some stride-assessments. Damage report: Quasimodo ain’t got shit on me, and I think I’d be better off in a wheelchair (with apologies to bad-asses in wheelchairs).
That the Ministry of Silly Walks hasn’t solicited my expertise is beyond me. My poor, limp stump of right leg cocks out an an angle and is swung like a heavy club in some semblance of forward motion; meanwhile my weaker left leg scuffs along in pursuit. Sexy, I know.
Then again, sexy isn’t exactly the look I’m going for, though maybe it should be. Via the dreaded “Tag Photo” function, Facebook has informed me I tend toward haute-unsure that can best be described as “I’ve come to eat your newborn.”
Speaking of eating: “Hello, hamburger steak. Prepare to meat your doom.” I posted that on Facebook recently and people liked it, so I’m slapping it into this column as a crappy segue to talk about Thanksgiving leftovers–which is entirely unrelated to people-watching and relatively obscure Monty Python references.
To say that me and my ex-husband Bill Murray have been supping a lot of turkey soup lately is an understatement. We’re heading into the holidays broker than we’ve ever been–whether together or otherwise–and so we’ve been making leftovers stretch like Armstrong.
If you think it’s weird to spend a lot of time with your ex, you’re right–it is. But if you had a Star Trek tradition six years in the making, you’d understand. Space may be the final frontier, but if the show teaches us anything, it’s that love and loss are complexities unconquered the universe-over.
Between episodes, we play two-person Spades or steel tipped darts, meanwhile listening to vinyl (PS: I recommend not taking Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” too literally)–and the stove, should it boil-over.
“Gosh, turkey’s sure got a distinct aroma–and it smells like the holidays,” I said, realizing it for the first time.
“Right? What other time of the year do you eat turkey? Well, other than deli meat.”
“Bleh. You know what? After a lifetime, I finally admitted to myself I really don’t like deli turkey. So I’ve been opting for ham instead; though I’d prefer roast beef if it wasn’t so sinewy.” (Ah, yes. Meaningful conversations at their finest.)
“Sinewy?”
“Yeah, sinewy.”
“I don’t think that’s a word,” Bill said as he won a trick with a King of Hearts beating my Jack.
“Shut up! You know it’s a word. Sinewy. Sin-ew-y!”
Bill just shook his head defiantly.
“Gah! You know, those stringy, fatty things in sliced meat that looks like the aerial view of rivers and tributaries?”
“Oh. So, like, this card is very sinewy.” He threw down an Ace with a mischievous smirk and clanked his can of The Beast against my glass of red wine, though it was still sitting on the table and I was in no cheery mood.
“Actually, now that I think of it, maybe it’s a misappropriated word that really means tendon, but–”
“Ah-ha! See, you have no idea what sinew is–if it is anything!”
“Bill, it’s a goddamned colloquialism, I’m sure of it.”
“Colloquia-what?” Bill’s vocab isn’t exactly prize-worthy, but he’s got a Ph.D. in pushing my buttons.
All is forgiven when I win the game. Curiously, it seemed only because Bill “Play to Win” Murray–a man who’s only happy playing a game he’s winning–grossly overestimated his cards. Could it have been calculated? Did he lose on purpose so that I’d win? That neither sounds like the man I married nor divorced, but surprising change is exactly that.
With the leftovers stew almost done, it was time to cue Star Trek, take out the trash, attend to a bad habit and think about the day. So, swinging my stupid leg, I got up to look for my Locals.
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