over two decades in the making.
a timeshifting autobiographical poetry collage w/photography.
a diaristic, nearly "daily writing" (ad)venture.
new pieces are posted most days..
**new and in progress** --
recordings of each poem are being added.
these are read by the author & posted to each poem's page.
--Del Ray Cross (contact delraycross at gmail)
It was an era wherein if one were to take the steadily shrinking perspective into account, one might be less prone to get so jacked up as the blips on the antique monitor get more and more exaggerated. Studies have shown that, whether or not there is a significant fluctuation in mortality rates, be they holding steady, declining or increasing at whatever grade, steep or gradual, humanity’s general giddiness, on the whole, remains pretty much the same. Furthermore, a mortal that becomes aware that it is finite, by nature, is just as likely to maintain its demeanor, be it elevated (optimistic) or not (pessimistic) at a steady rate until the very end of its existence as is one who never reaches such awareness. The same can be said about humans with demeanors that have ebb and flow, no matter the predictability of rate, and no matter how manic or how shallow in range, a human’s general behavior exhibited before its awareness of mortality, should such an awareness be achieved, has no statistical bearing on individual outlook or demeanor after said awareness. In other words, true or false, the very idea of immortality is, in the most basic sense, irrelevant as it relates to a human’s general disposition?
this character shows up a lot, and he just has this air of meta- phorical importance throughout; you know he’s going to really tell us something before all is said and done. right?
i’m not sure how best to relay this to you. my approach is, at the moment, improvisational. for one thing the summation of that which i am all too keenly aware is that i do not want to talk about this guy. i mean, what am i doing?
there’s this artist-type who lives on what i suppose you might call a sort of in-between area, where selfish cohabits with selfless, greed overlaps with charity, materialism with idealism (or any of the number of things one might assert that the opposite of materialism might be), and so on; for example, a person who considers himself a poet above all else might earn a living working at an accounting firm, or at a bank,
or be a brinks security guard in
charge of an atm machine, or work
at an investment company. let’s not
continue to overstate the obvious, because what I might be getting
at, and this is just among many other things that i may or may not be “getting
at” here (if one were to spend a lifetime
“getting at” things, what might one be able to say, and with any amount of satisfaction that doesn’t border on delusion, at the end of a lifetime, should
it have any heft or girth
at all, that one has actually and finally gotten? i mean,
of all of the whatevers at
which one might be trying
to get? what can a person
say has been accomplished?
can one say with confidence
that one has [yawn]
left the world a
better place
than it was
when one
arrived?) –
let’s say, for example, that, and I believe I’m getting a bit fuzzy, or tangential (or perhaps
the word i should use
is redundant?) here
(who can say that
fuzzy, tangential
and redundant
are not the very
triumvirate at
which i am
working so hard
trying to “get” over
here? “did that twisted
wretch just toss us this
crooked wrench?” it might
be appropriately and perhaps
even more vituperatively
queried), let’s say
that i was born
and raised here,
in this place, and that i have attempted to follow the rules as best as i can, with some intentional and some unintentional exceptions:
would i not be,
simply put, in
almost any
possible
scenario,
given those
few qualifications,
as a general rule, knowing
what you know only from what
you might have gleaned here,
complicit? might it not
be automatically said, or,
might it even best be rather
said, by which i mean would it
not be just as good and nice and
easy and even more correct to
allow it to go without my
even saying, that i am
complicit? that i am,
therefore, and above
all else, a hypocrite?
so you can see how exhausting it might be [is!] to dwell on this particular character even if only
within the confines of,
and again, just to
clarify, this specific
and ridiculously long and rambling semi- narrative that I claim is also, intentionally, intensely biographical (and do i thusly
have little or no
need to even use
the whole word,
autobiography,
in its entirety?),
while also making
absolutely certain,
repeatedly, continually
(and at this effort
almost unsparingly),
that this is fiction.
like a mantra, as if sung
by the most obvious of fowl,
whose songs or pecking or chirps
permeate an environment and yet
despite the most herculean sleuthery
are next to impossible to lay a naked
set of eyes upon, do you not hear
our dear narrator pecking away at
his “i am here but i am damned
sure not here, can you dig?”
there’s no real way for a hippo to tiptoe away
in a pretty or graceful or hushed fashion, is
there?
i do most earnestly hope that you
can nevertheless begin to empathize with me and my dilemma, and that
you might moreover even find it in
your heart to forgive the
fact that what i am
throwing up here
(both literally and,
well, literally)
is such a clunker
that one might wonder
how it made it out of
the factory door (which,
to be honest, in this case,
is not a very proverbial one,
given that this was more or less tossed out from the only
window that can,
and only with a tremendous
amount of exertion, might i add, be – but just barely – pried a tiny bit
There was so much to celebrate, so many places to be, so much to try, so many dances to be raucously danced. But it was already a quarter past ten! There were big decisions to make, like what to wear, how much make- up, what to wear, whether to drop by the pre-party, what to bring just in case he decided to go to the after-party, of course he’d go to the after- party, or maybe he’d wind up someplace unexpected, one never knows how a night is going to go, he thought, what to wear, what to wear, and who’s going to be wearing it, now that was always the real question, wasn’t it? It tickled
him to no end to think such thoughts, to know that it had become such a game amongst his modicum of a scene to see what he might show up wearing, what mood he’d be in, and, always, what the evening’s charade or ploy, in essence, what the entertainment of the evening would be, the antici- pation and, once it’s on, the giddy participation, the delight, the fun! And all of it simply because he had arrived! And yet, he never really understood why, or what the big deal was, about who he’d be from one evening to the next. Because, to him, that was not even a question. Sure, he played at enjoying the attention, reveling in it, in fact. But wasn’t the notion that he’d be anything but his own pure self no-
thing but a construct, given that no matter how late for the ball he was, no matter how hard a day he’d had at the office or, if he were still there, no matter how much longer he might have to stay, nose to the proverbial grindstone, no matter who was over for company, no matter who was over for fun, no matter with whom it was he awoke of a morning, no matter if there was no one there but himself (and Fifi, of course, she’d always be there, that thought
had him grin one of his wide-eyed
grins; some wore their hearts on
their sleeves, it’s true, but he wore his on his lips), the one thing that remained absolutely con- stant was that, through every bit of it all, he was who he was, he knew who he was, and he lived his mostly very pleasant and happy life know- ing at least that much. Sure, he was 100% Gemini, there was no mistaking that. But… “Oh my God! It’s 10:30! It’s time to jump into overdrive!” And with that, he began to quickly glide toward the bedroom. But, once there, as he was just about to pass the vanity, he stopped hard, turned to face it and leaned in, using each of his palms to hold himself up while taking a long glare into the mirror. “But, honey, it’s true,” he breathily declared, looking
himself right in the eyes,
“your lips really are divine!” And then he disappeared quickly into the closet to get ready for the night.
frailty, fragility, puke-y ad nauseum times infinity only no! ack! hock! sputter! we is merely mortal. we is not infinity. eat, drink, excrete, repeat: drummed numb dum-dum. butchered, bound and drugged like bleeding bags of processed meat. and horriblest of all, of course, is that we’re all be- jinxed, accursed, to get but teasy, mean, bedeviled glimpses of such glimm’ring app- aritions that bind our eggy, achy eyes like opulent oases to our craven hearts and hungry brains with adamantine stitches to set us after a nirvana that just about as soon as we can almost taste we are ass- iduously obliterat- ed, incinerated or otherwise stricken or eradicated. one by one and each by each we then get scooped indel- icately up and driven down a ways til out of sight (at very least) in prettied limousines or gussied up hearses.
change “Clonk” to “Dink,” change the ampersand to “’n” and the first letter of the next word from “D” to “C”
in line 10, “all by” becomes “alone amongst”
later (this is crucial!), “define” is to now be “divine”
consider adding the word “content” in short measure after the first in stance that the word “context” appears
“ditzy . . . enmeshed” to “dizzily” (remove “to contextualize”)
change “the now” to “the past” – duh!
the next “context” should be “law” then switch “law” to “order” (or vice versa), after which, add a semicolon and (for context, of course) “rank and file over content” (et voilà , we now have “content”)
make “Greg” “Margaret” w/in paren.: “point taken”
change “forget” to “remember” change the following period to a comma (“B” obvy to “b”) and “One hundred percent” [sic] to just “(100%)” and also “boy did I ever” to “fuck if I didn’t”
the next “was” should be “am” therefore “Omigod they work like you would not believe!” should follow in parentheses
decide whether or not “Just like usual” should stand on its own and add “Peanuts.” after “…circus?”
It hadn’t meant to be preliminary. And inasmuch as that can even be said (as if the con- glomerate of words themselves could by any means attest) it wasn’t meant to be at all. And yet, there it was, just lying there, in fact, in all of its primitive, non-essential and illustratively in- complete glory. Had he, perhaps, made a little note to himself to come back again tomorrow, or at least at the soon- est? It isn’t as if any- one were actually left wondering. But from what had, unremark- ably, been left behind, not even the slight- est hint could be gleaned.
The preacher always looked so much larger than life during the sermon. This is what Jonny tells his big brother one Sunday afternoon, and it was met with one heckuva loud mess of Jeffy’s all-over-the-place laughter. Which is pretty contagious. So at lunch the boys annoyed the poo-hockey out of their folks; even the twins, their kid sisters, said to hush it up. So the thought about the preacher being so gigan- tic disappeared completely from Jonny’s head, all the way, at least, until the following Sun- day, when right after the service was finished he got an odd-look- ing “Cummere,” out of his big brother, pract- ically pulling him out of a trance, and he was hop- ping and skipping to catch up with him as he took off down the aisle toward the pulpit, so that Jonny said “What is it??” a little bit too loud, and he sort of ducked his head into his chest, a bit embarrassed as he made his way to catch up to the front of the church where Jeffy let out a loud whisper, “Lookit!” and pointed all sneaky like
down under behind the pulpit to right where the preach’d be every Sunday all red-faced at his ser- man and . . . larger than life. Two cinder blocks, one on top of the other, were tucked neatly up inside the little hidden shelf at the very bottom. “Larger than life,” Jeffy let out and just burst out laughing ’til he was all crouched over, and soon enough, Jonny was, too.
I’d had no idea it was foggy before I stepped out some thirty minutes previous to rest on the bench. I suppose there were two benches. At first I sat under the drooping yellow bells, breathing in the intense so sweet you’d think it’d be sickly aroma of the bells, which were looking a bit haggard, had seen better times, the trees always seem in bloom, have been there for a few years now, but as I sat, facing the trad- itional department store, under the can- opy of the browning yellow bells, a gentle- man kept approaching my bench looking for, he said, his wallet and his torch, which he’d just lost. I could cer- tainly empathize with his loss, but I was al- ready a bit anxious from the rush of get- ting out and about be- fore dark, which I only just barely did. I fussed around a bit with my bag of snacks, which I’d just purchased at the pharmacy on the way to the square, got everything situated in my backpack, and stood up and walked around to the more open part of the square, sat down on a chilly but empty bench that had a panoramic view of the city’s upper scale shopping district around me, wonder- ing what I might have to say about what I saw, how I was feeling, what I was thinking, the people, mostly masked, walking to and fro across the square, some at more of a diagonal, in essence walking from intersection to intersection, and others would walk more parallel to a couple of the streets that tucked the park into a square. Although it was the heart of dusk and quick- ly darkening, given that the glorious and surprising fog had come in at some point during the evening, breaking what had been a week-long heatwave, for the first few minutes there were still presumed tourists, or just people like me, who who would pause to snap a photo of the commem- orative monument that rose high into the air and up into the sky from the center of the square, or of themselves, or of each other, before mov- ing along on their diagonal or horizontal or vertical ways to wherever it was they were going. But within what seemed like no time at all, maybe twenty minutes, my thoughts still a swirl- ing and unsettled admixture, it was as dark as night gets in a square that is nestled among brightly lit department stores and hotels. Which is to say, it
was as late as I had intended
to stay. So, without really
accomplishing the goal that I had initially set out to do (it had, I suppose, been an hour since I first ventured out), I leaned forward and rose from the metal bench, which I had only just warmed a little bit during my visit, and I turned in the general direction of home, and began my walk back, where, once I’d ar-
rived and settled down a
bit, I set about typing this
to send to you at a decent hour. I hope it arrives with good cheer, peacefully and pleasantly, and that it brings you a little something that catches and stays, perhaps brightening or enlightening your evening, or morning, or your afternoon, as such efforts can sometimes, on the best of days, yield. I am, as always, indebted; and yours truly, signing off.
The rumors abounded. Alli says “Your portfolio is reeking.” He is spot- ted by several civilians on different dates skip- ping about town at 3 in the morning. He vows to give up the pen, to stop reading entirely. There’s “nothing new under the sun,” he pro- nounces, as if afresh – this, overheard by sev- eral trusted sources in various Sunset dives. The boulevard is a dry sponge. What a pill this all must have been to him: the head- lines, the apostrophes, the disavowals. The city grew unsanitary while he – I heard – had grown fond of welts. With what? It’s how he took them, you know? He really took to it, too. He buried his entire wardrobe at the compound. I
Hello, everyone. How about we all gather around here, as I’d like to propose a toast. Let’s see [he closes his eyes], this is where I always seem to muck things up. [he opens his eyes] Hello?! Excuse me, I’m just trying to round folks up – not sure where everyone went, but they must be around here somewhere. After all, where else would they be? Oh – one moment – I think I see a few of them right over there. Yoo hoo! Over here? Haha, I’m always trying to get their at- tention, it seems. It’s been – seems like years that I’ve been trying to get everyone to just – yep. Those are, indeed, my friends. Hang on [takes a few steps in any direction, puts his hand over his eyes as if to shield them from the sun]. Oh for Pete’s sake. [he nervously titters] It’s certainly a good thing that we’re all friends here! I try like mad sometimes, I really do. Oh. I can see them now. A few. Yeah. Well, it does appear that there are those who are within earshot, so how about we get right to it. Ahem! I’d like to propose a toast. Oh, everybody! Oh. EVERYBODY!!! I’m hearing noises. Do you hear any- thing? I think I – but no one. No one seems to be coming our way. Don’t they know that they’re about to miss the roast? Well, I do suppose that we can begin without them, as they’ll be making their way up at any moment now. A toast, I say [he raises an imaginary glass]. Oh, no . . . hey . . . where’d you go?
Mary doesn’t like her picture taken. At family events, she loves to bring this up, tell everyone all about it. At the table this year, there was a box that looked as if it had been just painted a dull shade of yellow
by a very thick brush. Mrs. Hampton kept referring to it as her “golden” box. “Can you park it a bit further down, and a bit further in, perhaps?” She had everyone bending over back- wards, especially over this “golden” box. It wasn’t a “gift,” we were all told, but it might be a “receptacle.” And this year, Karla, that’s the dog, I guess she’s a small boxer – a min- iature boxer – all beige, she is, and this year, Karla hobbles. And it’s a pretty dramatic hobble. There is hardly a fuss over Karla’s ailment,
and for some reason I find this in- credibly disturbing. So I can’t take my eyes off of Karla. She’s moving around a lot, but the poor thing is so slow and so particular and you can see the pain in her big, black, bulbous eyes. At one point, Mrs. Hampton catches my glare, sort of lifts my gaze away from the dog and she gives me a long, hard look of “But what can be done?” I really have a strong compulsion to answer her with a look that says, well, I ima- gine a lot of things, really, just ask a veterinarian, I’ve seen some pretty astounding contraptions. Anyway, I keep straying from the subject, don’t I? Mary, as I mentioned earlier, she simply despises having her picture taken. But I, just as I have for, it has been a few years now, have come up with the solution to this rather awkward dilemma. Yes, I happen to know that Mary loves a very particular, and I must say quite costly, Beaujolais. “Hey, Mar,” I chime to her, she’s on the other side of the table, we’re all standing at this point, “Mary, would you like, perhaps, a small glass of Beaujolais,” slowly lift- ing the bottle, label outward, of course, from its purple shimmery bag. She absolutely lights up, bright as a marquis! “Oooh, Herbert, I would looove some,” she says, over-extending each vowel, loud and clear as a bell that she most assuredly means exactly what she is saying.
All of life (all along) against the barbed wire fence. We live in a herd community where pigeons are “comic” and pheasants aren’t (peasants). So, you’re going to glare at me all cock-eyed, are you? Here we are, a herd of cock-eyed glares and barbed wire incisions. “Who’s got the mop?” You’ve probably never even heard of a herd whose mop comes from Sicily.
Here I sit, beside my nightstand, where Harry Styles covers Vogue. I like this, my clean publishing para- digm, don’t you? There I sat, all brokenhearted and pistol-whipped, eating a mango, mid-hallucination. It seems like only yesterday that we were spooning on the rent-a-couch, trying to watch an episode of Night Court, each of our cans of peaches were awkwardly agape, having been so clumsily opened, and were sitting on the coffee table between us and the graveyard makeshift court of law. We talked well into the night about that summer we both worked in factories: yours mass-pro- duced pincushions; mine, little girl vanity sets that were almost as large as life, depending, of course, on the actual size of your little girl.
unbeknownst to the page, the words had some- thing to say, and it was imp- ortant that they said it. except the words got mixed up, rearranged, opted out. of life. which is, after all, a comedy, right? aw, you just think I’m none too bright. brains aren’t every- thing, though, are they? or at least that’s how I see it; every- thing: overly comical. and why not? to summar- ize, if it’s not the hours, not the days that are tra- gic, then what is?
got at it, did ya? boy, don’t I know it all too well. but here’s what you do, take it from me: do whatever it is you normally do to wind down the day, say prayers, hop in the tub, get the coffee ready, set the alarm, just what- ever. then you plop your- self right down in bed. fluff up your pil- low, tuck yer own damn self in. and then, off to dream- land you go. got that? I certainly hope you do. nighty night, now.
bring it to a simmer. remember that it did not have any taste the last time. don’t have the spice you feel you need to get it right? just use what you’ve got. no guaran tees, but come on …it just might work.
I have been famished. I’ve been utterly and despondently ashamed. I used to ask for my eggs over hard, but I’ve eaten them runny, and they were just fine. While I’m not entirely certain what I am saying to you here, I can say for certain, with apologies as it were, that it’s not about hunger. Allow me, if you will (and you do, gloriously, you do!), to take you on an adventure. For years, I’ve had this thing: I’d drop my friends off, by ones and twos, etc., with a tour guide. It was a beautiful tour that lasted no more than a couple of hours, and while there were different guides at different times of the day, it was the same exact tour each time, and every time I’d go along, too, a tourist, an audience member, just like my friends, ex- cept I’d been on the tour countless times be- fore. There would always be a nuanced differ- ence or two, but I’d hear the same stories, we’d traverse the same route and, with some adjustments for the season or for the changes that occur in nature on a regular and constant basis, we’d see the very same sights. And each time I would be just as curious and just as interested as I was at every tour previous to the present one. Except I was as equally interested in observing my friends along the way, seeing how each took to it, while also listening to the guide, curious about the sights and the stories that went along with what we saw, and all the while I’d be snapping pho- tographs, making little mementoes of the occasion. What exact- ly am I saying, telling you this, besides the surface of this one diminutive anecdote? I wonder. Am I simply more interested, in general, in being a participant than being a guide; am I more of a climber than a sherpa, more student, less professor? Or perhaps this aspect of me that I have just relayed to you reiterates my geminian nature, revealing how I am so often driven to be both and neither, all at once. I do believe that these things are true about me. In fact, I can say with confidence that they are. And I would happily, were you even the least bit willing and inter- ested, take the time to further elaborate upon these truths about me, would of course be curious to hear what you’d have to say about these propensities and listen to where you think you generally reside on such a spectrum; it’d be awesome to brainstorm with you to come up with a list of the pros and the cons of each of our respective ways of being in life, and to collaboratively come up with ways in which each of us could take this information and use it to better our lives going forward. I can envision a discussion such as this going well into the night, perhaps all the way until morning, as we branch out on various related (or not) tangents, relishing every minute of it and, upon parting ways for the night or the day, feeling filled with life and awe and questions and camaraderie because of it. I should probably tell you, though, that this isn’t really about any of that. I believe that I am, in actuality, at- tempting to illustrate here for you, that the reason I brought this up, is that with all that I am – which is the sum of all of whatever it is with which I am made up, and that makes up me, I miss those tourists, and I miss those sage guides; I mourn the presence of each and every one of them, and am so very grateful that I not only have had the serendipity to have crossed paths with each and all, but that on so many occasions I had the wonderful pleasure of going along on every small journey, every moment of which was a gift that stays with me, buoying me up every single day: to have been along for the ride with you. It has been pretty much everything, and so I give thanks, in my very small way; it’s the best way I know how, for now.
It all starts off pretty innocent, somebody sends you a pill in the mail. The next thing you know, you’re a hotshot with an endless prescription pad. We love to fill in the blanks like they’re Mad Libs, “Tonight I’ll have the [squishy] [starburst] that’ll have us all [slurping] the [zeitgeist] all [schadenfreude].” “Roughly half of my ancestors were German; the rest from every- where else. Interestingly, the German side of the family wasn’t rough at all.” He won’t stop hocking ptooey: everything’s “zaftig” this or that on the autobahn, he’s endless Mercedes and BMV, only it’s “Bay Em Vay,” as if he’s got something stuck in the middle of his throat and he wants to get it out; he’s spat the word “fahr- vergnügen” at least four times in the past thirty minutes alone. He’s invited us to a costume party and is trying like mad to have us wondering about the equipment he surely has downstairs in what he keeps calling his “underworld studio.” Is anyone fooled by any of this, I wonder, or is it just that I’ve skittered around a bit too close to hell for the last half dozen or so years, as optimism got whittled and chiseled away to reveal the fun-loving character with the reputation for slapping around a little bit more than just a bunch of pretense now and again? It used to be such torture hanging with the sycophants. But these days it’s about as riveting as the gaping maw of a really long yawn.
There was an explosion. These things happen. I was new to the place. It was a place, that’s what was new. And there was an explosion. I was going to be a writer. It turned out it happened most nights. At least for a while. There was an explosion, and this happened most nights, for a while, so I wrote it down. One night when it happened I had a guest. It scared “the livin’ bejesus” out of him, that’s how he put it. I said it happens. Quite a bit. Just one. Just a magnificent bang, like right out the one window, and then nothing. ’Til maybe the next night, anyway. He was here the next night, too. It scared the livin’ bejesus out of him again but not as bad as the night before, he said. I said “Exactly!” and wrote it down. It was something. Those explosions. Something that was happening. Something that felt tragic but wasn’t. Something to write down. Something that sort of situated us, that gave us something to bring up, to talk about, to discuss and wonder over, that didn’t have much in the way of cons equences, except it got our hearts maybe going a little bit faster and gave us what they call a thread, a piece of string to hang on to, together, so it was a connection. We’d had those before, tons of them, even, but speaking for myself, they’d all been disconnected, every last one of them, so it was those humongous kabooms that came at one or two in the morning, what sounded like big hollowed out bombs that went off right underneath the window and echoed way out into the city heat of the otherwise silent summer night for what seemed like a couple of minutes, ’til the sound of the two fans, one blowing on each of us because the room was always such a hotbox, it was like an eternity until the sound of the fans came back to being the only thing we’d hear, and for the rest of the night I could not even sleep, not after an ex plosion, neither one of us did, as it turns out. I’d allow my eardrums to come slowly back down to just that little fan, I had it on the bed with me, it was a steam-bath, still is, doesn’t matter what time of the year, here in this room, this place that’s mine now for over a decade since then, those explosions long since gone, whatever they were, they quit happening by the end of the summer, they did. But when you’d hear one, it was a big enough thing that it would literally bring you back. No joke. It was huge enough that it’d shape life out of what had become unrecognizable. That’s how big of an ex plosion it was. For both of us, I’d say, or at least I think it was just as significant for my friend. But I didn’t see him again, not once after that summer. Things were starting to get pretty weird, for one thing. I mean, for one thing, he bilked me. And it wasn’t like I had much anything to take, but whatever it was, he took it. He took it all. He had this motivation all of a sudden, and that was new. So he took me for all that I had, which again, wasn’t much, but boy, did that ever charge me up. And then: gone. Like he never even existed. By then, though, I was back, too. I had life. I had reasons. I would wake up all early of a morning, feel the blood pumping very particularly through my insides, and before I knew it I was up and I was doing things. And we never figured out what it was that went off nights, I have absolutely no idea, no idea whatsoever. But something sure went off in me that summer. Something I could not contain. And so I’ve got nothing but gratitude for whatever it was, those un godly explosions, nothing but a huge amount of gratitude. Maybe it was all in my head, knowing what I know of me then, but that doesn’t even matter. All I know is that I am here, and that this is true thanks, perhaps, to something that’d go boom of a night every once in a while that long ago summer. So, were it not for those explo sions . . . ?
What we have here is nothing but a bunch of lopsided days followed by Gunga Din. “Jesters, all of you?” queries dear Jessica (she’s a cheese-a- holic, it should be noted). O- therwise, “Don’t burn it before you sift it!” Now that my shift’s finally over (I’m told it was only then that the shit hit the fan), everybody grabs their colanders, per these here instructions, and turns quickly to- wards to- morrow (shielding the faces of strangers with their respective sterling silver strainers).
Always dapper, but almost always pictured seated, which, dapper and seated, always an elegant combination, or it least one that worked well for the good doctor. In this particular photograph his left leg is crossed gingerly across his right – lady-style, one might say, or upper echelon-style, or just comfortable in his lanky elder-man body-style – his circular specs have circular attached shades that add a further layer to the sexiness of this septuagenarian man- about-town with an eggplant-shaped face that sits not quite but just above a bowtie that conjures a quickly slashed felt-marker line (of perhaps half a centimeter here), and is precisely parallel to the high waist-line of his long khakis which, in turn, run parallel with the wooden back slats of the porch-swing upon which he sits or, more accurately, he’s pictured here sittin’ on a porch-swing. A front- porch-swing, much like what I used to swing upon at my grandmother’s (he was her uncle, as well), back when I was a child. But would that I knew such grace in this body of mine. The dapper doctor’s long – and lanky, just like the rest of him – left arm sits along the top of the swing to his left, its elbow rests just over the top on the other side. Follow the arm further and you can see its four long fingers crooked right in front of his left suspender, like a hand- fan pointing leg-ward, but only his thumb is at the suspender, unseen, yet apparently holding it in its crook, just away from his white, pressed oxford, as if to allow his heart a bit more liberty to do its rhythmic thing (the siphoning swell, the quick contracting whoosh, the tick the jerk of it makes and that can be felt). These are mechanics with which he’d be well acquainted, and intimately, being, thus far, the singular medical practitioner in these parts for the entirety of his adulthood. I imagine him letting out the subtlest of exhalations, his version of a sigh, and proclaiming to everyone and no one at all, “It’s a right pretty day, I reckon.” And who’d refute Uncle Doctor Randall Weaver, who was always on the verge of saying “I do declare!” And any soul who’d hear his declaration would be hard-pressed to disagree. Any passerby (and there were always at least a few) would, upon getting near enough to see Doctor Weaver sittin’ on his porch-swing’d greet him with an “Evenin’, Doc Weaver.” To which our distinguished gentleman, my great, great, great uncle, would respond by lifting his long fingers from his suspender, gently taking the tip of his fedora between his thumb and forefinger for a split second, then relax his arm back down upon the swing and drop his fingers back to his elastics, where they’d remain until the next pedestrian’s earnest greeting.
