Costco serves as a gathering place for us displaced folks in Medford. Today while waiting for my prescription, I had the chance to talk with two nice old Sicilian coots, Art and Emile. "Coots" I hope you hear as an endearment, these were two nice guys. Brooklyn. No Good Pizza Here. No Good Bread. Bagels? Forgetaboutit.
After I passed muster, Art began a routine that he'd been doing with Emile for at least a decade: guess what Emile used to do for a living. "You'll never guess in a hundred tries. Go head. You never guess. You don't want to take that bet."
The big cliche popped right into my head and I figured that they'd have a laugh and I'd make guess #2. Emile, despite his French-sounding name, seemed more laborer than something high-falutin. "New York City Ballet. He was a dancer."
I thought they went into another routine: "Jesus Christ I can't believe you guessed. No one's ever guessed before! That's incredible." I let them ramble on with this sarcasm for thirty seconds and then I said Okay. Let me guess again. "No no no. You guessed it. You got it right. Emile made ballet slippers for Capezio all of his life! Jesus Christ, nobody ever guessed before and you got it right the first time!"
Turned out Emile had worked with three generations of Capezios; taught the later generations how to make a good slipper.
They really couldn't stop sputtering. "This one got it right off. That has never happened before. No one's ever guessed right before." Minutes later we laughed our goodbyes and they disappeared into the large, value-sized afternoon.
I'm very observy after a fashion and maybe that's good. Recently I mentioned the little patch of retail near my abode. You know, the Buss sign and the Subway?
When you take one more eastward step, you're starting at a Castle Entertainment sign and a bad feng shui parking lot. Castle, if you don't know, is an attempt at bringing sex toys, porn and uh more porn into the respectable daylight of the superstore. Visiting one of these places seems like it should be a weird but my experience was as banal as any visit to the 7-11. As banal as any shop with a flashy display of S&M devices that look as if they're made by Playskool. No, no purchases were made. No, I wasn't looking for tips. No, I tell you. Now stop.
Yesterday I noticed that some vandals removed the plastic signs and left an exposed neon fixture that would do Dan Flavin proud. Me, I like that kind of thing, seeing the bones underneath. Not much of a prank but perhaps a conservative saved a few good souls from an ill-advised dildo purchase. Whatever.
Today I noticed a giant For Sale sign, the definitive marker of retail passing. (Hard to tell from the building though, it always looked closed to me. The kid proofing brown paper wrapper that covered the doors and windows up to around five feet means Closed for Business in my retail sign system.) As a retailer myself, there's nothing more shameful or lurid as a closed business. Thank god that purgatory (and Dante's silly middle book - you no read it!) has been voted out of existence. I would have spent too much time there atoning for my love of commerce. There's always hell, but I do digress.
So as I mentioned, my powers of observating have grown either stronger or more myopic. I'm voting stronger. Didnt' care much about the barn o porn before. Cared much more for the neon skeleton. I only wish that it would wake up and turn on at dusk now. The California smoke makes the setting sun look like it could ignite. I'd love to see that show through the cool horizontal tubes in that lonely frame. I'd love to see that.
My Subway, my five dollah foot longs, are just a few feet from where I live.
I try to hang out there as little as possible because in spite of the bright yellow atmosphere (I am NOT a Spring or Summer), it's just not a cheerful place. Maybe it's the because of the bus stop nearby. Okay, before you judge me, it's not my queasiness about public transport that makes me pause. It's the telephone number, "486-Buss" on the helpful Metro sign.
Another drama that's often played out at the S'Way is a quiet one that's probably only in my imagination. There's one young guy who works there, not attractive and his english is sub-par, garbled, cleft. My reaction of first seeing him, honestly: thank god he found a job somewhere. We communicated just fine even though I cannot say that I understood a single thing he said. Maybe for him too.
On one night of too much office, too little of my fridge, I found myself getting another sub magically stacked to order without the benefit of understanding his words and without us pointing. Another retail miracle. Then he started waiting on the customer behind me. Magnificent Spanish rolled out of his mouth. Authority and confidence and a completely different person. Once again, I had badly misjudged someone. Now I'm a bit obsessed about creating his backstory, creating a happy ending.
***
A friend and I were talking about teasing out any false positives in our life. We've been golfing together some and golf is a Rorshach testing ground for false positives. Hell, it's what keeps golfers playing. For example, we amateurs celebrate when we hit one of those rare perfect shots as if it came from our consciousness, our muscles, our very will. Professional golfers know that for amateurs, most of those shots are coincidences- the exception, not the rule. I like to recognize this possibility and weigh any successes carefully. My friends must think me loony when I celebrate truly awful shots because I know that I did what I planned as part of my learning process.
Whether it's luck, repetition or humidity, it is far too easy to claim responsibility for good fortune. Tons of stuff fall under this false positive spell: picking a winning stock, chipping in from off the green, living in the U.S.
The other side of the coin, the false negative, is just as damaging. Go head and reverse any of the list above: picking a losing stock; muffing a chip to the green; living in a war-torn region right now.
The positives and negatives above might be your responsibility if: the entire stock market is down but you consistently find the few stocks that gain value; your chips to the green fall within three feet of the pin most times; I can't even begin to speculate about life in either place. That just seems like a bleak exercise now that I've said it. Again, the opposite might reflect on who you are either. Might not mean anything inherently bad. Maybe you should have your money in a bank and stick to Putt-Putt.
***
I found a yellowjacket nest on my patio a few weeks ago. Shockingly light and looks like an ultra-modern papier-mache bead. It lives in the bird's nest, an altar in front of the painting of the cats. Striped stones, dapper bird feathers inhabit the nest as well. I imagine that if we could creak open a door into their minds, we'd see an image like this in our kitties' brains. It makes a kind of Cornell sense that's appealing and relieving.
***
In a meeting last week, a VP in my company cited an action that I took to solve a problem as an example of how to live our corporate values. Hell, like I have a clue about those slogans. Of course I was pleased for a moment. Then I realised, Jesus, I'm 50 years old! I should damn well know how to do something like that. Don't get me wrong, I don't see this as a personal false positive. More like a corporate false positive. In the way of slippery distinctions, I don't feel qualified to delve into the murk of corporate epistomology, if that makes any sense at all.
