Calling Rome

I called Rome. I heard he was depressed sitting in a jail cell in Switzerland and I wanted to cheer him up a bit. His stay in Switzerland to face U.S. extradition for that child-rape thing back in 1977 confused him. 

“I thought the Swiss were always neutral,” he said to me.

“This is different, Rome,” I said. “Besides, they hated Pirates because you used Walter Matthau. I told you no one would buy that casting.”

“I have had other failures,” he said. “Why would they take that one out on me so cruelly?” 

I had no answer for him. But really, Matthau? “The Swiss can get tough, Rome. You can’t even trust their watches any longer.”

After a long, sad pause, Roman said, “What will become of me?”

I didn’t know what to say. But I had to make Roman feel a bit better, so I said, “You will definitely live longer than 90, even if you wind up in an American prison.”

He was sobbing, so I sobbed along with him. 

“You have been such a good friend to me,” he said with a cracking voice. “You made me understand why Frank Langella was romantic with Whoopie Goldberg.”

“The least I could have done, Rome.”

“Now, on the precipice of my demise, you call me to cheer me up and I thank you for it.”

I felt so sorry for my friend Roman, even though he had dual French and Polish citizenship, an Oscar for directing and a place in film history. After all, when you strip a man of his dual citizenship, his Oscar and his place in film history, you are left with an ordinary human being with feelings and a pending jail sentence that he could never live out. 

I don’t know what will happen to my friend Roman but if he comes back to the U.S. and goes to jail, I would certainly ask him if he would like me to bring a loaf of bread with a saw baked inside of it.     

Life after marriage
~part four

So there I was, ready to depart from the PMSS rehabilitation center, having been cured from my Post-Marriage Stress Syndrome. In a strange way that caused bouts of nausea and facial ticks, I knew I would miss the place and all the friends I made while housed in this home for wayward jerks. Except for Joel, the annoying bastard who always sang songs from the Free Credit Report Dot Com commercials.

I stood at the entrance –which had now become the exit—holding my suitcase, which was odd because I had no suitcase when I arrived, and I thought about my final exam, the letter to my ex-wife which proved once and for all I was cured of that marriage. I wrote:

“I was listening to a song. The lyrics went like this: I know I cannot live without you. It was then I realized that not only can I live without you, I want to live without you and without anyone. Also, that moment rewarded me with perfect understanding of the immortal lyrics of Brian Wilson: Let’s go surfing now, everybody’s learning how, come on a safari with me.

“Sometimes it is difficult to think that I will be alone forever. But then again, sometimes it is difficult for me to think, period. However, thinking about you has ended. Just the other day I made myself breakfast and thought, ‘Isn’t it amazing how I can butter my toast and not feel a pang in my heart for having slept alone through the night with only one nightmare about being dismembered by a woman disguised as Taras Bulba.’

“So this is the last time I will write to you about my emotional problems concerning the divorce (that you, by the way, initiated). I am free of your grasp and of the torrid, stirring, disturbing, heart aching reality that you don’t love me. Now I can stand tall and say without drooling that I, too, do not love me and I am all the better for it.”

The center’s main doctor, Elias Relius, was so convinced that I am cured that he presented me with a free supply of Lactitol, Microcrystalline Cellulose, Colloidal Silicon Dioxide and Magnesium Stearate for recreational use only. The gesture did more than give me confidence for a positive future.  

That’s all she wrote

We all need to listen to her because she knows the endings of all things. Forget about that fat lady singing at the operas, it is “she” who truly defines when it is all over.

Consider any of her brilliant conclusions, each definitive and unarguably conclusive, and you are left to accept the finales. There is, of course, no resurrecting any one, any situation or any chance of survival when we realize, “That’s all she wrote.”

She has written for decades now and legend has it that she is a descendent of a “she” who also wrote for decades and that the legacy of writing endings was passed on from generation to generation, though it never was passed on to a male. No matter what you think, every thing in question is over when “That’s all he wrote.”

Her remarkable talent to write endings is so respected throughout the professional world that even doctors have gone to her while trying to turn around a terminal case. Air-accident investigators have noted that many times the final words heard from a pilot before his plane crashes are, “That’s all she wrote.”

Historians are just now beginning to understand the power of what she writes, though many are still reticent to present her with the credit for prognosticating conclusions.

Professor Edwin Fatz has authored a book titled She Could Write More, which supposes that if she continued to write then perhaps things can change for the better. “I only wonder,” he says, “if that is really all she wrote.”

Me and The Peace Corps
~Part two
 
The interviewer's eyebrows lowered. Then she said, "Your application also indicates that you have experience with uncivilized people. Who were they?"

"My family."

"Your family was uncivilized?"

"Like apes."

“A family of apes?”

“Yes,” I said, using three of my fingers to quickly scratch my chin. “I was raised … by people like apes. Well, like gorillas, really. There is a difference, you know? Like Tarzan. He was raised by apes. I was raised by gorilla-like people.”

“I see,” said the lady, sitting back in her swivel desk chair. “Your application reads that you were raised in New York City.”

“Yes, in Brooklyn. It was a time when many adults were gorilla-like. The fifties and early sixties. You know.”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Well, be glad you don’t.”

“So being raised by gorilla-like people qualifies you to serve in The Peace Corps?”

“I’m glad you feel that way.”

“That was a question.”

“I thought I answered that question already.”

“Sir, just what is it you want from The Peace Corps?”

“Well I’ll tell you one thing I don’t want: a uniform. And I know there is no official Peace Corps uniform and that is fine with me. I will bring my own clothes. And if you come up with a uniform I hope you don’t mind if I stay in civvies.”

Vacations with the kids

In a Japanese Garden

Lately and recently, though not at the moment, I have been spending a lot of time in a Japanese garden. Not in Japan but in a traditional Japanese garden nowhere near the Orient or a reasonably priced sushi bar. It doesn’t seem to matter because the elements of a Japanese garden are magical, even if one is not on sacred ground, like historic gardens in Kyoto.