i popped back into chicago, one Christmas, to spend a few minutes contemplating what had gone so very wrong there, some years ago. on a clean clear sharp December 25th, after church on the south side, i visited the school gardens, where in 4th and 5th grade i had raised radishes and pansies and carrots and lettuce. in order to make the most of the experience, i hugged a tree for a minute or two and also crouched to the ground and buried my hands in the loamy soil, which was welcomingly still soft at this late hour in the year. i sense that memory is embellishing, but it was as though my hands were floating in a moist chocolate cake, and i suppose i had drifted entirely away from workaday reality, and was thus hardly surprised that a solitary romantic figure was approaching my patch of soil with purpose in her steps. it was lucinda nichols, of harper avenue, which remains for me an exquisitely romantic address, and she wanted me to undo the riddle for her of why a man in well shined black wingtip shoes and a charcoal grey cashmere coat should be hugging a tree before immersing his hands in soil. i told her about the radishes and pansies of an earlier day, and she pronounced herself my new best friend, which she remained for nearly a month. how our alliance came to grief is for our purposes the interesting part of the story. the marvel is that lucinda and i were about equally spiritual, which is saying something considering how far out that branch i dwell. so we had far ranging talks on every imaginable topic, and this was tonic to my soul. on a fiercely cold clear day, after a thrilling january blizzard had reenvisioned the city in ice and snow, lucinda and i were having cocoa in my rented carriage house on webster street, in the charming precincts of armitage and damen and the western reaches of lincoln park, not that it matters, and on that day lucinda was confiding in me the ways in which she connects with the divine. when she asked me for the source of my own blessed assurance, i spoke of the Bible and good preaching and heartfelt gospel music and congregational hymn singing, all of which was inoffensive enough to her until i made the mistake of remarking that God speaks to me by the additional avenues of tv shows, such as nypd blue [also the unit, written by a boy whod gone to school down the other end of webster] and via vanity licence plates. her mood darkened abruptly. she said, i can certainly understand how God speaks through licence plates, but tv is a corrupt vulgar medium which God would not touch with a ten foot pole. i clung to my version through a couple of turns, whereupon she gathered her scarf and her mittens and her considerable dignity, and she advised me to no longer think of her as my friend. after i showed her out, my excellent abyssinian ally, name of bayonne, approached me with a request for a walk on the snowy streets, which i was happy enough to oblige, wondering if the cold would soothe the steam boiling between my ears after hearing my process trashed by an admirable soul. we left the cottage by its rear door and set off down the alley, the cat high stepping through the snow. we had covered no more than 40 or 50 feet of urban tundra before i noticed a snazzy yellow corvette laid in under the carport of a house that shared my alley. its vivid yellow caught my eye and begged for a second look. i saw that the car bore the following legend in its license plates: I DO TV.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 17:06:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015