Waterlog

Waterlog.

The rain has begun.

I park the car close as possible, then dodging the drops, duck into the library.

“Ahh,” says the librarian, “we’ve been wading through your requests and look what’s washed up.”

It is like Santa handing over a present.

“Ahh, ‘Waterlog’”, I say.”The perfect book to read in the bath,”

“Just don’t drop it,” he says.

I should have seen that coming but Steve is quick, very quick.

“Thanks,” I say and we have a brief chat on the merits of reading in strange places, like baths.

“Have to go”, I say. “The rain’s getting heavier.”

By the time I get to the car, the book and I are waterlogged.

Steve would have appreciated that pun.

Now I don’t have to worry about dropping it in the bath.

* what’s the strangest place you’ve read a book?

Hiding Place: a Tiny Tale

Hiding Place.

Was wondering where the cat snoozed sunny afternoons

when I turned the hose on some groggy –looking gardenias

in a cloistered corner of the yard

and found out

as a cat bounded out of the bushes into the clearing

as if she were scalded

The Getting of Wisdom

Back in the seventies when I first

went teaching , I came across them ;

flimsy paper tickets as evidence you’d paid

for your journey on the tram or bus;

you’d turn them over discovering a world of wisdom:

‘it’s the spouting whale that gets harpooned’,

‘it’s not enough to point the gun , you’ve got

to pull the trigger’ ….. ‘the past is dead,

the future’s not here, the present is your home’ ;

little homilies to help you along life’s journey ;

I collected them all until they stopped using them —

then one day left them in a carriage and never

saw them again ; I was like a disciple

who had lost his guru ; I had to seek

other sources for the getting of wisdom .

Where Celebrities Grew Up

Reading an article by David Remnick,

editor of ‘The New Yorker’

since 1998

I discovered

he was born in Paterson, New Jersey

the same place as Philip Roth,

the novelist whose biography Remnick was profiling,

as was Ginsberg,

the man who wrote “Howl’

that poem that still echoes down the decades.

the same place too

as William Carlos Williams,

the man who wrote ‘the red wheelbarrow’

and wait for it,

Lou Costello,

the comedic partner of Bud Abbot

whose films split our sides

in the fun house of the fifties;

what do they have in the water of Paterson, New Jersey,

that so many famous people

grew up there;

it must be quite a place

Hey! That’s Not a Word

• 

I was streaking ahead and then she put down that word. It was on a ‘double word’ score.

Hey! That’s NOT a word! I said.

Yes, it is. I was just reading about it in ‘Body and Soul’ [ a supplement in our Sunday newspaper].

And she bent across and showed me.

What does it mean?

It’s something we used to do as schoolgirls, she chuckled. And she told me.

I was flabbergasted. The secret life of schoolgirls, I thought. Wonder of wonders.

Okay, I said. There are 4000 new words in our language each year so why couldn’t that be one of them?

What Happiness Is

You know what happiness is? he said.

Contentment? I suggested.

Not even close, he said through the burnished orange of this late autumn afternoon.

Money? Wealth?

Come on, he said. You know better that that.

Then what? I asked.

Curiosity.

What?

It’s not true what they say about cats, you know. That old proverb about curiosity killed the cat. It’s to stop you changing lanes.

You’re beginning to sound like a zen poet, I said. Like Li Po.

Become like a cat, he said. Go out into the world, cat-curious. You can never NOT be happy if you’re finding out things.

 

do you agree?

where is happiness found for you?

what is the chief impediment for happiness, do you think?