What a day. This will be a report.
It began with my mother getting ready to go with the neighborhood girls to lunch at Olive Garden. I think I must have complained about not having a life or something. Sure. So they got together and said they would take my mother to lunch. I stuck around the house until ten. They were picking her up at eleven, so I would just be back from my walk before she left.
Then the gym. I went to the "boom-boom room," to warm up with a total body workout before hitting the weights. Tennessee was already there and I thought I would see him, but when I came out, he was gone.
"He said he'd come back here before he left," the shock jock said.
"The Talker is gone," said one of the ladies.
Hmm. Maybe he got a call. I don't know, but I had said something to him the day before about going to get an early Margarita for Cinco de Mayo. He'd said yes with his lips, but his eyes weren't certain, so maybe he was ditching me. It was OK with me. He has one more day in town, and he has been busy for the past week packing everything up. Maybe I'd hear from him later.
When I got back to my house, I took a shower and sat at my new desk. I wrote a note to T and his wife on my old stationary. I've had it forever, but I didn't like it anymore. I have rarely used it. Then I thought to make some postcards. My midwest friend sends me postcards from 'round the world, so I would get one to her first. I printed up that picture of the salt marsh on one side of some 300gm cardstock and then flipped it over and printed the backside with postcard markings.
I wrote a note, addressed it, and put an old stamp on it. Cool. Then I made another, more dangerous card, for Q. I would have to put his in an envelope, though, so I went into my office desk drawers to get one. Crazy, but none of my envelopes would hold a 4x6 postcard.
I didn't want to sit in the house all day. Indeed, I wanted to change my routines altogether, and I decided to go to a little French bakery just off the Boulevard for a late brunch. The day was gorgeous and I was feeling pretty free.
Halfway there, I remembered the postcards. Selavy. I'd have to mail them later.
I grabbed a sidewalk table and ordered an egg, ham, and brie croissant. It was after one. The Boulevard was fairly busy, but it was quiet on the sidestreet. Hardly anyone passed by.
When I finished eating, I walked around the corner to a beautiful little Spanish courtyard that led to the Boulevard. It had once housed four upstairs apartments, and at one point in life, I was thinking of trying to rent one, but the properties became too valuable and were turned into offices and shops. The stationary store was there, up a beautiful little outdoor stone stairway. The courtyard had once held a small fountain, but now it was all bricked.
When I entered the shop, the owner was sitting at her desk.
"Hello," she said. "You look like you are on a mission."
"You've had this shop a long time," I said.
"Thirty-six years."
The woman was an acquaintance of my old moneyed girlfriend's family, and indeed, I think she is the one who bought my last stationary. But I mentioned none of this.
The owner showed me some things in a book, different styles and paper tones and weights, and of course, the different fonts. Then she said, "I do have one company who is having a fabulous sale. The stationary is on 300 gm cardstock and is engraved, not simply printed. It is at a 50% reduction until. . . oh. . . May 15. They include the plate."
On sale, 50 cards and envelopes were $175. I told her about the new desk that had inspired me, but I was kind of browsing, so. . . .
"Well, the printed ones are always available and they are nice, too."
We chatted for awhile longer. She is a nicely contained woman, and I was reminded of those years when I was "recognized" by Village Society. Not part of it, but "known." I had always loved the genteel surfaces, the honeyed tones, the elegance of the rooms. . . Gatsby-itis. Whence I came, it was a true Wonderland.
Now that old society has been replaced by something new. There was always money. Now there is more money. It's not Palm Beach money, but it is inching closer now.
When I walked back out on the Boulevard, I wondered what to do. I was breaking routine, breaking habit, but I didn't want to waste the day, so I decided to go back to my house and finish working on some projects.
I got a call. It was my mother. She was back from her lunch.
"What are you doing?" she asked me. "I've been home since one-thirty. I'm bored."
"Good to know," I said. "I'll call you when I get bored."
"What?"
"Nothing. How was lunch?"
"I had soup and salad. It wasn't any good. The others had meals, but I didn't eat much."
Good old mom. I told her I was doing "stuff" and that I would see her in a bit. Somehow, though, the magic of the day seemed to have disappeared. I made more postcards and then worked on old images in files I hadn't touched for a decade or more.
NYC, 2012. I walked around with a big assed Canon with a 24-105 telephoto lens taking pictures in the street. Nobody paid any attention to that then.
The images seem like miracles to me now.
I hadn't heard from T, and it was getting time for me to head back to mother's. I looked at the postcard with the forty-one cent stamp. Wait. How much to mail a postcard now? I went to the computer to look it up. Seventy-one cents, it said. Jesus. I'd mail everything tomorrow.
The tenant came over to ask me if I wanted her to bring over some cookies that night. She leaves on Friday for her own homestate to help her mother with her grandmother who turns 107 on Saturday. Being sole caretaker for her grandmother, the tenant said, has ruined her mother mentally and physically, and she can't wait for her daughter to come relieve her.
"Huh," is all I can ironically muster.
I grabbed the makings for Margaritas, Cointreau and tequila. I'd have to stop at the grocers to get limes.
When I got back to my mother's house, she was sitting in her usual chair in the garage.
"Do you want a Margarita?"
"Sure."
Cointreau and lime juice in equal parts, then tequila to equal the combined amounts. The juice of one lime was perfect. I took the glasses out.
"Wait. I need to make a picture."
I sent my lousy phone snap around to friends: "Mom, me, and Margaritas. Happy Cinco."
As we drank, a fellow walked up the drive. Salesman. He wanted mom to replace her old aluminum windows.
Nope.
"We do roofs, too. I see that you are about ready for one."
"Really? She just got this one about four years ago. I guess we'd better call the company and tell them."
He just grinned. I kibitzed with him about putting on a roof that lasted 22 years. I talked about the price of Pella windows. Turned out, that is what he sold.
Somehow the conversation turned. He had been in the service. Iraq. When he got out, he went to engineering school, he said, but he realized he needed to be outside, so. . . . He asked what I did. Then he told me about what he was reading. He'd just started reading Kafka.
"Oh, man. . . I think the last story in the collection is "The Hunger Artist." That's a great one."
I did a quick explication of the thing. He told me about what else he had been reading, and that he had a love of Plato and Socrates. We talked a long time. His partner who was working the opposite side of the street had come back to the car, so he said he needed to go.
My mother was not drinking her Margarita, so I said I would. As I poured it into my glass, she said, "Leave me a little."
Then the ex-soldier from the Iraq war, the salesman, the reader, came walking back up the sidewalk. He wanted to tell me he had enjoyed talking with me and wondered if maybe we could talk more as he read. It was a little awkward, of course, but I said sure and gave him my phone number.
When he was gone, I told my mother, "See? I'm a hippie. I can get along with everyone."
"You sure can talk," she said.
The tenant came with the fresh baked cookies. They were awful. Vegan, gluten free, low sugar. . . they felt like sand in my mouth. I ate half a cookie but no more. They were truly nothing a cookie should be, sweet and fatty and full of flavor.
I made two more margs. We all sat out until the bats were flying, then with the last light, we went inside.
And that was it. That's my tale.
My morning starts with an HVAC fan that won't shut off, even when I turn it off at the thermostat. I have to call the repairman.
It's always something.
Mark Kozelek didn't get "famous" until he was in his forties. Imagine such a thing. Red House Painters, then Sun Kil Moon. Then solo, he blew his own career up. He may have been a real asshole. So some say. Some of his music, though. . . . It is the stuff I used to hypnotize "my subjects" in the studio.
Oh, shit--addendum! I left out an important part. After the first marg and meeting my new boyfriend, I told my mother I wished there was a good Mexican restaurant nearby so we could have tacos. She said there was a Taco Bell up the street. Really? I hadn't had Taco Hell this century. O.K. I'd get some.
I got a lot of them. We ate them all. I have to tell you, though, there isn't a lot on a Taco Hell taco. But at least this morning, I don't have Taco Belly.
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