01-Aug-2007
Cherry Picking
I once had a critic accuse me – well, it sounded like an accusation – of writing wonderful sentences and paragraphs at the expense of …I don’t know, something else I guess, perhaps the philosophy of the world or the unique nature of underwear. Taking the accusation, however, as a compliment, I decided to see if I could find a few of those brief, mad instants of wisdom. Herewith are some cherries picked from my works and offered totally out of context. Some are pithy, some are funny, some make me wonder what I might have been smoking when I wrote them.
Jokes
Before going on, though, here is a nice insult: If you had brain surgery, it would have to be done by a proctologist. I said that to my boss one time – joking – but she had no sense of humor. Guess what happened? “The Peapacker Papers”
Labor
Not many jobs rival moving the earth for sheer spirit-draining labor. As a younger man I occasionally dug irrigation ditches, foundations for houses, gardens, pipe chases, and even graves during a short fix as church sexton. All I can say is that the earth likes things the way they are. It looks at your muscles, chuckles a bit, and suggests you go play a game of Scrabble™. “Bib Britches”
Work
I know most of us work all our lives for the prime rib and still end up with a hot dog.
“Sex Tattoos”
Logic
It has often been thought that toy soldiers teach manliness. They do not. They teach logic, often geometry. The deployment of troops (plastic or otherwise) is also similar to flower arranging, perhaps painting: there is art in combat – discovery, elucidation, enlightenment. Feng shui makes sense in the placement of land mines; it is not relevant to the cluster bomb. Holding logic and art in one hand, though, is like trying to squash a slug with your fingers. “The Peapacker Papers”
Sex
I loved algebra, English, and every science; grasped quadratics, iambics, and Latin along with every dick and set of car keys not brusquely claimed. There are teachers today who remember fucking me in high school and I’m sure it worries them. My own thought is that surely they have improved over time. The Erotic Memoirs of Mrs. DamnJack Pelletier
Sobriety
…he now maintained the kind of sobriety that makes boozers fond of calendars. “Jack Applejack’s Holy Turn”
Hygiene
Mary Lou looked into the medicine cabinet for her husband Carl’s shaving cream so that she could shave her legs. She’d given herself a pedicure, buffed her feet with the pumice stone, and painted her toenails, so she decided that as long as she was doing all that work she might as well do her legs and give herself that all-over feminine feeling. Inside the medicine cabinet she found Carl’s head, his eyes open, a certain disappointed glaze to them. “Fate”
Morality
Just east of here, in a small trailer by the river, lived a woman who had five children – all girls – by five different men. None of the men had chosen to live with the woman because she had five children with five fathers and was thought to be morally questionable. “Leaves”
Sex – 2
Go out, then, to a rest stop on an interstate highway at two in the morning. Take the two of you stealthily into a restroom, into a stall. Take rags and a cleaning spray with you and clean the ghosts and the slime and the body pickings of strangers out of the stall and recelebrate your union. You will not be the first to do this. It is not clear that anyone is the first to do anything anymore. The Erotic Memoirs of Mrs. DamnJack Pelletier
Merchants
Nehemiah Stubbs, Hally Steinway, and Alexander Wilson were all merchants. Their stores were on Main Street and, with the economy having about as much sparkle to it as mud on a mirror, they often spent whole days without seeing a single customer. Someone once said that the last time Main Street sparkled was when a horse peed on it. “Ice Cream Ladies”
Teachers
Mr. Boundas was a big man with a great belly and a voice that seemed to rumble through every inch of that belly before booming out in a virtual salute to language. His words performed like hammers and scalpels as he gave his students what he called the gift of grammar and the miracle of insight; as he gave them – more than anything – permission to speak, as though speaking were one of the many wonders of the world. “Making Love”
Pigs
What made Mrs. Higgins special, though, was a certain sense of territory, an almost human imperative to lay claim to certain points in space and time. Bear in mind, however, that no one ever mistook Mrs. Higgins for a human, especially Mrs. Higgins. If it has ever been good to be a pig, the secret of that goodness had been given to Mrs. Higgins, and Mrs. Higgins did not tell her secrets. “Mrs. Higgins”
Tall
Sometimes they thought him short on learning because he was tall, and it is often easy to think that tall people neither need nor have anything other than height. Tall men and women often become corporate heads by being tall, even though they might be about as smart as a gherkin. This is why very few corporate heads are ever seen in public. “Jim’s Award”
Creativity
Creative souls … are as perishable as an egg in a glass of beer. “A Monday Afternoon With Trixie J. Donnelly”
