wet paint

hey you; you, not them; you; look here; don't touch me; do not touch me; touch forbidden; warning; please touch touch me; please please pretty please touch me; now; dare you; danger; stand back; come here; no harm no foul; who are They to tell you what to touch or what not to touch; it won't hurt anything; what's the harm; go ahead; WET PAINT; after all, it doesn't say touch or don't touch; it doesn't say anything like that; WET PAINT merely states a fact; but is it a fact; is it really wet and is it really paint; no command, no imperative mode; an adjective modifying a noun; reality-based; T.S. Eliot said a poem is not complete until it is read, with that in mind the declaration WET PAINT is incomplete, unfinished until the proposition is tested, is borne out, by human experience; and what about nonhumans, a bird, say, who flies headlong into the sign or into the supposedly nondry paint, such a tragedy; if Heidegger can ask 'why beings rather than nothing,' can we not query the veracity of this sign; luring, seducing, tempting, daring, cajoling, nudging, almost screaming to touch, touch furtively rapid-fire when no one is looking, no one around, running the risk of imprinting your inimitable fingerprint, your human stain, for all it's worth, now and seemingly forever
 

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.

sign language; or, zen koans

IF THE DOORS ARE OPEN PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE THEM CLOSED

IF THE DOORS ARE CLOSED PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE THEM CLOSED

IF THE DOORS ARE OPEN PLEASE DO LEAVE THEM OPEN

IF THE DOORS ARE DOORS PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE THEM CLOSED

IF THE DOORS ARE WINDOWS PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE THEM AS DOORS

IF THE DOORS ARE WALLS PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE THEM CLOSED

IF THE DOORS ARE WALLS PLEASE OPEN THEM

IF THE WINDOWS ARE DOORS PLEASE UNLOCK AND OPEN THEM

IF THE DOORS ARE DOORS PLEASE DO LEAVE THEM OPEN

IF WALLS COULD TALK WOULD DOORS HAVE EARS

IF EARS COULD TALK WHAT LANGUAGE WOULD THEY HEAR

AND IF A TIMES B EQUALS C SQUARED WHAT IS THE COSINE OF CUPIDITY 

Blind Person Area

Take a deep cleansing breath.  

Before you get riled up, I'm not "against" blind people, deaf persons, disabled children or adults, or anyone who faces physical or mental challenges. Who would be? As you likely know, the vocabulary we use to describe people and their limitations is open to question and controversy. That's why I hesitated typing "disabled" above. I am not acquainted with all the verbal alternatives, such as "typical" versus "atypical." (And because my Attention Surplus Disorder [ASD]-addled mind will otherwise forget, let me observe in passing: Have you ever seen a traffic sign cautioning drivers with respect to someone with mental health issues? Why not? Isn't that a statement in itself, relegating mental health to a level less important than physical health? Chew on that one before proceeding.)

But these semantic distinctions are not my main topic here, though I frequently noodle notions about words and their use, misuse, and connotations, inadvertent or otherwise.

So what is my main topic?

Slice of life. Slices of life.

Signs of life.

Just slicing away for you and me to examine.

Such as:

I was driving around and saw a BLIND PERSON AREA traffic sign. It occurred to me that I have never encountered a blind person in one of those traffic-sign-designated areas. Not yet. I might tomorrow. Same with a DEAF PERSON AREA. I have yet to encounter a hearing-impaired person in the vicinity of a sign advising me of same. But how would I know? Perhaps I have. (And why should I know?)

Have you?

If so, what are we required to do? Presumably, the sign is advising drivers to slow down, but it doesn't say that. And presumably it is asking drivers to be more alert.

Fair enough.

Believe it or not, the signs themselves have stirred controversy. For example, in 2007 the issue of whether to put up a DEAF CHILD AREA sign in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, stirred up the local citizenry. Some argue that such signs are not necessary, that they reinforce stereotypes regarding limitations. Traffic sign engineers assert that the signs diminish in effectiveness over time. (Couldn't you say that as well for the ubiquitous STOP sign? I've written about this before.)

Again, as stated in my introductory disclaimer, I mean no disrespect to anyone with special needs. However, I would wager that the definition of special needs could withstand some stretching, twisting, and pulling. With that in mind, consider some signs we do not have but might consider, for better or worse:

WARNING: ACTIVE ADDICTION ZONE (Don't stereotype as to where you might plant this sign. It could be anywhere.)

CAUTION: ALCOHOLICS AT PLAY (Imagine the ruckus bar owners would raise if these were sprinkled in their environs.)

DOMESTIC TURMOIL AHEAD (Placement would be based on the number of disturbance calls to authorities, or determined by the number of pink flamingos or ceramic trolls on the lawn.)

ABJECT POVERTY (Insert your own dang comments.)

SICKENING WEALTH

JUNK FOOD FLOOD

CAVIAR SURPLUS

BOUGIE

DO NOT ENTER: ENTITLEMENT ZONE 

EGOCENTRIC ZONE

DON'T YIELD

DIVIDED HIGHWAY — AND MORE!

COMPROMISE

TATTOOS

LITTER ZONE

YOUR TURN

kit-kat club

Driving upon the snowy, slushy streets of Liverpool, the one in New York, not the one of Beatles fame, I paused because the traffic in front of me had paused, as the parade of vehicles waited for a light (officially called a "signal" by transportation officials) to change (having mentioned The Beatles, I owed you "A Day in the Life" reference). (Notice that the preceding sentence, discursive and parenthetically laden as it is, constitutes one legit grammatically and anatomically correct sentence in the English language. One of the most annoying observations by lay people is that a long-winded or Proustian sentence is "a run-on sentence." Wrong. A run-on sentence has nothing whatsoever to do with sentence length; size does not matter. Go ahead; Google it if you must.) I noticed that the light had indeed changed (with nobody blowing their mind out in a car, by all appearances). The traffic started moving again, imprinting the white-gray mush with snow- or all-season tires' signature treads. A bluish-gray Mazda hatchback inched along immediately in front of my 2007 VW Rabbit (141,000 miles). Without warning, my eyes caught a flash of fuzzy-furry white jumping onto a shelf (not exactly a shelf but I don't know what else to call it) in the back of the Mazda. It was not a projectile of knitting wool as one might purchase a skein of in Reykjavik (not white), as I had bought for soon-to-ex-wife in 2016. It was not some plush toy tossed by a frustrated, hungry, or unruly child sitting in a carseat in back. No. It was a cat! A living, alive, moving cat. A cat whose catface expression conveyed annoyance, adventure, impertinence, play, irritation, and frustration. A cat whose movement was swift and certain. It jumped up, scouted the shelf and the scene outside, and darted away out of my sight. gone. I saw it. It was not a vision. The frisky feline gave no evidence of seeing the driver who was arrested by his or her sudden movement. What evidence could there possibly be? Beats me. It couldn't wave. Hold it. As a matter of fact, it catpawed at the air, as if trying to capture an invisible mouse or sparrow. It couldn't help doing that. Its catnature demanded such alert alacrity. Could the feline  -- I wanted to say felicitous feline, just to be alliterative, but I can't be certain said cat was felicitous or infelicitous -- have signaled a quick wave to me, a hello, an acknowledgment of a fellow-living-creature's presence, a greeting, or a fuckyou message? I'll never know. I can't interview the cat because the car moved along, the cat stayed in the car as I did in mine, and we went our merry human and feline ways. The thing is, have you ever seen a live cat in a car before? Not a cat in a cat carrier. A live-prancing-around-as-if-in-the-wild-or-in-a-living-room cat? (That's a lot of hyphens, buster.) I don't recall ever seeing a cat catting around in a car before. Is it legal? Is it safe? Do dogs mind? (Mice and birds don't mind, as long as the cat stays in the car.) Is there a risk of escape and therefore cats in cars is only a wintry, closed-window phenomenon? Finally, there's the most solemn and deep question of all: why?

The Envelope, Please

Awards shows create a dramatic pause by having the emcee intone, “The envelope, please.” Further drama is created by hesitations and teases before the envelope is opened. The award nominees and their entourages nervously await the anticipated announcement. “And the award goes to . . . 

Call it the envelope of tension. The tension envelope.

Years ago, I was arrested by the sight of a sign on a commercial building seen from Interstate 80 near Hackensack-ack-ack-ack, New Jersey. It's on the left as you head toward the George Washington Bridge.

Tension Envelopes, it declares.

It long ago inspired my own inner pause and reflection. Namely: the world does not suffer from a dearth of tension envelopes, does it? Aren’t we enveloped by tensions at work, at home, on the road, and in our hearts? Our inner landscapes are dotted with these tension envelopes, both individually and collectively. They come in all sizes, shapes, and colors.

Is our envelope of tension paper-thin or stretchable and impermeable?  Who affixes postage to it so that we can mail that tension to anyone, near or far? That’s easy. I’m the one in charge of dispatching my very own, specially designed, jittery-filled packages to anyone of my own choosing. Sometimes I send my tension envelopes C.O.D. (collect on delivery; capacity on demand; chew on dis; come, on dude!; change or die).

How do you send your tension envelopes? And to whom?

And are they received as “warmly” as mine? [Insert ironic emoji.]

Somewhere in the oceanic, discursive writings of Marcel Proust, I encountered his observation that the human body is a "nervous envelope." In remembrance of such a thing past, I bent the upper corner of a page. I don't know which one. But I can’t argue with Monsieur Proust’s take. We live in this envelope that begs for relief and inner peace. Our nervous envelopes seek serenity or release, distraction or diversion.

If our tension envelopes are empty, what do we fill them with? (They wouldn’t be tension envelopes if they were totally empty; by definition some tension electrons must crackle and roam around or reside there.) The candidate tension-reducers list is familiar to any wanderer of the modern world: sex, drugs, alcohol, food, work, danger, gambling, anger, other people-places-things, you-name-it ad infinitum.   

As I type it, I realize my tension-envelope mitigation (TEM) list is skewed toward the negative. It doesn’t feel complete or whole; it doesn’t possess enough dimensions for the 3-D world.

I can’t seem to connect the dots or check off the right multiple-choice answers. I need your help. Work with me here.

An alternative, or parallel, parade of TEMs might include the following: meditation, mindfulness, prayer, walking, running, painting, sculpting, gardening, woodworking, weightlifting, yoga, pilates, massage, or doing the dishes.

Agree? (Add your own.)

But I have a sheepish confession to make. The second list sounds a tad boring compared to the first. I’m embarrassed to admit this.

Does that make me “less than”? Does it reveal a personality best left kept private?

Or does it merely make me One of Us?

Everyone Is Approved Here

As you drive along the busy boulevard, an A-frame sandwich board all but shouts, "Everyone is approved here!!!" It is an unabashed, traditionally American, free-enterprise invitation to buy “pre-owned” automobiles. The sign says, in effect, "No matter what your financial history is, no matter how reckless or foolish or disastrous or triumphantly capitalistic, we can lend you the money to buy a vehicle." (Naturally, such generosity has its own price. That price goes by the code words “interest rate” and “months.”)

Which got me to thinking.

Imagine if "Everyone is approved here!!!" referred to real people. What if actual living humans were approved “here” just as unconditionally and with the élan of three exclamation points as a used-car dealer approves all?

"Everyone is approved here!!!" could be a statement of credit beyond financial history, and instead it could apply to redemption that reverses personal misdeeds and waywardness.

Does unconditional approval get the cold shoulder in our society because of our puritanical past? One can reasonably argue that the reward of virtue and the punishment of transgressions is the right path. It’s wholesome for society. It sets the right balance and the right example.

But is that notion more cultural than theological?

After all, the New Testament offers ample weight and rich testimony for what we will call the Mercy Rule, as opposed to the Justice Rule.

In the early Seventies, when I was a fledgling English teacher, a colleague just as new to the profession announced to his social studies students on the first day of class for that marking period: “You all have A’s. That’s it. You have an A.” This was not contract learning. It involved no quid pro quo. The students were dumbstruck at first. Looking back, I would venture to say the teacher risked disciplinary punishment or job loss for this daring, if not foolhardy, move.

The teacher later trumpeted the success of his gambit. He said no class collectively or individually ever produced more or learned better. They rose to the occasion and justified someone’s belief in them, however dreamy or utopian. All were not merely approved. They were rewarded in advance, unconditionally.

Not being a sociologist, I cannot safely draw any generalized conclusions from this small sample. I cannot go from point A to point B to establish a theory of education or a social construct rooted in unconditional “all are approved here.”

But being a columnist, I can pose leading questions, and draw inferences till the cows come home — home from wherever they wandered to in the first place.

Taking literally the declarative sentence “All are approved here” (with or without accompanying punctuation denoting interjection, surprise, or excitement) yields a multitude of questions, the answers to which will remain speculative.

Could you successfully apply this approach to child-rearing?

What about the justice system? Would the Radical Advance Approval Method cause chaos and imperil public safety? (Incidentally, my former teaching colleague went on to become a top official at the U.S. Department of Labor. I was shocked to see him one evening making a comment on the evening’s national news.)

Speaking of labor and industry, what if supervisors and managers gave employees automatic A’s on annual performance reviews? (I had a manager do that; I loved working for him.) Would quality and production improve?

Consider the implications for the alcohol and substance rehabilitation industry. Would outcomes be better or worse than those produced by current methods?

I’m just a columnist. I get to grade myself with an A no matter what anyway.

rain

the deliciousness of pluvial abundance pouring down no other direction for it 'cept sideways 'round through trickling rivulets sky to yawning earth running rushing to unseen fate and transport pure wanton freedom of rain its indiscriminate blanketing biblical in scale and equality "rain" one of The Beatles' most underrated songs celebratory simple childlike in delight if you will rain in my memory a clear vision the Eighties Times Square walking to my desk at Random House driving torrents rain inverting umbrellas into skeletal art cascading splashes from tires of Yellow Cabs arrested by the sight of a pedestrian inundated by a curtain of rain's results splashdown no splashup her own miniature tsunami personal impersonal and I swear she stopped and smiled even laughed as if what are you going to do might as well exult in it and here I was lamenting my soaked feet she never knew what I witnessed never will never can this benediction this rainworthy anointing

sign, interrupted

I woke up Sunday morning to see a street sign lying on the ground, injured or dead (who can say?). The sign had two messages affixed to its pole: one prohibiting parking from the posted spot to the corner, the other permitting parking on odd-numbered days starting at 6 p.m. How the sign found itself in the prone position, rather than the standard vertical one, is a mystery. It's a mystery to me, but not to everyone. The normally-rooted-in-the-ground metal pole holding the sign's message was severed near the bottom, seemingly sheared. An unbloody stump remained in the ground. How did this happen? It would take some force. A thump was heard in the night, the morning hours. Did a vehicle hit it? I saw no tracks to indicate that. Did Halloween mischief makers make mischief? How? What are we to make of this, if anything at all?

a cardinal virtue

I heard the sonorous chirp of what almost sounded like a cardinal, but somewhat off, truncated. It was as if the familiar (to me) sound loop of the male cardinal were skewed, off a few notes. No, more like it was a tape of a male cardinal being played backward, abbreviated. Picture the wind-up bird of Haruki Murakami fame being wound down or rewound.

I looked up.

High in the honey locust tree (I think it was), shading me if I were to stand under its foliage, was, yes, a male cardinal.

The sight shocked me, arrested me.

I was expecting to see a different bird, something unexpected.

But the cardinal himself stopped me, gave me pause as he went through his routine, which I had mistakenly taken to be a tad uncardinalish.

I watched him. And listened.

I wanted to do my mockingbird thing and imitate a typical cardinal song, to see if it would answer my call. (Was the perceived modified male cardinal song modified as some sort of mating ritual?)

But no.

I just stopped and listened.

I wanted to bow or make the sign of the cross through the air.

I did not.

But I was grateful enough to do either.

follow the money

You walk up to the ATM. You prepare to make a withdrawal. You see that the previous customer (or the one before that, or even before that; who knows?) has left a receipt in the ATM. The half-spit-out receipt is sticking out its paper tongue. You extract the thin piece of printed paper. You are curious, in a financially voyeuristic way. You quickly notice that the receipt almost shouts:

ACCT BAL  $140,193.48
AVL    BAL  $140,193.48

You wonder who has ready access to this amount of cash. The receipt noted a $100.00 CASH WITHDRA FROM CK1. You have never possessed a sum even approaching this magnitude; no, not even after selling a house (since you have never owned a house on your own anyway). (We are referring to the ACCT BAL / AVL BAL sum, naturally.) You experience a hybrid of delight, envy, resentment, curiosity, remorse, greed, smugness, satisfaction, preachiness, whimsy. Did anyone want this receipt? Evidently not.

You save the receipt.

a tree, a nest, and a pool

In an ancient rite of excommunication, a bell, a book, and a candle were employed. A 1958 movie starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, with Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovacs, borrows those words for the title, "Bell, Book and Candle." (I wish they had used the serial comma.) Today, on Tipperary Hill, I saw a Christmas tree with needles the color of copper (a hue not unlike my dog's hair) by the sidewalk (yikes! keeping a tree till Pentecost?!), a tiny bird's nest (sans bird's eggs) on the sidewalk a block away from the discarded Yule tree, and the swimming pool in Burnet Park filled with unnameable swimming-pool-azure water but absent of swimmers.

What, if anything, are we to make of these signs?

I do not know.

#punctuationmatters

The day after Mother's Day, as I was driving, I spotted a sign outside a church. The sign declared:

MOTHERS ARE GODS

ANGELS ON EARTH

Being a sometime editor, I quickly perceived what I thought was an error of diction and wanted to rejigger the movable letters to say:

MOTHERS ARE GODDESSES

thinking, "Wow, that's a pretty progressive church, going all New Age on us with gods or goddesses." And then I read the next line and realized the misperception that the missing apostrophe in "GODS" had wrought in one reader. See, punctuation matters. In heaven and on earth.

Incidentally, theologically speaking, I don't get all Thomas Kinkade-warm-and-gauzy over that angel thing. Back in the Sixties, in high school, Father Giuliani used to say we've got to be human before anything else. We're humans. No disrespect to angelic entities, wherever they may be, if anywhere, but we humans need not aspire to that ontological leap. (Is it even a leap, Kierkegaardian or otherwise? Now don't go ruffling your gossamers.)

blind person area

Yesterday while driving I saw a sign consisting of black letters declaring BLIND PERSON AREA set on a yellow background, in the village of Baldwinsville, New York. (Those of you inclined to be persnickety, like me, are urged to not get your knickers in a knot over the missing hyphen between the first and second of the three words. Nor should you be concerned with the legit split infinitive in the preceding sentence.) I am not blind. I have known some blind people in my life. For three summers out of college, I worked with blind college students who were orienting to college life in the summer before their freshman year. My point in citing those bona fides, if you will, is to forthrightly state (split infinitive again) that this post is neither disrespectful of blind people nor insenstive to that aspect of their lives. 

Seeing the sign triggered some silent questions to clank around in my discursive head, or wherever thoughts neurologically reside:

1. Upon seeing a sign like that have you as a driver ever encountered a blind person in the designated area? I have not, to my recollection. I'm not questioning the veracity or sincerity of the municipal sign posters; I'm just sharing my limited experience.
2. Where does the area begin and end? In other words, what are the borders of the BLIND PERSON AREA?
3. Granted, the sign is urging drivers to be more vigilant or cautious, but in the absence of such a sign do drivers have license to proceed with an iota of comparatively less vigilance or caution?
4. Since the sign was not also in braille (well, maybe it was, but I do not think so) and assuming blind people are unaware of the sign (and I could be wrong on this aspect, too), is it possible that some blind persons actually take offense at the sign, owing to their independence and mobility, in many instances?

Today, with the interior knowledge that I'd be composing this post, I happened to see a sign (at a different locale) that read DEAF CHILD AREA. So, I ask you: 

1. Do the same questions as listed above apply?
2. Or do radically different questions apply?
3. What if both of these signs coexist in the same not-precisely-designated area?
4. What questions arise?
5. And what answers?

seeing the signs

Seeing the Signs.

That's the title of my latest book, available at Amazon.com.

It is almost entirely a compilation of stuff written here over several years.

wrong exit

The signs were not there. Or I did not see them. Well, actually the signs were there. I misread them. I expected more overt, more blatant exit warnings. (Are they "warnings"? More like proclamations, declarations. Not so much Good News, as News. Do with the information what you will.) So I kept going. But it began to feel not quite right. Sure enough, at the rest stop I consulted a map on the wall. I had overshot the exit. I exceeded my expectation. I now had to make the wrong exit the right exit. I took a bridge, of majestic beauty, even as my anxiety rose like the bluish spires holding up the cables. I headed north. I backtracked. I found my way, even though it was not the way. I met my party. It was all relative ("all relative," an oxymoron if there ever was one). So I guess wrong was righted.

presence

I saw a sign.

I saw a sign in front of St. Ann Church, just outside the City of Syracuse -- "in the world but not of it," you might say, if you are not suburban-minded (as I am not).

The sign read:

LESS PRESENTS

MORE PRESENCE

I liked it. I like it.

Did the pastor give a Christmas homily on that?

It's a facile declaration.

Simple.

But what would it mean?

Fewer physical gifts and more staring into eyes, more hugs and holding hands?

I talk a good game.

This would be harder than I first thought.

 

what I saw today

• a few dozen vehicles either off the road, facing the wrong way, or on the road, same calamitous circumstances, owing to the slippery slope of snow
• whitened and crystalline branches, limbs, tree trunks, and mini-palisades
• rain or snow or ice against the windshield
• windshield wipers
• the tired yet wise and kind eyes of the 98-year-old woman who gave birth to me
• my hometown, remarkably recognizable
• toll booths
• lines of people at the rest stop, also called text stop
• road signs
• heavily mascaraed and tired-beyond-years eyes of a gas station sales clerk
• a McDonald's crispy chicken sandwich
• a holiday bouquet of not-very-fresh flowers
• a coffee-to-go, from Wendy's
• apostrophes
• the digital readout of mileage on my car's dashboard surpassing 100000

vulnerable adult

I saw a sign. Upon entering the highway, Route 690 West, an electronic sign alerted motorists to a VULNERABLE ADULT, and gave a description of a vehicle, possibly accompanied a plate number. No respect or insensitivity whatsoever intended for that person or the person's loved ones (the ones whose concerns elicited the alert), but it gave me pause. Vulnerable Adult. vulnerable adult. (With or without the initial caps, with or without the proprietary nomenclature.) Are you a vulnerable adult? Am I? Yes, we are all sometimes vulnerable adults. Some of us, all the time. And we are vulnerable to the slings of time, the arrows of circumstance or history. We are at risk to fame and fortune, or at peril to poverty and perdition. And when we find ourselves vulnerable as adults, either individually or collectively, who is there to shield or save us? Should they? How? Or should our vulnerability merely introduce us to the icons of impermanence, the faceless faces of Nirvana?

I kept driving.

deer me

Driving home the other day, late afternoon, early evening (who can remember any more? maybe I am making all this up as I type), near the Syracuse border with Solvay, I saw a white-tailed deer gallop off to my right, into some shrubbery, fenced off. Did I say gallop? Gallop with a dollop of prance and hurdle and gambol and leap. Seconds later: a middle-aged bearded man riding a bicycle. I try to catch the eye of the bicyclist, as if to wordlessly say, "Dude, you see that? You see that deer? You chasing it?" Even if I did catch the bicyclist's eye for a split second, he wasn't indulging me. His look was like, "I'm riding this bike. Deer? I ain't seen no deer." I made the right turn. I thought I'd intersect the path of the deer, but no sign of him. In the bush, I guess. Or else it was a very large dog or a fox. Or a figment. (It's redundant redundant to say "figment of imagination.") A 3-D figment of fantasy. But naw. It was real. It was a deer. And don't tell me the bicyclist didn't see it. I'll wager the two of 'em, Bicycle Man and Deer Me, have this bit, this act they've worked out. It's a routine. "Figment Follies."