The Pure Life of Dreams

September 5, 2024September 5, 2024

Planting Arugula at the Back of the Tenement Building

Karin had been planting arugula stalks in the swampy water.

I thought many looked they were past gone but she said, “No! Even the dried reedy bark ones are good.”

August 29, 2024August 30, 2024

Dad is in Paris in a Hospital for the Insane

I am in Paris to visit Dad in hospital and Mum only walks downhill.

I’m searching up where the hospital is, while sitting in a café.

A French woman is with me. We’ve been there for some time, talking. The iron lacework tables and chairs are painted white, like the walls of the café, which is bright and sun filled.

The woman sits at the table as I type out the name of his hospital. She has a sick parent there too and I know it is my chance to chat her up but it has been a long while since I did anything like that.

Her hair is short cropped and black, and I think she would be OK with me flirting but still I’m hesitant. Yes, even though she is cute I feign being unbothered about chatting her up.

We sit there for a long time.

There are three senior citizen hospitals in the Île de la Cité, I tell the woman. I speak about my Dad in the ward, about its white walls with its large windows like a hospital for the insane, though I don’t mention the last part.

She gets up to leave.

I know she’s going because I haven’t attempted to flirt with her but I’m adamant that it was easier to not flirt; despite losing out; despite the fact that we had common interests, what with both of us having a parent in the loony bin.

After she’s gone Mum and my sister come in to the café. The table’s a mess, with my computer and phone and iPad spread across it. Under the table is my two tone leather briefcase with the square handles.

Mum and. Elaine pull back two of the iron clad chairs and sit with me. They’ve just arrived so only I know how to get to the hospital where Dad is, I tell them.

Then we set off, my computer folded under my arm, out of the café and onto a cobbled street.

Mum heads off down the hill. She only does that because she has difficulty walking uphill.

No it’s not that way, I call out to her.

Downhill is easier, she says.

It’s up the hill. Sorry, I repeat, then we have to take the second exit of the roundabout.

I want to walk but because of her we’ll have to take the bus. And once we get to the bus stop we’ll have to figure out the ticketing system.

But we don’t have to wait long – the tram comes quickly and we get on.

We need centimes, I tell Mum, as she fiddles in her purse.

She pulls out a pile of coins but they are mostly quarters, and a few pennies.

Who has coins these days? I complain.

Then I realize that I am only carrying my computer. I left my other stuff behind!

Before the tram sets off I get out.

Go on ahead without me, I tell them, and I hurry back down the hill to the café.

I walk back in and the manager, who stands at a lectern by the entrance, her body facing away from the door, nods at the table I was sitting at.

I hurry over to the table.

My briefcase is still there, as well as my tablet and my coat. It is all there.

I also see my black iPhone, next to my notebooks. I didn’t realize I’d forgotten those, but anyway I’m relieved.

There is the familiar smell of Sunday morning bacon as, from the bright light of the walls, I stir from my sleep.

Photo by David Iliff via WikiMedia Commons.

August 23, 2024August 23, 2024

Lost Baby in the Museum

We had another baby.

She wore a white fuzzy jumper suit that went from head to toe and I pinched the top of it, the crown of her head, and steered her through the exhibition.

She walked in little steps, now she had learned to walk, across a tiled foyer towards the first room in the museum.

Siobhan and I had been there before, in fact I had been multiple times, but hopefully we’d find something new to look at. The last rooms had the Egyptian corridor which was always interesting for something.

It was funny to think we’d had a third baby.

I must must tell Kamila, I thought.

We arrived at the appointed hour and a woman stood at two heavy polished wood doors in the foyer and punched our tickets. Then we pushed open one of those doors so that we could pass through.

The first room was huge with thick maroon curtains hanging from the walls. The floor tiles were black polished square stones, and at the far end was a large bed with a fluffy cover to lie on.

I steered the baby in that direction and Siobhan and I jumped onto the bed and lay diagonally across it.

The bed glooped.

“I thought it was going to be a water bed,” I said. “It must be from the 70s, before they figured to put baffles in.”

Siobhan lay on her front and I was on my back and the waves of the water inside made my stomach want to turn.

“I have to get off,” I said, and we got off together.

“We should get a brochure, otherwise we don’t know what we are looking at.”

“It’s supposed to be experiential,” Siobhan replied.

“It’s ridiculous,” I complained.

We resolved to get a pamphlet or instructions.

“Two minutes,” the woman with the punch told us as she let back out into the foyer. “After that I can’t let you back in.”

I steered the baby towards the gift shop, and we asked a man at the kiosk for a brochure.

The kiosk was situated one step up from the floor so he was looking down at me when I asked him.

“Nothing like that,” he said as he showed me a coloring book for children.

So we asked him to look after the baby and went into the next room along.

The new room looked like a lecture hall, a dark yellow room with rows of seats sloped up in front of us, but when we asked the man at the lectern, he shook his head and we turned back towards the gift shop.

By the time we returned the baby had already disappeared.

“She must be somewhere around,” I said and we hurried through the foyer, past the woman with the punch, and back into the first exhibition room.

There the baby was, at the far end of the room, in a corner next to the bed.

“Oh no!” I exclaimed as I saw her toddle towards us.

Someone had put a plaster over her right eye.

I knelt down to look. There was a blister there, where I unpeeled the plaster, and below her bottom eyelid there was a bloody hole, the diameter of a pencil.

“It’ll be alright,” I said to Siobhan and the woman who’d put on the plaster said, “She just bumped herself.”

With the back of her pudgy hand the baby scraped her eye, across the hole.

“Don’t do that,” I soothed. “It will be alright.”

Then I turned to ask Siobhan, “Where to next?”

Photo by Abd Elhamid Zaki via Pexels.

August 15, 2024August 15, 2024

Brutal Editor Provides Review in Chinese Restaurant

I was sitting in a Chinese restaurant located at the end of the main street of the village. It was late at night and the rain beat down hard outside.

I sat in the corner, furthest from the door.

The restaurant had plain green wallpapered walls that had not been changed in decades. Two large paper menus side by side were tacked up next to the entrance and they still reflected the older prices.

Two other men were there as well, though the restaurant was closing up for the night. They sat at separate tables closer to the large window in the front and they appeared to be listening in on my conversation. They both had their anoraks on, whilst they sat huddled over their meals.

I was on a call on my flip phone and it was one of the editors. He’d gone through the sample I’d given him and I had my leather bound notebook open on the table in front of me. I was taking notes while he talked.

The editor had ripped apart my story. It had been upsetting but I was willing to take his points on board. He didn’t talk loudly but his voice came out through the phone and projected through the restaurant because it was quiet in there.

I was sure the others could hear even though I didn’t want them to.

Behind me on a shelf in the wall was an old time radio with faded white plastic casing. Someone had pulled up its antenna. It felt as if the editor’s voice was projecting through the radio even though I held the phone close up to my hear to muffle the sound from the other restaurant goers.

The owner came out from some swing doors to my right.

“We’re closing,” he barked and this time we made as if to leave. It was the second time he’d come out to tell us.

I stepped out into the rainy night and held the notebook above my head with one hand while holding the phone up to my ear with the other.

“Look, I’ll have to call you back again. The rain is beating down,” I said to the editor as I followed the curve of the road away from the restaurant and past the closed up stores.

The yellow light of the storefronts projected dimly onto the sidewalk as I walked by. And the rain flecked in my eyes as I snapped the phone shut.

Photo of restaurant from my childhood referenced in Seeking Sanook.

August 8, 2024August 8, 2024

The Wrong Affair

Janet and I were going to the stores to do some holiday shopping. As we walked between the Christmas stands in the mall she had her hand on my shoulder.