The Kinks – A Well Respected Man – 45 RPM Single
Uploaded by tjsmith51 on Aug 17, 2011
A do the right thing day.
I lost my phone last Thursday night. Because I thought that you could get things for free. An important lesson I always receive to learn and just miss.
My sister gave me her winter jacket from last year, it is warm and furry.
The jacket’s pocket is ripped and I sew it hastily like it’s easy and can’t believe she hasn’t sewn it yet. After a week, the seems pull again and I forget not to put things in there or that I can be really condescending.
But on this night I knew full well I would lose my phone. I wanted to lose my phone so I would be forced to deal with getting a better phone plan.
I have recently moved to Brooklyn and next door to my apartment is a phone company called Metro PCS. It’s amazing, no commitment, pay as you go, 35 bucks. You walk into their chaos and drop some cash and they will give you a phone and a number, a way to be connected, contacted, find directions, a spot, a point a pin on this massive island.
On my first visit I was lured in by Mr.Mr. who handed me a flyer and some witty comment about my dog who was wearing a scarf, not for fashion reasons but because inevitability i lost her leash ( again, intentional).
It is a vortex in there. The purple and the chaos, or maybe the chaos first and then the purple but they become one of the same both regal and demeaning. Everything is one thing if you really think about it.
Mr.Mr. has entered behind me. He is speaking on his device that is connected to his ears with bright white strings. He sits in front of me while Moe pacing back and forth is simultaneously explaining to me the plans they have while taking payments from other customers and text-ing on his phone. Mr.Mr. reclines in the chair behind the counter and I can’t help but listen to his voice, it is low and deep and it is a soft warm spot to focus on inside of all the sounds around. It is a while before I realize that he is having a very private 12 step-like conversation and he catches my gaze and doesn’t blink till i look away. It’s the hot water you spill on yourself cooling off and you realize your sleeves are wet when you step outside.
Then resident Mr. White Butt walks in, matching jumpsuit telling the whole store he has lost his iphone. The GPS may recover it in his MASSIVE apartment, but he needs to be reached immediately. He just won’t stop talking no matter how much everyone ignores him. Then he starts flirting, a sad thing. Upon rejection he dismisses me as being young and probably from Williamsburgh (ha!), i just feel wise. Mr. White Butt gets helped and leaves unwillingly saying that he looks forward to his housekeeper explaining to him how to use Metro PCS’s service. He leaves, comes back in, says nothing and finally leaves for good.
His comment managed to silenced the whole store. I took it as a good moment to make amends with Mr.Mr. I walk over to him and say we should shoot a homage to Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing here. He laughs and says, you know I was an extra in the film, he used to live in Bed-Stuy. Apparently Danny Aiello and Spike Lee are really nice people, and Mr. Lee still has a clothing store in the old neighborhood.
He asks me where I am coming from and I say Barcelona. He smiles and says, oh Spain, I have never really left the states except for once as a child when he was vising his grandparents in Michigan and one night they drove over to Canada for a party. I ask where in Canada and he says he’s not too good at history and I say neither am I. He says we should ask Brainiac (Moe) he’ll know.
Moe hangs up with whoever he is chatting with on the land-line with a familiar, “ya’alah bye.” He asks Mr.Mr. to be quiet because he can’t concentrate and I smile and say shukran wishing I knew how to say something else, he says afwuan, and now he has come back to me and I am happy for the few words of Arabic that I know (thank you, your welcome).
I finally get a phone (that doesn’t work, but that’s another story). I leave the store, saying good bye and thank you to Moe and Mr.Mr.
There with almost all of the potential to know exactly where I am.
the happy holidays
And on the 7th night of Channukah I went to meet my Grandmother for dinner with my sister.
We arrived exactly on time (5:15 pm) and grandma was late. My Grandmother is never late. She is a beautiful elegant woman. Her face and eyes are slightly moist like glitter when she tells stories. She is a master story teller with a story for every single word, perhaps it is her Yiddish upbringing, or maybe coming from a different era of entertaining, but mostly i think it is her and her spectacular inner world.
Grandma enters and passes our table looking flustered in her black polar bear knee length jacket. Her cheeks are rosy from the cold and her eyelashes always twirl up a little framing her playful eyes.
“We are here,” I say. “Oh girls, I am so sorry I am late, you will never believe what happened,” she says.
She shows us her wrist watch like we have never seen one before.
As if we didn’t know a clock runs on gears and sprockets that from time to time need to be wound. As if people only from a certain era have the privilege of time stopping.
“It’s o.k.” we ordered already. We were eating dinner before going to see a play, my Gandmother’s gifting-tradition for as long as I can remember celebrating anything.
“Oh dear, I need to call Grandpa, I forgot to light the Chanukah menorah.” Grandma its o.k. you can light it when you get home.” She is not pleased with this answer and gets up to speak with the hostess. I see her motioning to the tea lights on the table asking for eight and explaining that she will have to leave them on the table and nobody can touch them until tomorrow. The waitress apologizes and shakes her head no.
Grandma comes back to the table looking worried and begins calling Grandpa again. The hostess returns with a little electric candle in her hand saying she needs to light this evening’s candle, perhaps we would like to do it and say the blessings.
Grandma jumps up and says, “Oh yes, come on girls.” We follow Grandma to the front of the restaurant one of us on each of her sides. We lean over the juice bar and huddle close as she screws in the light. She begins singing and we join in as does the young girl behind the juice bar and the table behind us.
The electric flame glows though it is our faces that are warm and burn. The blessing says that “throughout the eight days of Chanukah, these lights are sacred, and we are not permitted to make use of them, but only to look at them, in order to offer thanks and praise for the miracle.” From my belly tonight I can say, Amen.
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