My Redacted Life

We had been married about six months or so, my redhead and I. Did I ever mention that she had fulfilled the major dreams of my life? That is to say a knockout girl with long hair, a sports car, a good job, and the opportunities abounding in civilian life. I was set.

Well, almost. As the ink had begun to dry on our marriage certificate, she, this knockout redhead, informed me of the immediate cessation of driving around with “the top down.” Seems that it caused tangles in her long hair. No problem. I immediately surrendered that small aspect of my dream-structure. I suppose I was, early on, developing an understanding of the requirements for a long marriage.

It did come as a surprise, however, when I received a call one day at work. “You should see,” a lovely feminine voice said, “my new haircut.”

“A trim?”

“A little more. You’ll like it.”

The afternoon proved as agonizing as the wait for a jury verdict. Later, I drove my Green Angel, with the top down of course, to the home we had recently purchase. Visions swam unimpeded through my head of “beehive hairdos” so popular in my formative years. My heart beat a slow tempo of anticipation guided by fear.

She wasn’t there when I arrived home. There was only one way to prepare for the tragic unveiling. I popped the top on a beer and put on an Otis Redding album. I waited. Maybe the scriptures would help. The only one I knew by heart was John 11:35.

“Jesus wept.”

A car pulled up. I finished the beer and waited.

What do you know? The most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life walked through the door. Of course I had figured by now that my new wife wasn’t a true redhead, but I was totally unprepared for what I saw. Outside the birds began to sing. My heart raced and my mouth went dry. I guess that throughout a long marriage, a person will fall in love numerous times. It’s best if is the same person. Worked for me as one might expect.

Decide for yourself.

We don't need no
stinkin' long red hair.

Monday Blues

Taking Monday off. I've scheduled an appointment for physical therapy on my knee exactly as the much publicized eclipse is to occur, another case of bad timing duing my life. In addition to arriving "in-country" only a few weeks before the so-called "Tet Offensive" kicked off, I finished my tour with the United States Navy 24 hours after the last draft-dodger got the last good job in the country. Later I retired, or sort of retired, a few days before interest rates on CDs hit 0.025 percent, or one percent less than the cost of the gas it took to go to the bank and renew.

And, of course, the sexual revolution began during my wedding reception.

Change

Early morning thoughts with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.9 in E flat Major performed by Mitsuko Uchida. (Yes I know, I don’t stray far—see below).

As I sit at our farm before the Sun has even thought of rising, I sense a slight rough spot in the greased grooves of the Universe. Two of the Queen B’s dogs have altered their morning resting routines. Why?

Betty Lou, the 50-pound tomboy who was supposed to have been a fox-terrier mix, is asleep on the couch instead of the green recliner. Suzi, the Evangelist, has chosen another chair. She normally faces me in the morning with a supplicating look on her face as if my salvation were the only important thing in our postage-stamp galaxy. She was rescued by the Queen and her mother, the Lady Hazel, from underneath an abandoned church where she had lived for some time with her collection of toys: a tin can, one long stick, several rags, and a hand-fan from a long defunct funeral home. She seems to have turned her back on me today.

So what’s up? Is there perhaps a small hole in the Curtain of Reality? Do I care to sneak a peek? One remembers, of course, the ending of William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury.” Luster, one of the Compton family’s “boys,” offers to take Benjy, the idiot man-child, on his daily carriage ride and opts to circle the town square counter-clockwise, instead of clockwise as per the daily routine. Benji goes berserk until Luster turns their horse Queenie around and then:

“I could hear Queenie's feet and the bright shapes went smooth and steady on both sides, the shadows of them flowing across Queenie's back. They went on like the bright tops of wheels. Then those on one side stopped at the tall white post where the soldier was. But on the other side they went on smooth and steady, but a little slower.”

In short, things were as they should be.

Life in our country, as in this modest living room in the midst of nowhere, certainly seems about to change, and maybe the dogs presage it. It may not seem a major event to the few remaining of the generation that lived through the three-fold catastrophe of WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII, but it unsettles a thinking person in present times. Is it comforting to realize that, far from a modern feeling, it was expressed years ago, this sense of impending change? Matthew Arnold alluded to it in the Victorian era and even hearkened back to ancient times in his epic “Dover Beach,” to wit”

“Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.”

So I guess I had best prepare for … oh wait … Betty Lou just moved to her normal chair and Suzi has turned to stare at me.

Never mind.

 

Worth reading anyway

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also: www.wattensawpress.com  www.cwblogsite.com