eight days of unremitting rain out here, and it has just been a slip-sliding misery. my neighborhood is one drenched, splashed on, dripped on, dejected hell.
at a 99 cent store this morning, waiting to pay for my three dollar umbrella, (my third for the week) an old lady talking to the young man helping her look for thermals said, "i guess it's time to build the ark now." the mexican looking man looked askance at her and went back to his corner with that funny muzzy look. just meters from the store, a gust whipped my umbrella inside out. by the time i reached my place i felt like a late thinking noah.
had i been noah, no animals would fit my bill of lading. instead, i'd outfit my ark with stories. those worth keeping until the rainbow ribbons out in the clear sky. but as in all of life, 'tis easier said than done. so many of them. so few to whittle down. what is the measure of a story worth building an ark for?
how about this one about a bohemian writer who married a man she barely knew and left him before the wedding night was over because she couldn't stand the pink bedspread?
how about this one?
inconceivable as this may seem, but in dante's inferno, the poet met only one prostitute down there. and instead of being trashed in the milder upper regions of hell, where sinners of the flesh were castigated, she was surprisingly dumped along with the flatterers wallowing in shit. you'd ask why? because, when her lover asked if he had sated her, she would reply baldfaced "beyond all measure."
