The Triumph Of The Egg

By Sherwood Anderson

                         In the fields

                         Seeds on the air floating.

                         In the towns

                         Black smoke for a shroud.

                         In my breast

                         Understanding awake.

                               -Mid American Chants

Tales are people who sit on the doorstep of the house of my mind.

It is cold outside and they sit waiting.

I look out at a window.

The tales have cold hands,

Their hands are freezing.

A short thickly-built tale arises and threshes his arms about.

His nose is red and he has two gold teeth.

There is an old female tale sitting hunched up in a cloak.

Many tales come to sit for a few moments on the doorstep

     and then go away.

It is too cold for them outside.

The street before the door of the house of my mind is

     filled with tales.

They murmur and cry out, they are dying of cold and hunger.

I am a helpless man--my hands tremble.

I should be sitting on a bench like a tailor.

I should be weaving warm cloth out of the threads of thought.

The tales should be clothed.

They are freezing on the doorstep of the house of my mind.

I am a helpless man--my hands tremble.

I feel in the darkness but cannot find the doorknob.

I look out at a window.

Many tales are dying in the street before the house of my mind.

The Triumph of the Egg Complete iBook

Red Meat

When I came home from work today, I checked the mailbox on my way to the front door. Hidden away amongst the mess of carpet cleaning fliers, coupons, a Vons ad, the Penny Saver, and various other dross by post, was a newsletter from the Poway Memorial Society. The cover featured a Grim Reaper standing in front of a cash register asking the question, ‘Do Funeral Prices Scare You To Death?’ Being that it was two days after my 49th birthday, I asked rhetorically, “Is this some kind of sick joke?” Or was it some kind of dire portent; a harbinger of my imminent demise? Did they know something? 

We sat down for dinner a while later. Steak and salad. I took my steak extra rare.

I ate the steak first… just in case.

Blood Metaphor

I always considered my car an extension of my home, especially when I went to work at a job I couldn’t stand. It was a refuge of sorts. A place to temporarily hide away from the tedium and boredom. There was a long artery that connected to the back of my car, stretching all the way back to the spot in front of my house where I parked.

It would serve as a place to catch a quick nap on those rare occasions when one just needs to fall asleep even for a few minutes of rejuvenation. It was a place to listen to the radio or get warm. A chair for transfusion. It kept me tethered to the life that I considered my real life, the real purpose of my life. It contrasted the non-career job that only served as a means to an end, to the home-life it helped provide; a vocational ground I suffered daily, painful, exsanguination. 

 

My car was the vehicle in which I would go, on most days, to pick up my kids from school and deliver us back to the nest, where we would patiently wait, engaging with our books and papers and things, for wife and mother to return as well. We would be reunited from the circadian scattering into the world. A familial coagulation. I felt as though I had been infused and made whole again.

Heroes Triumphant Return

Yesterday evening, O and I went to the Carlsbad Outlet Mall. We listened to Prairie Home Companion on our way there, as its actually quite a distance from our home in Rancho Bernardo, and we left just before Six PM when Garrison Keeler and Company begin their soothing ah shucks faux huckster intellectual salve session for the American Middle Class miscreants who need to feel reassured that we're in at least some small way superior to people who don’t listen to shows like Prairie Home Companion.

Our target for the evening was the Croc store. O intended to purchase Crocs for her nieces and nephew, to be included in a package that was going out soon to Mongolia. I like Crocs myself. I own two pair, but hope to obtain more in the near future. In fact, if things go as planned, I will be a full blown Croc collector by this time next year. The plastic shoe version of a Philatelist.

We were successful at the Croc store, and, it being kinda late, we decided to get something to eat for dinner. O wanted Japanese food from a chain place called Sai Pan. Calling it a Japanese restaurant would be a bit of a stretch though. Akin to referring to Taco Bell as fine Mexican cuisine. Maybe not quite so bad as that. Taco Bell is really only acceptable when one is nearly insolvent... or drunk... or both. Sai Pan on the other hand it actually quite acceptable. It just has that cookie cutter just-above-fast-food-restaurant feel to it. You’re definitely not thinking, “Boy, I sure do feel like I'm inside a Ryokan in Old Kyoto!”

Anyway, there were a lot of diners in attendance that night. As usual, the Carlsbad Mall felt like a Free Market Festival Day at the United Nations. There are people from every corner of the globe wandering about. Hell, the Public Service Announcements are in both English and Japanese. The first time I heard the promulgation in Japanese, it left me perplexed, simply because there are so many more Spanish speakers in attendance than Japanese speakers. Maybe the Mall is partially owned by savvy Japanese Investors, and thus demands a certain level of recognition, even subtly.

In the restaurant, there was this kid sitting with his parents nearby. He was maybe three at the most. They sat behind us. Every now and again, this boy would laugh out loud a laugh that I absolutely loved. It was a kind of triumphant laugh, a squeaky version no doubt, but hardy nonetheless. It reminded me of a returning, beloved hero, riding into town on a white horse to the cheering and jubilation of the townsfolk. Not a brutal military man, but a romantic movie star-like hero that all women swoon over. I said as much to O, who seemed to agree with me.

Later on, we were walking back through the mall, kind of making our way to a coffee at Starbucks. O stepped into a store while I waited outside. It was getting late and the crowd was thinning out. Suddenly out of nowhere, that same little boy came running up from the other direction, he stopped near me brandishing a new plastic pirate’s sword, purchased from one of the novelty kiosks. He thrust the sword into the air as his mom called to him, and he triumphantly plunged the sword into the scabbard, and the scabbard into his belt, and took off running again. I imagined he was off to a regal reception of adoring admirers somewhere between the Croc store and the food court, grinning triumphantly, declaring: “A-Ha!!’