Inventory of the Contents

Inventory of the contents of the mailbox, second box in the wall on the left, second building on the right, final Wednesday of the month:

• one note asking the post office to hold over-sized parcels for on-site pick up


• one note asking the UPS driver to either deliver the package to this address or redeliver to another address, whichever is more convenient


• one letter from the Social Security Administration outlining estimated monthly disability and retirement benefits:
  
          --estimated time to retirement: 40 years
  
          --estimated likelihood that Social Security will have "junk bond status" by 2050: 98%
  
          --estimated personal 401(k) or IRA savings to date: undisclosed


• one oversized flier from the local community college color printed on glossy paper, without referring to a single actual course of study


• one letter containing photos of strawberries, roses, violets, dandelions, cottonwood, unidentified plants (2), and what is either a lonely goldfish or a lethal snake


• one letter containing an origami boat constructed of folded dollar bills in a variety of denominations


• one note from the post office regarding the arrival of an over-sized parcel that is ready for pick up

Inventory of the contents of the mailbox, second box from the bottom, far right column of boxes, along the far left wall of the building at the intersection, past seven (7) days:

• this box remains empty but anticipates the imminent arrival of payment for services rendered

Inventory of the contents of the top left hand desk drawer, living room, south facing apartment, top floor:

• power cord for laptop, showing imprint of teeth marks from orally fixated house cat


• USB cord for camera


• battery charger for camera


• collection of assorted business cards, received


• collection of assorted business cards, personal


• sheets of stamps: King and Queen of Hearts (3 remain); Abstract Expressionists (1 full pane, 1 pane missing the Rothko, 1 pane with 4 left); Cowboys of the Silver Screen (none used)


• one letter which will remain unanswered


• one box of stationery


• one box of novelty correspondence cards


• three packages of envelopes in various sizes and shades of taupe


• four postcards which will never be sent


• two lists of New Year's Resolutions


• seven blank bank deposit slips


• a valid passport


• a to-do list of potential birthday gifts

Inventory of the contents of the trunk of the fuel efficient silver steed nearing 80,000 miles and not quite due for an oil change:

• a spare tire


• a winter snow tire that hasn't been transferred to the storage room yet


• an old pair of running shoes


• a bottle of insect repellent


• two pink silk umbrellas


• a green wool blanket


• a collection of road maps for every state and major city east of the Mississippi, plus Quebec and Ontario


• a bag of assorted clothing destined for donation


• an ankle length black overcoat

Inventory of the contents of a studio refrigerator, all of which date to the spring of 2008

• one ice pack


• two jars of jam


• one container of methyl cellulose adhesive


• one container of blue tinted paste


• one refilled bottle of water


• one box of crackers


• one bottle of salad dressing

Inventory of the contents of the safe deposit box held in secure perpetuity of the failed, rescued, merged, bought, renamed Savings Bank:

     dammit, there's a key for this box somewhere. ah, there!

• one birth certificate


• one marriage certificate


• one divorce certificate


• one death certificate


• one large tan envelope containing an assortment of U.S. Savings Bonds

It is worth noting that none of the names on any of the certificates or savings bonds are the same name, nor do they appear to bear any familial relationship to one another. The names are primarily, but not solely, male, of two or three syllables, and completely unremarkable and unmemorable. The surnames might be of English or German or French descent, but watered down and become generic after generations of residency elsewhere.

The safe deposit box does not contain any other documents, cash, keys, jewelry, photographs or electronic equipment, nor does it seem as if the original contents of perhaps more dubious nature have recently been replaced by these cheap forgeries. The birth, marriage, death certificates are so banal and generic as to apply equally to any members of the population selected at random from any phonebook in middle America.

Residue of illicit drugs could not be detected by the finest canine noses on the planet; evidence of a currency counterfeiting scheme would be impossible to trace through the innocuous color photocopies of savings bonds; material proof of illegal and ill-advised derring-do captured in a foolish moment of relaxed guard casts no shadow and drops no hints.

No log or video recording provides a hint that the box may have been visited, its contents edited, exchanged, removed, replaced, ever, at any time in the past three of four decades, which was when the Savings and Loan building was originally constructed, for it is also of unremarkable vintage, indeterminate styling, placed downtown in a college town of no particular academic rank in no particularly noteworthy section in no particular state.

The building employees have been there for an average of 15 years, although some tellers are quite young and certain officers are being encouraged to retire, but any except the newest staff members would be able to recognize a majority of the bank's account holders and nearly all the safe deposit box holders by sight: the town isn't that large, nor is the bank. Only a year ago did they stop giving lollipops and balloons to visiting children, replacing the positive reinforcement with stickers and, for the canines waiting in the passenger seats in the drive thru lanes, dog biscuits.

The same janitorial staff has vacuumed and mopped and dusted and emptied the trash and sent the shredded bits of sensitive documents to be incinerated and watered the plants for the past eight years; the posters and brochures were redesigned for the renamed Savings Bank four years ago, and then left, unnoticed, untouched, unedited, to become part of the wall paper. The office furniture predates the failing and rescuing and merging and buying and renaming of the bank, and is scheduled for replacement next year, assuming that targets for new accounts are met and balance sheets remain positive.

No staff member is aware of the current contents of the safe deposit box, nor was any staff member aware of the previous contents of the safe deposit box. This is unlikely to change, assuming that the annual dues to maintain ownership of the box continue to be paid by the name listed as the content holder on the account, and even, in the event of default, thereafter, as there is no particular demand for safe deposit boxes at this savings bank, and a number remain empty, so following up on delinquent accounts is viewed as a very low priority.

In point of fact, no one is either aware or concerned of the contents or their ownership for this particular safe deposit box. That is both the beauty and the frustration of otherwise unremarkable banks in out of the way cities, for two weeks and three days ago, a middle aged man with a receding hairline and gray about the temples, dressed in a pair of pressed chinos and a blue and white button down shirt, driving a taupe Lexus sedan, came into the bank, opened the safe deposit box directly above this particular box, and moved the contents of the upper box into the lower box.

Into the upper safe deposit box, he placed a yellow rubber duckie and a pair of black leather cashmere lined gloves, and from the lower box he extracted a quarter of a million dollars in cash, three loose square cut emeralds, a small velvet bag containing 27 carats of cut diamonds, a key to a safe deposit box to a bank in a completely different region, an envelope of negatives depicting a very important person in a very compromising position, a bag of an opiate based narcotic, and a small pistol.

These items he stored in his leather messenger bag, which he casually carried back to the Lexus, and then transferred, with himself and his other small traveling case, to a white Chevrolet, which was waiting under the second bank of security lights on the produce side of the grocery store on the north side of town. And then he drove. And he drove. And he drove, until he arrived, destined to never visit that innocuous and unremarkable town again on his travels.

---

reading
actually, having Neil Gaiman read to me. lovely.

weather
piles of tones of gray temper the skies, the seductive scent of lilacs, a glowering full moon through the mists of clouds, and ugh! the final (!) week of dreary cold

¿qué?

What is your story about?

In which the expectations of the mundane and material world
are subject to the scientific method and
the hypotheses proved and disproved and
the results recorded and published in
a highly secret coded language whose key
is provided to members of the Select
who pay an annual donation to the Society
and learn the secret handshake
and drink martinis.

-------------------------

Where's the magic?

The magic is under a rock amid the moss next to a tree growing alone in a field where during the rainy season there is a stream and during the migratory season a constantly shifting scene of ducks and geese and always clouds, wind, sky, sun, stars.

The magic is in an unmarked box in the basement stacked in a corner by the water heater next to the abandoned armchair with broken springs and not visible from the cellar steps.

The magic is woven into the rug in the living room, the threadbare Oriental rug with an unfortunate wine stain and a corner which was gnawed off by a puppy years ago.

The magic is in this envelope with the creaky handwriting and the 5 cent stamp addressed to someone who may or may not have been a great aunt.

The magic is here, in my hand, and I give it to you, freely, without expectation.

-------------------------

What is the truth you want to tell?

What happened was not what anyone who remarked upon the occasion then or later claimed it to be. What happened bears no resemblance to the events observed or the memories cherished or the fears imagined. What happened may be the actual truth, but it cannot be claimed as the universal truth as a universe requires accurate, unbiased observers, and no one present provided such a surface free of discriminations, expectations, and comparisons.

What happened was a boy went off the path in the forest, a bird swooped down from a tree, a squirrel found a horde of peanut butter cookies, a pair of shoes reunited after many frustrating and heart-wrenching years apart, a bear awoke from hibernation craving salmon and bacon, a grandmother used her umbrella to stop a thief, the mailmen went on strike for better hours and more stylish uniforms, a dashing young man was held hostage in the basement of the library by a graduate student who had been denied grant funding, a small octopus escaped from the aquarium downtown, a mountain exploded on schedule but without conviction, the grass was choked with weeds, and the tire ran over a nail.

What happened was a sick parent, a broken pencil, a lost photograph, an incomplete memory, an unmade bed, a battered leather suitcase, a cold soggy grilled cheese sandwich served with lukewarm coffee, a broken violin string in the middle of Stravinsky, a toupee ruffled to disadvantage by the wind, an abandoned swingset turning to rust in the afternoon sun.

What happened was a lost brown grey tabby cat found shot with a bb gun after weeks of frantic searching, a strangled dog, an asphyxiated fish, a guinea pig with cardiac arrest, an ice cream truck that sold drugs to neighborhood kids, a crashed hard drive, cold oatmeal, latrine duty at summer camp.

What happened was learning to make pizza, hanging paper streamers, eating ice cream for dinner, composing love letters destined to remain unread, building towers out of matchsticks and spinning the dog's hair into yarn.

What happened was a wrong number, an incorrect ZIP code, insufficient postage, a mix-up of recipients, a farewell and an arrival.

What happened was a bottle of cold champagne and a bowl of fresh strawberries, a breeze from over the lake and a rowboat that didn't leak.

What happened was boarding the wrong train and going to the sea, cycling though the hills and forgetting to bring a map, watching the clouds change shape and eavesdropping on the other inhabitants of this square foot square yard square mile as they muddle through as best they can with the script they were handed, the character sketch they were asked to play.

What happened was a locked house, a mistaken identity, a thunderstorm, a game of charades, a film festival of animations, a bottle of tequila, a spooky attic, a competition, and a terminal case of confusion.

What happened was an unmarked country lane, a horse who threw a shoe, an early snowfall, carols on Christmas eve after just the right amount of eggnog so nogged the egg was superfluous.

What happened was a broken promise, a better offer, an unexpected summons, a sudden inheritance, a front page news story, an unfinished poem, an unkissed lover, a folded newspaper hat, a croquet set missing the red mallet, a fountain pen without ink.

What happened was a shoebox of someone else's photographs, a dog-eared paperback, a business card left in a library book, a pair of red snakeskin cowboy boots, a marinara sauce over veal, a pizza Margherita and a bottle of Chianti, and a leaking roof.

What happened was a crowded airport, a delayed flight, lost luggage, a game of cards, a sleeping nun, and a passport filled with indifferent marks made by customs agents whose home lives were filled with fish and chips, television, small children, and Sunday roast beef dinners.

What happened was a three-legged dog, a tree struck by lightning, a field filled with lambs, a family of ducks, a ragged, unconvinced fox with a suicidal streak living unhappily amid a commune of vegans, a stream that flowed uphill and a butterscotch cookie recipe that won the blue ribbon at the fall fair.

What happened was a child lost amidst strangers at a picnic, a field of four leaf clovers, a rainbow that kept shifting and shifting and never quite touching ground, a car towed due to a street sweeping schedule based neither on logic nor on sense, a family of rabbits relocated from a field to a petting zoo, a broken ankle, a pot of strong Assam tea served with warm scones and blackberry jam.

What happened was a root canal, an uninsured motorist, a kite flying high above the meadows on a spring day, a skipped algebra class, a book of poems written on newsprint in lavender ink, a found puppy, a politician with an unauthorized biography and a secret second family, a gang of pirates, a solar eclipse, and a shooting star.

What happened was a chemistry experiment gone awry, a Spanish essay written in Portuguese, a flash of sunspots, a concert pianist performing at home to no one except a bitter old man living upstairs, who is deaf but still feels the vibrations from the baby grand, an impromptu game of hopscotch on the downtown sidewalk, a day devoted to speaking in song, a year devoted to living deliberately, a watch stopped at the hour of death.

What happened was a loosened tie, an unwatered plant, a neglected electric bill, a torn page from a photo album, a story told in rhyming couplets, a whirr of wings, a visit from a banshee.

What happened was a multiplication table calculated in base seven rather than base ten, a tax return filled in using Roman numerals, a flashcard with the wrong answers, a set of stickers of all the national flags of the world, vandalism on the brick wall, an unintentional mixed metaphor, a dripping faucet, a gallon of milk gone bad.

What happened was a new espresso bar, a bus strike, a playground built by Buckminster Fuller, a Lego castle and a robot whose controls were jammed and could only emit a loud and steady beep beep beep.

What happened was I didn't and you forgot and they declined and he refused and she demurred and we all let the project drop without a second thought because what happened wasn't something any of us care to repeat, much less discuss in polite company.

What happened, didn't.

---

reading
reading. hrmm. that would be books, magazines, newspapers, or electronic articles. those things. I left them somewhere, just over ... hrmm ... here? maybe? there?

weather
ah, forsythia. ah, daffodils. ah, tulips. ah, dandelions. ah, violets. ah, bleeding heart. o! spring!

vernal advents

Babs de Genlis and Pippi Aubergine
implore the pleasure of your company
for an afternoon of
mustaches, martinis, bocce, & lilacs

Sunday : May 9, 2010 : 2 p.m.
Arnold Arboretum

martinis, mustaches, lilacs, and bocce provided
please bring guests and something frivolous to eat and/or play

Babs de Genlis underwateravenue@gmail.com
Pippi Aubergine pippi.aubergine@gmail.com

---

reading
Also, May 6 : artist's book group meets! 6.30pm for 7pm

weather
all the trees in bloom

The To Do List

The coffee maker goes on the stovetop, not in the refrigerator.
The water goes in the saucepan, not on the kitchen floor.
The cat food goes in the refrigerator, not in the drawer.
The blender is lidded before being plugged in.
The cats are watered.
The floor is vacuumed.
The car is petrolled, the bills are paid, except for one, which sits accusingly on top of the bookcase.
The library books are renewed, left spine open on top of chairs, the magazines piled in heaps on the floor, the shoes abandoned to the forces of chaos, the closet a husk of alternative identities, the linens folded, the handkerchiefs embroidered, the sink scrubbed, the light bulbs changed, the pencils sharpened, the telephone rings, it is time to begin.

The thermos of coffee packed with a flask of soup and an apple, the map folded to reveal the necessary, the back of an envelope entrusted with the hasty scrawl of a phone number and directions from the interstate; the glove compartment is an archive of hastily scrawled phone numbers and directions on the backs of envelopes, a source of potential momentary embarrassment, camouflaged by five years of receipts for oil changes, tire rotations, registrations, towing, jumping, windshield replacement, body work. In a separate compartment loiter the receipts for fuel and car washes and parking places, carefully interfiled amongst scratched cd's and sporadic to-do lists.

The interstate is empty of all public intentions and expectations, the speeding left lane more of a dance towards the benign future than a force of impending doom, the pottering right lane a sunny morning coffee and newspaper break, the intermittent gas stations and rest areas a respite from radio programming that threatens to grow redundant without ever quite managing to do so. Slowly the stations fizzle and die, replaced by local reports on agriculture, the weather, and politics, the voices of hosts betraying hints of geographic origin, the gas stations becoming plazas of mooring where anything and everything can be discovered in aisle three.

The map is consulted, the sky compared to the weather reports, the luggage in the back seat checked for stability, the stack of audio books shuffled and readied, the phone coverage lost.

Somewhere, the note sent out before departure is read, thought over, read again, responded to; in the next house over, a phone rings or fails to ring; the mail is delivered, the electric bill, a flier for weekly sales at the grocery store; a dog chases a Canada goose through the cemetery, earning stares of disapproval from an in-process funeral, even though the deceased was a curmudgeon who left his not insignificant fortune to the humane society. The refrigerator hums to life, prolonging the validity of the cat food, orange juice, and peanut butter, and the downstairs neighbor wakes with a hangover and hazy memories of tequila and promises of eternal, mind altering, life redefining love, with someone whose name they can't quite remember.

Ahead, the highway narrows, and declares a change of intention from over-groomed underutilized four lanes of obsessive business-like speed to a quiet desultory slightly rugged two lanes, curving along fields and farmhouses, billboards appearing only as handpainted signs tacked to fencing and telephone poles, announcing farmstands, coffee shops, the world's largest reptile museum, a shop selling hunting trophies, antiques, collectibles, and 24 hour live bait, and a lone gas station. The numbers on the intersecting highways grow larger with the increasing distance from the metropolis, they houses wander between the immaculate and the abandoned, and next to the miniature golf park, the turn off is reached.

None of the audio books are quite right, the music collection has grown weary from overplaying, the local radio station is hosted in French and plays indecipherable but cheerful ballads and pop tunes. The air is colder, and scented with the smells of three weeks ago and the mysterious scents of dirt, water, hills, and possibility. In the back seat, amongst the groceries, the clothing, the wine, the shoes, are books, colored pencils, scissors, instructions for origami spaceships, and papier mâché steamships, torrid romance novels, cold war thrillers, a typewriter, a bottle of glue, a bottle of glitter, a marriage certificate, a lease. Somewhere there is a tent and a feather pillow and a dictionary and the first edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage and a set of dominoes and a deck of cards and a stained cookbook and the power cables to camera, phone, laptop, civilization.

An inquiry at the mini golf park is greeted with the information that they are closed for the season, but whether it is too early or too late or they are closed forevermore or just not open today is not revealed by the plastic letters neatly spaced on the sign by the gates. Season dates and prices remain hidden from sight, a destination to be left in mystery while the remainder of the directions are transcribed from the back of the envelope. There is a certain amount of confusion regarding whether the roads are separate or the recipients of dual names, and the map does not deign to clarify matters in a location this remote, but shrugs indifferently and keeps its secrets.

The envelope likewise neglects to disclose distances, landmarks, anticipations, leaving the powers of navigation to serendipity and instinct and optimism, while at home the cats negotiate the real estate of the windows and the automatic timer for the light and the radio clicks on. A house roasting a whole pig for a twenty fifth wedding anniversary receives a visit from the fire station, the governor's intimate hobbies are broached on the afternoon news, a sports game is lost by the home team to hated rivals, a nephew is born, brought squalling and messy into a world of light and confusion and inconsistencies.

Construction downtown slows traffic to a snarl of tangled nerves, bicycle commuters risk life, limb, and concussion to weave through stopped traffic rather than stay on the bike lane a quarter mile west, and a ferry boat is evacuated due to concerns in the engine room. A PTA meeting starts on time, a choir rehearsal lasts a half hour longer than scheduled, a man high on a badly mixed street drug attempts to rob a convenience store, but is stopped by shaking nerves and a woman buying a gallon of milk and a pint of chocolate Häagen-Dazs with a handgun in her purse. The river hosts ducks and floating water bottles and the sun tilts the earth until the sky turns pink, and suddenly, there on the left, is the next turn, if two of the letters are transposed and an "S" is added to the end of the street name.

The overhanging trees cast a murky shadowy dusk that hides more than true nightfall, none of the houses have numbers, and what people can be glimpsed offer only impassive sideways looks of mistrust, bad pasts, lost narratives. There, ahead, partially hidden by an over exuberant rhododendron, a lone red balloon and a stiletto spray painted in glow in the dark paint: a final right turn before the directions can be consigned to the glove box, the baking chocolate and whole chickens and lettuce and berries moved into the kitchen, the board games added to the assortment on the coffee table, the pin the tail on the donkey tacked to the wall by the fireplace, and greetings all around and dive into the hammock with a chapbook of poetry just released and a martini freshly shaken, ice-cold, for the final twelve minutes of daylight before dusk fully descends, and brings with it the future.

---

reading
my new favorite book: Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess : Instructions

weather
magnolias in bloom! daffodils in bloom! this horrible terrible no good very bad dreadful lingering cold in retreat

après l'école {a DYP! production}

The puppet show was scheduled to begin at four-thirty. It was expected to go without a hitch: all the music was cued up, everyone had been told their places, and the audience duly shuffled into the room on time. A side table of Kool Aid and boxed raisins and peanut butter and celery and Girl Scout Cookies promised a worthy reward for their attentions; the younger siblings were corralled into a corner of the living room from which they could do no harm, safely out of the way of the action until their presence was required, in Act 2.

There had been a bit of a fuss over who would be in charge of the music, since the stereo belonged to one participant and the mish-mash of records, tapes, and cds to a range of households and libraries, but they agreed to draw up a list of the order of the music and then draw a name out of a bucket to determine who would be in charge of the machine, which was then followed with further bickering as to how much stage time the music controller would have, since it wouldn’t be fair to be both in charge of sound and have the leading role. The discrete exchange of a Snickers bar and a pair of earrings helped settle the argument.

The past hour had been filled with pre-performance anticipation, changing into costume and putting on make-up and curling hair: even if it was a puppet show, they would still be appearing before and after the performance to talk to the audience, and so they still needed to be in the character of performers rather than in their daily appearance as relatives, friends, troublemakers, daredevils. The final parent arrived, delayed for whatever reason grown-ups are unable to ever be on time, the order of events handed out to the audience, the children shushed and pushed into their corner, and the performance began.

The stage was a bend in the hallway next to a bedroom door, separated from the audience by an old curtain hung over a broomstick. From the bend in the hallway the audience could observe in the living room, and the bedroom could become a spacious back stage area, littered with the detritus of costumes, make up, piles of puppets, stuffed animals, and other necessary accessories. This meant that the stage area itself was rather crowded, since it was confined to an area slightly less wide than the length of a broomstick, and the walls on either side meant that to address the audience directly one had to duck under the curtain without upsetting the precarious balance of the broomstick and curtain, which during rehearsal proved all too ready to come crashing down.

Where, then, to have the music situated? It was easier to get to in the back of the curtain, blasting at full volume from back stage, but the way the outlets were in the bedroom meant that even at full volume it was still muffled in the living room. But having the music in the living room mean the performer would be constantly dodging back and forth, a highly dangerous situation given how precarious the broom and curtain set up was. Inspiration struck with the placement of the stereo in the bathroom, where the cord would stretch to the doorway into the hallway, and so someone just had to very carefully sidle out the bedroom door into the hallway and back three steps to play the music, which was less risky to upsetting the curtain.

The cast of puppets featured the house favorites and were assigned by degree of best friendness. The newest and most exciting of the puppets was a fuzzy brown monkey with a yellow vest, whose feet Velcroed together around the waist and whose hands latched behind the neck of the puppeteer. The monkey was worked by sliding an arm up its back into its head, operating like a ventriloquist’s dummy, and it meant that whoever had the monkey was seen by the audience, standing in front of the curtain and being both a character and the monkey.

The favorite puppet was a tiny reddish brown one, that was just exactly hand-sized and might even been handmade. It was either a little bear or a little kangaroo, and also wore a little vest, and was more often a kangaroo than a bear. Its eyes, nose, and mouth were stitched outlines in black thread, and the mouth didn’t open; as a puppet, only the arms moved as the fingers inside waggled back and forth, or the neck nodded. There was a little girl puppet universally derided for her string hair of yellow braids and her freckles and her green dress with flowers that looked like a piece of old tablecloth, and a white mouse with a long tail and clear plastic whiskers, and a villain, who had once been designed as The Count and now represented everything evil that would befall the cast of characters.

The final puppet, the crème-de-la-crème, the entire reason the younger children were being allowed to perform in Act 2, was the marionette. Maybe it was a kitten, maybe it was a fawn; specifically what animal it was was impossible to tell, but it had a wooden assembly that controlled four feet with clear fishing line, and attached to another stick that controlled the head and the hips. There was no tail to speak of; it was made out of pale brown fake fur, with pink patches at the feet and the ears , and it had been a present for the little sister, here appropriated for the puppet show with promises to appear part of the performance. No one could work the marionette, not the little sister or the older siblings or the friends, much less the parents, but no puppet show could be held without the presence of the marionette.

The cast was rounded out by appearances of the four foot long green striped alligator, the stuffed cat, the real hamster in clear plastic ball, the yellow lab, and, in a last minute substitution for a borrowed but absent Barbie, a Raggedy Ann doll, missing an apron.

The music started, an old Boston Pops recording of Fanfare for the Common Man, rousing trumpet fanfare letting the adults know to pay attention! this was serious stuff, followed by each puppet appearing above the curtain, bowing, and then perching on the head of the previous puppet. The monkey was saved for last, so that monkey and performer could scooch out underneath the curtain, bow to the audience, and take their place in position under the rest of the puppets, held aloft by visible arms as puppeteers balanced on stools, tip-toes, and each other’s backs. The music controller tried to keep her puppet in position while readying the next track, slipped off the stool while trying to reach, and knocked over the rest of the puppeteers, a movement which was made to look intentional by the sudden appearance above the broom of the alligator.

While he strutted back and forth to the reggae music thus provided, the puppets and puppeteers trampled underfoot, the monkey, in going under the curtain, became tangled in a length of fabric, and brought the entirety crashing down. The situation was salvaged by the younger brother’s timely performance of Taps on the trumpet, an instrument played with more enthusiasm than skill, and while two performers back stage struggled to right the broomstick and curtain assembly, the dog was slowly walked past the audience, with Raggedy Ann strapped to its back. As the program notes explained, this was Snow White being carried in her glass coffin after eating the poisoned apple, but the younger children, who were due to play the Seven Dwarves, were unprepared for the Act 1 appearance of Snow White, and started singing an off-tempo but on-key medley of hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work I go while the trumpet continued to warble through the final notes of Taps.

Thus started, the younger siblings continued as rehearsed with Father Abraham, mixing the movements with the hokey pokey until suddenly the dog was corralled by a parent, the music switched to Für Elise, and the marionette deployed for a heart-wrenching pas-de-deux with the hamster in its clear plastic ball. One by one the other puppets appeared, dancing above the curtain rod while the marionette and the hamster cavorted on the floor, the hamster kicked occasionally from behind the curtain to make sure it stayed within reach of the marionette.

The other puppets, led by The Count, decided to kidnap the marionette and tie her to the railroad tracks, which was accomplished by wrapping the ever-tangled cords of the puppet around the broomstick, and then enlisting the alligator as freight train. As the music cued up for the theme song of the Lone Ranger, the monkey puppet reappeared, a silver star pinned to its chest, and the rest of the puppets bounced above the curtain rod, demonstrating their best galloping without a horse as part of the sheriff’s posse. The crocodile was thrown headlong into the crowd, the marionette and the monkey embraced, and the music cued to It’s A Small World, as all the puppets were thrown into the air.

Forty five minutes of pandemonium from when it had begun, the puppet show was declared a success, although the marionette had to be cut from the broomstick, and the Kool Aid spilled onto the living room carpet. Copies of the program were signed by the actors, and safely stored in scrapbooks or quietly discarded, the dog separated from the doll still strapped to its back, and The Count, the villain, hung from the living room curtains to pay for his dastardly deeds. Thus concluded the evening, the promise of afterschool performances for the year ahead launched, with much ado.

---

reading
The Infinities, under the influence of opiates (hooray for codeine)

weather
crickets, sunset, clotheslines, and seersucker