quote unquote exciting

I strolled into my bank. "My" is undeserving of this application of a personal pronoun. The article "the" is apt in this context that is being built one verbal brick at a time. When this institution was a credit union, when I joined it in 1990, "my" would be literally and figuratively correct. But that was then. (I don't have to tell you we live in radically different times. Even if you hear someone lament the externals of these times, you can't commonsensically conclude whose side they are on: the uncivil, invidious xenophobes or the unmoored, vexed communitarians [moi].) 

Back to my bank stroll. 

I glide through the lobby, a boulevardier without portfolio, a citizen of the commonwealth (as if our wealth were common!). Absent any forethought, I ease into one of the cozy faux-leather chairs arranged away from the tellers, a distance from the glassed, venetian-blinded offices of "associates." The armed chairs (meaning they had armrests not weaponry) were in a tight circle around a nonexistent bonfire, adjacent to a Keurig with coffee pods, creamer, sugar, stirrers, all of this free stuff intended to enhance the customer experience, to welcome bank customers and prospects, or bank customers' or prospects' friends or relatives awaiting the financial-task-performer's task completion. Granted, the chairs might potentially host a waiting retinue attending to latter-day Bonnies and Clydes or Jesse Jameses, their thumbs gliding on "devices" in order to share strategic get-away info. (But why would they be so foolish or risky? Today's thieves silently hack, 24/7, invisible even to the rest of the household above the Mountain Dew-empties-littered room in the basement illuminated only by a nest of computer screens.) Do not so breezily dismiss this heist theory: at the entrance, the bank warns entrants against wearing hats or sunglasses for this very reason. Really? How retro!

As I said, I plop down on the tawny-cream vinyl waiting-room-decor chair. I figure I'd complete a text or two before entering the line (no waiting line evident, actually) to "do my business." Being old, I am an agonizingly slow texter, using my (not "the") index finger, not my thumbs, which anyone under 40 does, which is agonizing for millennials et al. to observe. Drives them nuts.

No hurry.

A flaneur not in France. 

An associate pops out of her office, her face barely disguising worry and urgency.

"Can I help you, sir?" she asks in the international language of officialese.

Insouciantly (to continue the français theme), I reply, "No, I'm fine."

If I could've, comfortably attired in my paisley smoking jacket, sans chapeau, I'd've lit a cigar, tossed the wooden match, and asked her for an espresso.

I continue my dilatory digital dalliance on my device.

Within minutes, another associate pops out of her office, next-door to the office of the aforementioned associate.

"May I help you, sir?"

Your poseur-narrator, a former English teacher and retired editor, appreciates her understanding of the distinction between "can" and "may."

However, for this gadabout, the word "sir" in her query is jarring, off-putting. Why? Three, maybe many more, times this associate and I have interacted professionally at the (not "my") bank. She has answered my queries, helped me perform the proper paperwork, seen my signature affixed, and secured a financial instrument or two for me.

Sir?

You don't remember my name, or if not my name my visage, or if not my name or face my signature if I show it to you?

Without hard evidence and with a dollop of imagination, I conclude the two bank associates see me as a threat, an indolent idler casing the joint. A would-be John Dillinger or "Pretty Boy" Floyd in-waiting. (Pawlie Kokonuts does have a certain criminal panache, don't you agree?) 

Some welcome, Keurig and all.

This institution boasts the slogan "America's Most Exciting Bank," a curious tagline given that a tsunami is at least as exciting as a wedding; given that a once-in-a-lifetime stock market plunge is at least as exciting as a World Cup victory.

Despite my insouciance, was I too exciting with regard to Financial Institution Security Heistiness (FISH)?

May I help you, sir?

"No, I'm fine. Thank you," I replied avec un sourire anglais.

still small voice

You heard a voice, you say? No, I'm not smirking. I just want to know. You heard a voice. Was it loud? Soft? English-speaking? Man, woman, or child? No, I already told you, I'm not mocking. I'm aware of those who hear voices. Schizophrenics, say. I am not saying that's your story, and if it were, it's nothing to make fun of. It would not be something to make light of. You heard a voice. Was it one time? Did it happen many times? Was it a dream? Could you decipher its message and was it personal, reserved for you? Did the still small voice frighten you?

(As an aside, have you wondered how a comma inserted after "still" might alter the meaning of the phrase? That's a meal to digest at another time, señor.)

Granted, it's only logical and common sense to discover that no voice, large or small, still or wavering, can be heard in the midst of tempest, fire, earthquake, flood, blizzard, tornado, whether you are Elijah or Eddie, Elisabeth or Edie.

So we agree on that.

Stop. I'm not being argumentative. If you don't stop saying that, I'm walking out of here. So stop.

I want to know.

Did you crave or trigger the voice? Did you lay the groundwork for it, somehow fertilize the soil of your listeningness?

Wordless, you say.

I can buy that. I really can. No exact words but a voice nonetheless. I get that. I've had similar episodes, experiences, whatever you want to call them.

It's more of a feeling but just as real.

Small? I like that notion too. Like if it was not small and it was staring us right in the face, right in the ear, so to speak, then we'd pay even less attention to it. The Billboard Effect. The Train Syndrome. You know, you live next to train tracks and after a while you don't notice the rolling thunder, the rattling plates in the china cabinet, the silverware chattering like your teeth in December.

Besides, wouldn't "earth-shattering large shout" sound less poetic, less biblical, less kingly and royal?

Where were we?

But would you listen? Would I listen? Would any message, neon-blazing or decibel tsunami-ing, divine or AI or secularly sober, coded or clear, fetch a response from you or me or any modern man, woman, or child?

Tell me.

In a voice of your choosing, in a dialect, volume, and tone of your choice.

Tell me.

tight pecs

Tight pecs, she said. The massage therapist. He was on his stomach. When he flipped to the other side, on his back, like a salmon on a cedarwood plank being grilled, she said it again.

Tight pecs.

She said it factually, indifferently, with no judgment implied. Nevertheless, her repeated assessment unsettled him if only because she hadn't said anything at all (nor him either, uncharacteristically), since she had said, All right now. No more talking, enjoy this, at the beginning of the session.

So, he wondered to himself, were my pectoral muscles so tight she could even tell from the back, it was that noticeable oh boy.

He took no blame, felt no shame. What do you expect after all these years, all these chest-tightening events (CTEs), this parade of pectoral crossings?

Then, on his back, posed morgue-corpse-like, eyes REM-fluttering, the massage being so soothing, so somnolent, his mind (and body) drifted off, untethered from orderly language and thought. Pec. Pecs. Peccavi. Penance. Pick a peck. Peckish. Pecking order. Tight pecs. Loose pecs. Henpecked. Pickled.

And so on, peter-pauling off into Faulknerian-Joycean incoherence, and then pre-Freudian, Jungian gibberish.

Her hands continued their soporific, salutary journey, aided by exotic emollients from unnamed islands south of Madagascar. Her healing hands advanced their sacred mission of sensual reparations, carrying the dessicated, wounded cells back from undisclosed unwinnable battlefields.

Her hands.

His mind.

Like a reverse-backward-forward-slo-mo-1980s-MTV video, like a 1960s LSD-laced kaleidoscopic vision of the Desert Fathers, his gibberish scrambled, rescrambled, and jigsaw-puzzle-solved into something reminiscent of language, suggestive of logic.

Her hands regrooved the worn roads of his pecs. YIELD. Work Zone. 

A configuration of notions, letters, syllables, words lined up on the shore of rationality. Sentries or sentinels, reporting for duty. Reporting for sanity.

I got it, he said, a toddler finding his missing marble, the cerulean cat's-eye with turquoise pupil. I got it.

What, she said.

Tight pecs.

What.

It's easy, he said. So simple.

What.

I have tight pecs because they're trying to protect my heart from ever being wounded again, he said.

Oh.

Oh.

She pressed down on the plastic pump, twice, thrice. More emollients for her traveled and trained hands. Back to work.
 

a thousand nothings deep, or fifteen questions

• To not be or to be? (that's where every naked vernixed baby starts)
• Can you be tied up in nots?
• Have you been a little noughty boy or girl or other?
• How many noughty problems are you trying to solve?
• Is it all for nought?
• Exactly how do you not do something?
• Will she even know about the myriad midnight moments you texted her but did not press Send, the relentless repetition of uncertainties, declarations of love posing as a litany, the anvil of No in your chest radiating its metallic pulse out to the tired sheets?
• Have you learned any lessons from that course you took on set theory, the difference between a null set and an empty set?
• How does one measure nullity-zero-none? 
• If you're trying so hard to not do something, aren't you doing more than if you were doing nothing? (we're talking again about her cited above)
• Why is it harder for you to say No than Yes (except when Yes would clearly be better than No, or vice versa)?
• Have you noticed that to forgo the habit of Yes you have to acquire the vernix-covered habit of No, which requires more discipline, resolve, will, and anonymity, because after all who pays attention to your silent No, Not This Time, the No that is mined in the night or in the day when you are mumbling with your earbuds in?
• When is enough enough, more accurately, when is not enough finally enough?
• Are they always lying, at the least fibbing, when they assert, No, it's nothing, nothing at all, that is not what I meant at all?
• How do you (yes, you; no, not you) spell No?

Lyrics to a Shitty Country Music Song, take 1

She said she loved me 
Told me I was hers alone
Not counting her Huskie. 
Scratch behind my ears, I'd beg. 
Boy, she tickled my funny bone 
As her Huskie humped my leg. 

Refrain:
I'm your hungry dog a-growlin'
You got me pantin' and howlin'
Babe, treat me like a piece o' meat
And give me that extra treat.

I said I'd love her
Till the cows came home
She's creamier than butter
Even more than cream cheese
Shipped all the way from Rome
Though it was just a tease

Refrain:
I'm your hungry dog a-growlin'
You got me pantin' and howlin'
Babe, treat me like a piece o' meat
And give me that extra treat.

Then one day just before dawn
She hopped an eastbound train
By noon her clothes littered the lawn
So Huskie and I were all alone
Standing in the cold and rain
Left with nothin', not even a phone

Refrain:
I'm your hungry dog a-growlin'
You got me pantin' and howlin'
Babe, treat me like a piece o' meat
And give me that extra treat.

[readers invited to add lousy verses]

stock phrase

if you recall

our stock

phrase

such as it was

three ancient words

wrapped around

our twisted veins

mad crazy

seared

 into a Tuesday

moon

bright blood

bloomed in the cut

one too many moorings

ripped from our secret heart

a black pearl

labeled

‘love’

taking a sip

what's the harm

who will know

just a taste

after the dance

just a touch

no pain all gain

we can manage

a single kiss

ain't no trouble

have one more

just a sip

give it time

give us time

for one last hit

before the slip

lurks a lie

has a name

shiny bauble blaze

sends a scent

and hides a truth

of fire and rain

flame and fury

crashes to ashes

rust to dust