Sacred Images?

It Could Happen, Part I

This was a little something I put together last year as a joke for the ladies with whom I was working at the time. They both were taking some time off at the holidays, and were leaving me alone in the Tech Services area. At one point, I believe that they considered finding me a sitter...and although I thought about it for the sake of this letter, I was not involved in the stealing of a fish from Broad Street. This may have only been funny to me and about three other people. Please forgive me if you are bored.

My Agenda While Dee and Tallulah Are Away Friday, December 22, 2006

7:30-9:00 Discard books for bookstore; try to get all videos out before 9:00am to avoid being knocked out of way by crazed-VHS-buying-patrons (didn’t they read in the New York Times that VHS is so yesterday?).

9:00-9:25 Collect All Sharpened Pencils.

9:25-10:00 15-Minute Break.

10:00-11:00 Make prank phone calls to all other departments w/in GPL. Also call Bobby Welch from untraceable phone and ask if he’s got Prince Albert in a can.

11:00-12:00 “Borrow” library director’s SUV; steal the six-foot, fiberglass prototype of the Broad Street Big Fish from the bench in front of the Hardin Center just to see if it can be stolen. Leave the premises. Call Bobby Welch back and ask him if he knows where his fish is.

12:00-12:30 Lunch

12:30-1:53 Practice breaking my best-time record on riding book cart down delivery ramp at back door.

1:53-2:27 Explain to the cops that I really work at the library when they arrive after being called on a disturbance involving someone riding a book cart down the delivery ramp at the back door of the library.

2:27-3:30 Practice throwing pencils into ceiling above Tallulah's desk.

3:30 Go home.

Hit Me Again, Harder This Time

Just got to work and opened up the grant file upon which I was working yesterday and there was NOTHING there. I'm looking around for a camera at this very moment and hoping that someone is going to jump out from behind the door and yell, "punked! The last two weeks have been a big joke! You can go back to your normal life now!" I'm way-ting...

Current theme song for my life:
Haitian Fight Song (II B.S)-Mingus
It has nice statements and responses.

You Can Bank On It

A disgruntled patron called the Reference Department Saturday afternoon and left a message stating that he did not like the way his taxpayer's money was being spent at the library and that he was going to kill everyone who worked there, "you can bank on it." There were other things that he said as well, I'm sure, but once someone says something about killing, I tend to not hear anything else.

Now, lucky for us, he made the same call to the president of the United States, so he has been incarcerated. This is a troubled person who has had some dealings with the law before, someone I hope I never have the misfortune to meet.

To think that someone would make a threat like that over thoughts of his tax money being spent in a way with which he disagreed, and being unhappy that there are pictures in the newspaper of children enjoying themselves at the public library...I'm trying to think of ways in which to exact some type of revenge that are of a library nature, book press, exacto knife, lots of overdue fines for the rest of his life, permanent banning from the library...none of them instill the same amount of fear that a death threat can to a person who has, for the last two weeks been faced with the mortality of someone they love, someone who needs them to be around for support and help. I'm feeling a little vigilanteism coursing through my veins. Funny, I felt the same way when our apartment was broken into in Denver. I slept for three nights on the sofa facing the door which was pried open to access our home, in the hopes that the larcenist would return so that I would have a crack at the person who had made my home a place where I felt uncomfortable. I had very detailed fantasies of where the thief came back and I blinded him with my bare hands and pushed him out of our third-story low-rise, supposedly secure apartment-with-a-view window. I was comforted only by the passing of time and a poem that JAY passed out to our neighbors the following week when we did not get satisfactory answers from the super or the police concerning how this could have happened in a secure building. It eloquently captures the disorientation and the desperate need to respond when one is faced with threat. It is one of Steve Scafidi's best poems.

To Whoever Set My Truck On Fire
But let us be friends awhile and understand our differences
are small and that they float like dust in sunny rooms
and let us settle into the good work of being strangers
simply who have something to say in the middle of the night
for you have said something that interests me--something of flames,
footsteps and the hard heavy charge of an engine gunning away
into the June cool of four in the morning here in West Virginia
where last night I woke to the sound of a door slamming,
five or six fading footsteps, and through the window saw
my impossible truck bright orange like a maverick sun and
ran--I did--panicked in my underwear bobbling the dumb
extinguisher too complex it seemed for putting out fires
and so grabbed a skillet and jumped about like one
needing to piss while the faucet like honey issued its slow
sweet water and you I noticed then were watching
from your idling car far enough away I could not make
your plate number but you could see me--half naked
figuring out the puzzle of a fire thirty seconds from
a dream never to be remembered while the local chaos
of a growing fire crackled through the books and boots
burning in my truck, you bastard, you watched as I sprayed
finally the flames with a gardenhose under the moon
and yes I cut what was surely a ridiculous figure there
and worsened it later that morning after the bored police
drove home lazily and I stalked the road in front of my house
with an ax in my hand and walked into the road after
every car to memorize the plates of who might have done this:
LB 7329, NT 7663, and you may have passed by--
I don't know--you may have passed by as I committed
the innocent numbers of neighbors to memory and maybe
you were miles away and I, like the woodsman of fairy tales,
threatened all with my bright ax shining with the evil
joy of vengeance and mad hunger to bring harm--heavy
harm--to the coward who did this and if I find you,
my friend, I promise you I will lay the sharp blade deep
into your body until the humid grabbing hands of what must be
death have mercy and take you away from the constant
murderous swinging my mind makes my words make
swinging down on your body and may your children
weep a thousand tears at your small and bewildered grave.

Parking Lot Pas de Deux or Hi, I'm Tracy!

One of my dearest and oldest friends, The Senator, waltzed into my office on 7 December at approximately 3PM and asked me if I wanted to go see the Alabama Ballet’s The Nutcracker in B’ham on Saturday. I vacillated on whether or not to go because of Dad just being out of the hospital and all, but after talking with Mum, decided to go. You see, I wanted so badly to see this version of The Nutcracker because the Alabama Ballet was one of only six companies this year to have the rights to perform Balanchine’s version (choreography and story much more child-friendly than Baryshnikov’s adult verson). Balanchine happens to be my all-time favorite, classic choreographer. He was pretty good at what he did. So good in fact, he was responsible for pairing Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev together in the 60’s, thereby establishing what I believe to be THE quintessential ballet partnership of all time (another favorite partnership of mine, not of Balanchine’s making, was Baryshnikov and Kirkland-if you see the famous early 80’s production of The Nutcracker with those two in it and you will never want to see anyone else in the roles of the Nutcracker and Clara).

It was so nice to be back in a city with noise and traffic and sidewalks! In typical fashion, running late to the opening curtain, we literally had to run around the BJCC to find the correct entrance. Upper Tier, right smack in the middle (my favorite spot), great view! Was thrilled with this particular Heir Drosselmeyer; he was vampire-like with black hair and white skin and flew about the stage like a clock pendulum, black cape flapping like bat wings. The children in the audience were speechless at the sight (it was almost frightening and worked very well for building suspense). Clara was played by an absolute doll of a girl, diminutive and fetching, with beautiful technique (Jacqueline Cannon, who will probably become a principal in the company one day). And the Nutcracker was a fine danseur, but looked like post-surgery, post-eighties Michael Jackson in the face (were those his REAL cheekbones and was that his REAL nose? I tried to not think of this as I watched him dance, but it was his face after all, which was quite hard to avoid looking at).

It was a delightful production, mice and spice and soldiers cavorting about (youngsters and preschoolers who are notoriously unpredictable on stage, but huge crowd pleasers with their accidental stepping on each others’ tails and exaggerated helping-of-each-other-up-when-you-fall sort of behavior). If any of you blog readers have a chance to go see this production, please do. And take your children with you. It is a wonderful ballet to introduce young girls and boys to the dance world with.

A fun and extraordinarily distracting day (especially because I was miss-introduced as Tracy early on, and everyone purposefully continued to call me by that name all day). My thanks to the Senator, his staff and his company’s business trips!

Post Script: Notice the jazz hand of The Senator and the "I'm trying to hold my turnout" look on my face. Parking Lot Security was watching us closely (because we looked like professional dancers?).

Release

Dad was released late Monday evening. I like this photo most because we were waiting alone together. About an hour before, Dad had been told that he was getting to go home, this after thinking most of the day that he would be released on Tuesday. Mom had gone ahead to fluff the nest. We knew that he had a couple of hours left in the hospital because he still had that ever-so-helpful IV in his neck (when removed, the patient has to recline for forty-five minutes before rising), and was waiting for the novel that would be his post-surgery instructions and prescriptions. Dad was super happy at this moment. The food tasted pretty good to him and he had real pants on for the first time in five days. I love the Bill Clinton thumbs-up he's giving me.

Unhooked

Good night with Dad last night. Chest-tubes out, catheter out. Some time after dinner, I had Nurse Deb show me how to unhook his oxygen from the wall and hook him to the oxygen on the wheelchair so that we could go for a stroll when he wanted. The set up is like this: oxygen is hooked to the back of the wheelchair, heart pillow is placed in the seat (just in case he needs it), Dad gets behind the wheelchair and pushes it around the hall until he gets tired. I accidentally gave him a bit of a tougher workout last night by forgetting and leaving the wheelchair breaks on. I’m still saying some Our Fathers for that.

I can tell he’s feeling better by the number of times he gets up and the conversations we are having about the news. We are in agreement on the impact of political candidates’ infidelities on their ability to be efficient leaders and whose business those infidelities are (none, and no one except those involved).

Was able to catch a flick last night while sitting with Dad. I had earlier in the day purchased a copy of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang because it was a well-received independent film and it had Robert Downy, Jr. in it (what a glorious actor). Oh man, I can’t believe that I had missed this film (no, I guess I can believe that I missed it, because I’m sure it never had a showing in Gadrock). I highly recommend it to anyone who likes brilliant dialogue and film-noir send-ups. I warn you to stop the film and use the loo about halfway through so that you don’t pee on yourself when you see the accidental finger-chopping-off scene (it’s true, someone’s finger accidentally gets lopped off in the most hilarious way and I am racked with laughter right now just thinking about it). It has what some folks would call gratuitous nudity and lots of cursing (two things of which I’m not personally opposed to), therefore, I will never be able to show it at the library (it is now lumped with some of my other non-library-appropriate favorites like Snatch, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, etc.).

I must ring off now. I’m tired and have to try to get some shut-eye so that I can make it back to the hospital in the AM. Also, I’m having great difficulty concentrating right now. I am currently sitting in my car in the parking lot of the local library, taking advantage of the wi-fi so that I can upload to my blog in a timely fashion. Across the street is a house that is ostentatiously decked out in holiday illumination and is playing the bleeding Carpenter’s Christmas album at a bloody awful volume (those of you who work at the library and the po-lice department know what I’m talking about). Occasionally, the monotony is broken up with Tchiakovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Funny, I used to like that song.