AT THE CROSSING

AT THE CROSSING oil pastel on construction paper 12 x 18

can you speak English?

Mr. Chairman Miao asks Mr. Stinker

a cat talk: DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?

2 golds, 2 silvers, and 1 bronze

https://picasaweb.google.com/xdoggyster/20110604?feat=directlink

2011-06-04

I competed in the senior game in Sonoma country in the age group of 56 to 59. I am 59 this year. I entered 5 events and got 2 golds, 2 silvers, and 1 bronze. No bad.

oak meadow

oak meadow oil pastel 14 x 17

an eulogy: at a private funeral

Eulogy at A Private Funeral

“Dear Charles, who is regretfully remembered as a sinner , a happy one though, had passed away on March 8th, 2011, the international women’s day, an occasion he predicted of his death, because of his abusive ways to his previous wives. He died at age 87, the oldest bank robber in American history, survived only by his victims of such crime. He had remained an incorrigible criminal all his life but never got caught, which is the only reason why that he was able to carry his enterprise to the end of his life. He had been successful for more than 20 well-spaced bank robberies over life time, the last one being the most easy. He just walked into the Bank of America, wearing sun glasses and with a walking cane that had a short shot gun incorporated to it. His tall fragile frame lent misleading charm to the bank clerks, and they looked at him with amazement while he calmly demanded all the cash from the registration girl. With great joy of almost getting away with a few thousand dollars in cash, he stepped out of the bank into sunshine. The heat outside stirred up his joyful heart to a faster and faster beat which pumped large volume of air and blood into his brain and back to his expanding heart. He fell to the paved side walk before the police got hold of his arms. His nose was bleeding while his heart stopped beating. It was not a peaceful passage into heaven, given the circumstance, and his bag of cash fell into the police hand as the smoking gun. He deceased before he was able to get into his own get-away car. He was not charged with the crime, pardoned by the governor as having senior delusion, and as an effort to reduce the legal cost. Dear Charlie refused to leave us no legacy and his unrepentant way of life marked him out as the most consistent example of original sin. His greed had been a result of personal failure and societal neglect, and to which all his friends feel the burden of pity. Even he left without the chance of returning the money to the victimized bank himself, the bank had showed profound grace not to sue him, since all the money was returned to the bank by the police. Of this, all the indignation felt by the suffering people through association are now ebbing away. We have come to say, you, dear Charlie, are forgiven and you remain forever in our prayers that in heaven, your chances to resort to the same behavior is next to zero since there are no banks in heaven. All you miserable wives are there, and all your three sons, who had received their blessings before electrocuted are there to meet you. You are the last one to come to the merciful fold of our beloved Father and his son Jesus, to join your deceased members. As the sole recognized hero of a unpunished bank robbery, you will remain a mythical icon for the many people after you and your mug shot the most treasured image in our heart of the oldest grandpa bandit of our time. In your death, you have cheated fate and outsmarted the police and our well-designed legal system and prison practice. May your spirit hover high in heaven and never to return to earth. Amen.

fantasy : a rap

Fantasy

I am No. 1
Under the sun,
Wherever I go,
I am having fun.
Kiss the nuns
Spank her buns
I shook her up
With my gun.
I went to the bank
I pull out my gun
I shouted loud
Bang Bang Bang.
The police are coming,
I start to run
They shut up the door,
I am on the floor.
I can’t reload
My pants are torn
Indecent exposure
They hold their fire
The chase is over
No one is hurt
Money is nothing
I am no money man
I am not so Kosher
That is not so bad
I am just a loafer
Darker in the sun
The police left
I am still No. one
The magic word is
I can, can, can.

A Thought

A Thought


Here，
I stand，
A big coma
Between two short words;
Their capital letters
Being erased,
By last century’s advertising:
Existence, Existentialism

后庭宴 无题

I publish my hobby--writing Chinese poems in Song style (a style popular in the years between 960 AC and 1279 AC before the Mongols overran us.) in case any Chinese reading friend comes along.



后庭宴

无题

千部旧经，
半箱残稿。
雨声催得梅花早。
淡香轻扫粉红衣，
一生相痴一时俏。

飘零柳絮满庭，
山远水长云渺。
月升星小。
又梦相思草。
树影浅如烟，
花落长安道。

无题

甘草子

无题

山远。
野风无迹。
草浅轻轻卷。
纸上春愁短。
歌里相思晚。

白发镜中笑容懒。
只昨日，青丝曾挽。
不叹流年任急缓。
道鸟鸣婉转。

Buddhist Monk Jumps The Wall (佛跳墙）

Introduce a Chinese Vegetarian Dish

Buddhist Monk Jumps The Wall (佛跳墙）
( a vegetarian dish that lures the most disciplined )

Next door to a brothel
A Buddhist temple closes its doors
Separated by the mud wall
Monks read on their straw pads
Flower girls ready for the night

Under the bamboo shadow
When the moon is low
A pot of vegetables
Smell better than the meat stew
Tofu cuts and bamboo shots
Mushroom pieces and water chestnuts

A stew is slowly cooking
Over a fire attended by the girls
The smell flows wide and low
Wakes up the clean-shaven monk
Who is numb on the toe.

The flower girls set the table
Temptation lies beyond the wall
A dish of earthly lure
A dish to the heavenly poor

The monk gets up from his station
Sucking in his tongue
As light as a hungry cat
He jumps up the wall
All his years of self enlightening
Came undone in just one blinking

Should the monk jumps the wall
Should the monk attempts the fall
Should flower girls welcome him
Should the monk tastes the earthly lure.


The dish is a forbidden delight
The fall is a forbidden plight
Buddhist monk takes the fall
Buddhist monk jumps the wall.

Buddhist monk jumps the wall
For a dish of the earthly lure
Buddhist monk jumps the wall
For a dish to the heavenly poor.

Poetry Reading

#Poetry Reading

Mr. Poetito came to “Connected” for Poetry Reading every Monday. Connected was a place for people with mental issues to self help themselves. He came with a bottle of clear water in hand, and told Lulu, a Chinese middle-aged woman, something about his water drinking history while waiting for others to convene.
“In my family, half of us love spaghetti, half of us love sour dough.” he took a sip from his bottle. “In food, our family has the best combination of the Italian with the French, but in everything else, the difference is as big as that between spaghetti and sourdough，” he elaborated for Lulu. Amazingly to Lulu, Mr. Poetito grew up having never had coffee. To Lulu, both his family background smelt strong coffee, his family name sounded too close to coffee--Kofferman, and he has been able to abstain from drinking it, just think of It?! This was something deserving investigation, Lulu thought to herself. Now Mr.Poetito was 64 years old. The whole world was moving in ten days into the 21 century and he had never tasted coffee in the 20th century. Wasn’t that a regret of the century? No. Mr. Poetito was positively negative on this issue. Mr. Poetito told his latest admirer, that Chinese fair lady that the reason why he had abstained from coffee was that coffee cost too much. Besides, coffee as a beverage to the Europeans was not introduced into Europe until the 18 century. People don’t have to have coffee as a drink. The Chinese, the Japanese, the early British all drink tea, and babies all drink milk. But if you start drinking coffee, you will be hooked to it, and you can’t stop it. And think of it, at least two cups of it, for say, 50 years, how much money that would add up to. So he never started. Fair Lady wondered how he was able not to have coffee in a family with a last name as Kofferman.
He said, “Kofferman does not mean man of coffee. It is a German name, a Jewish German brand.”
“What about tea?” the fair lady asked him.
“ No, never either, never, for all the tea in China.”
“What do you drink?”
“ Me? bottled water, bottled water, at present, it costs $3.75 for a case of 24 bottles. If you get it at the Hot Dog Stand run by that Jewish guy Ralph，it would cost you 1 dollar a bottle. But think of 24 bottles at $3.75 a case plus taxes. The government will soon charge us taxes for drinking water and toilet paper. That is the price you pay for wiping your “Pope’s Nose.” Mr. Poetito was indignant.
“ Taxes, how I hate the very single word of it, not to say the plurals. We are a government of taxes and sexes. You watch my words. Why are you here, by the way, Ms. Fair Lady?”
“ I really don’t know. I thought I would like to hear the English spoken by the Americans and to learn how the English language has evoluted.”
Such was the afternoon tea conversation in a small reading room at the “Connected“-- a self-help center for the mentally disabled. The term is now being universally toned as “diversely challenged” or “culturally disadvantaged”, or “spiritually diversifiablely yoked.” Whatever the names or terms one is thrown at, the encounter of minds, sane or less sane, is what conversation is all about. For the last 6 weeks, the Poetry Reading group is neither attracting nor losing participants. The three persons dedicated enough to be there never missed one reading. Every Monday at 12:30 noon, the reading started with Mr. Poetito played a little mystical tune on the piano. The only difference now was that Fair Lady had brought snacks and when asked to spare 50 cents, she eagerly went through her purse to find 10 pieces of “Mr. Lewis & Clark”. People, now 4 of them, never introduced their names. It seemed that people knew each other. Here, everybody used “You, please” as a common request, and turned heads to the person intended. Mr. Poetito wanted to read to the group members the greatest one liner he judged to be, and he wished to read it the way the old English sounded in the 1400 during Chaucer’s time, when the old man told “amusing dirty stories in Irish accent”, according to Mr. Poetito.
“I can’t read it like this, I need to write the line down and read it aloud.” So he took a piece of paper from his bosom pocket, which had a few small stacks of paper slips separated by different color of pencils. The pocket budged out and balanced back by long sharp pointed pencils. He wrote with great effort that he had to shut out his eyes with each stroke, as if the very alphabet was too old to be dragged out of history. Lady Another and Gentleman Another looked intensely at him, with eyes narrowed in case the old spirits conjured out of the page blew fires. Eventually, and verily, Mr. Poetito finished and holding the slip of paper high against the ceiling light, he first cleared his throat by bellowing his empty tummy and then with his one hand in the air, he blinked his eyes towards the sky and shouted,
“Out of your grave, I will not save.”
“Explosive, explosive, impressively explosive,” Mr. Gentleman Another hammered one of his hand in a tight fist into the palm of another hand, “very Irish indeed, very Irish.” Would you read it again for me, I don’t think I quite get it.” Ms Oriental Fair Lady demanded with excitement, her face turned red, but hard to say from what: the embarrassment of not being able to get it, or the awareness of being impressed.
“Oh Yeah? you want to hear the greatest one liner again? In a sound 400 years older?”
“Oh, yeah, but how you know how it sounds like 400 years ago?” Lady Another asked.
“I don’t wish to burden you with the how’s. People spend all their life tracing the development of accents localitalically authentic. You don’t want to know, verily, you don’t.”
“Oh yeah! But I do, I want to know and I really, truly, sincerely want to know.”
“Oh yeah? You simply don’t know what to want , be careful what you want. We on the other hand, have no time. We are living on borrowed minutes and we are already 14 minutes into our countdowns. Let’s forget how and let me read you the greatest one liner that sounds 400 years old.” Mr. Poetito wagged his head from left to right and from right to left. He read it aloud again and waving his hands. Fair Lady still could not get it, and she would not rest the issue.
“Would you enact it in present local English, so I can appreciate the glorious splendor of the line?” Ms. Oriental Fair lady insisted.
“You are tough, you are truly a poem lover, I can see. Well, it runs like this in local English. In the grave, I will not save.”
Fair Lady followed his sound and exclaimed that she know the difference now. “If you replace the vowel of “ei” with “aa” then it sounds like the ancient English, which sounds like the Irish English. For instance if I wish to say Oh the great red flame of fame, I will just shout like this-- oh the great, read flaam of faam? Do I sound like Chaucer??”
“Blerrdy, blerrdy red,” Gentleman Another exclaimed and stomped his feet.
“That is some serious local accent to get used to if I am to understand that ancient Irishy English. I am here only 10 years and trying to investigate how the American speaking English, and the English Americans are speaking is totally different after more than two hundred years of independence from the British. Like in Chinese. We can understand Cantonese, and that is the oldest Chinese, got 9 different tones, instead of the 4 tones in Mandarin Chinese.”
“Well, deep, verily deep. We don’t want to get into that. We are the living local English, county wise and state wise, and coast wise.” Mr. Another commented.
“Do you mean to say colloquial English?” Fair Lady asked with a lot respect to linguistic sensitivities.
“Well, a sort of, being local is being colloquial. without the local, how can you have the average, daily, uniquely distinguished flavor of an English from the British ?
“Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.” Fair Lady nodded. “May I read one of my own poem? It is a limerick. I really don’t know the rules of limerick, but I just found one little book of limericks, so I copycat the formula and here I have a retake of the limerick; would you like to listen to it?”
“We would appreciate it if you read us your piece.”
“Ok, ready, here comes my Irish limerick, though I could not replace all the ei’s with aa’s unless I write them down. But I don’t wish to sound 400 years old. I will just read it in local accent and here is my HotDog Praise:

“A little background information first. I used to sell hotdogs at the corner of 4th street, and one day a guy came and he produced a 50 dollar bill and asked me for “Hebrew National”. I understand the “national” and looked at the 50 dollar bill, and somehow I thought he wanted to donate the money to the Hebrew cause. So I just asked if Hebrew National is some kind of Jewish political Party. He said no. It is a brand name for a hotdog.”
“Oh, Oh, my God, if only I have money I would buy Hebrew National, they are the best, they are so good. Oh I wish I had the money.” Mr. Poetito rubbed his hands very fast and intensively as if he tried to start a fire between his palms.
“I will buy you a Hebrew National after this reading,” Fair Lady said, “all rise, and attention please, here comes the Hebrew National, the Praise of the Hotdog.”
Everybody withdrew their breath for a second and she started to read her limerick in her legal alien’s English:
Hebrew National, dogs at their best,
Blessed before processed.
Baptized before dressed,
In red and yellow, ketchup, mustard, oninion and tomato,
Kotcher style butcher,
The oppressed, not depressed, is delighted, .
“Bravo, Halleluiah, Jesus Christ, Holy Mary. Shot, darn it, smashing,” the two gentlemen were wild with appreciation and kept their emotion freely expressed for a long minute.
“The oppressed, not depressed, is delighted, , is the killer line, a winner punch.” Mr. Poetito blinked his eyes faster and faster, as if the onion smell was sipping out of the hotdog buns.
“Baptized before dressed, just right to the stomach, a good splash, dropping a Franklin in a boiling water tank. But I am not against Baptism and I am Jewish myself.” Gentleman Another commented, at the same time helping himself to some of the cookies Fair Lady brought to entertain the group.
“Science did some study to approve that after certain age of using one language, your brain is wired in such a way that switching to another language is almost impossible. You say you are here only 10 years?”
“In September, yes.”
“Well, beat me. You are certainly pushing our language very far. Who teaches you, you got a tutor?”
“Carl Marx,” said Fair Lady.
“Carl Marx, that German Jewish who wrote the Capital?”
“Yes, you are right.”
“He did? oh yeah, he certainly did a good job to liberate you from the shackles of proper English. You write with heavy accents of Chinglish.”
“Oh, yeah, you are absolutely right.”
“Oppressed but not depressed. That sounds exactly like the mental well being of the hotdog consumers who are snatching a quick bite from a corner hotdog vendor and put on a satisfied smile on his face and put his tie straight and walk full stomached back to his clerical duties. A good slice of hotdog, very tasty, very amusing. Walhalla.” Mr. Poetito raised his legs and kicked his heels and again robbed both his hands very intensively and delightfully.
Gentleman Another looked at the clock and reminded the group that only two minutes were left.
“Maybe another limerick for a teaser to end today’s very entertaining poetry reading?” Ms. Oriental requested. Mr. Poetito turned his head to Fair Lady and smiled his childish smile. Oh yah! Another one, here you go。
Ms. Fair Lady cleared her throat:
Johnny’s Mom loves limerick lyrics,
She always cracks up at the end kicks,
Johnny’s dad sings blues and grass,
He’s the best guitar picker,
But Johnny has the biggest baby pecker.
Mr. Poetito’s jaw fell and he paused in his breath and then burst out laughing.
“Hai Hai Hai, a good stretch of the form and smell real Irish. What are you? Any Irish connection?”
“No. Pure Oriental, a bit of Huns, if you insist. I have curly hair. My teacher Carl Marx said one has to totally forget his own mother tongue so he can learn another one. And he has to use the second language the way he uses his money. If he does not use his money it is paper. Unless he speaks the language, it is not his language. That’s how I speak the American English.”

“Good, good, jig your butt, jig butt, jigbutt, jitbug jitbug.
Mississippi one, Mississippi two, mississippi three Mississippi four, Lord I am five hundred miles away from home.” suddenly, the door swung open and a girlish woman came in, while rapping. Her pants were below her dorm of belly flop and her hair up shooting in two pigtails on top of her head. She was very welcome before the 20 seconds left of the reading. But she insisted that since no other events scheduled, the group might continue for another 15 minutes until they were ousted by other interest group.
“Yes, oh, yeah, let’s do it, let’s have another Brockovsky.” Gentleman Another was excited and he reached out for his thick red covered Brockovsky. He was a dead hard admirer of Mr. Bro, “admired him to death,” as he said. He enjoyed Mr. Bro’s “serious shit-- very vocally expressed holy shit of a poem. His poetic output smells adult stinkiness, fermented by drug, alcohol, cigarette, and whore…”
Fair Lady looked at Gentleman Another with jaw jarred, and eyes bugging out. She could not quite understand why and how Gentleman Another could keep his own skin so cleanly pale and agelessly soft. He looked like a baby fed on formula bottles, nothing of the food of vice has ever contaminated his look.
“May his soul just as cleansed as his face. By reading the dark poems of the great crusaders against the mainstream culture, he may purge his own dark shadow into the winds.” Fair lady murmured.
As new enthusiastic advocate of the poetry reading, Ms. Jitterbug Another, slammed her hands on Mr. Poetito’s lap. As if he was being executed by electro emotion, he jerked his legs and said with great self control,
“No touching Missy. No touching Missy.”
“I am sorry, I am terribly sorry Sir, I didn’t mean to. I don’t like to touch people, they give me lice in the hair. Well, I’d better keep my distance but this is a poetry slam, itsn’t it, your poetry is slamming good and I just could’t help to slam your lines. No offence.”
Mr. Poetito opened his eyes and focused them onto Missy Whatwhoever, “I have got no lice.”
“Yes, no lice, no lice, only fried rice, Jesus Christ, cheese and rice, serve you right. They kind of rhyme…”
Fair lady shouted and put her hands together in a Buddhist greeting. “Serve you rice, serve you rice, your highness.”
The clock struck 1.45pm and everybody looked at the clock hands, the long one first and then the short one after that and sat themselves straight and ready.
Gentleman Another declared that the poetry reading was over and the group was being very self-motivating.
Mr. Poetito was putting all the poetry collections into his brown paper bag. Fair lady offered to give him a kaphf cloth bag with red lettering “ French Kiss” printed slant on the side.
He looked at it and said it looked too expensive and seductive for his contents in the bag to escape theft. “ My brown paper bag is a virtue by choice, the poorer you look the safer your property. Of course no one can steal my idea in my mind. No, that’s not quite true anymore, I mean. Only I keep my ideas inside my mind and never leak them out, then it is safe. Otherwise, stealing from the brain is a very rampant crime not punishable in most of the cases. Someone will say Einstein hit the formula of relativity at the same time that his girl friend hit it too. Who will be able to make out who stole from whom? Be careful of the people who wish to get rich by stealing from others. Poetry is very easily accessible to theft.
“Thanks for the instructional comment, Mr. Poetito.”
“By the way, Marquisette of French said that the Chinese women are terrifically prolific, is that so?” asked Mr. Poetito.
“Yes, child bearing and poetry writing are the result of leisure for women in ancient China. I myself believe that’s what that is meant.”
“I did not know Chinese woman wrote poems beside having more babies than women in the previous Roman empire?” Mr. Poetito kept his inquiry going.
“Shame on you, you told me you started to read Encyclopedia of Britannica when you were 10 years old and you haven’t come to the topic of woman poets in ancient China?” Fair Lady retorted.
“which volume?”
“I don’t know. I don’t read E.B. I only read Mark Twain. and Bernard Shaw.”
“Well. I have been reading books in Berkley library 14 hours a day and I am too tied to remember anything at all now. But don’t assume I did not remember. It will pop up when the spark of enlightenment hit the fuse and re-connect the circus of thoughts. So Long.”
“Wait, Mr. Poetito, won’t you go with me next time to get some hotdog? Here is a few singles, take to get you some bottled water in the Grocery Outlet, they sell 24 bottles at 3.75 a case”.
Mr. Poetito took the 5 dollar bill from Fair Lady and did not even say thank you.
Fairlady waited and no thanks forthcoming. So she packed up her poetry book and left with a last evil look at Mr. Poetito and left without saying Goodbye to any one.

WAKE UP THE KING

Wake Up The King

Phil, the 57 year Vietnam veteran, has found a bed in the Paradise on Brookside. It is a shelter for the homeless run by the Catholic Charities. Even homeless, he still looks kingly, with his double color wavy hair parted in the middle and brushy eye brows almost knitted together. He has lost his shape of the teeth. Not the teeth, but the shape of them. All the teeth are ground down to leave only chiseled points and broken. They look like wolf teeth, if anyone imagines what the teeth of the wolf would be. His thin lips are protruding at the world as if regarding the daylight with disapproval. He has long and hawked nose, deep set eyes. When he looks at you, he narrows his eyes, parts his legs real wide, and raises his eye brows up and down at the same time, right, then left, right, then left. His eyes hide below his eye brows and leave a very serious impression that he is giving you his kingly regard. He speaks with a slur sometimes. Not that he stutters. He is chewing tobacco most of the time and he smiles a big chewing smile, and his chewing sometimes makes his speech less fluent and precise. He is fondly given the name “Ghetto King Phil”, to which he enjoys very much and behaves more and more in that effect. He starts to wear robe. It is not the dragon robe for the Heavenly Son of the lost Chinese Royals, nor the robe for the Kings of England or France of remote past. It is a bath robe. But it is apricot yellow, which is the royal yellow reserved for the Emperor in China before 1900. He wears his hair long over the ears, and styles his hair a bluish grey with streaks of yellow which blend strikingly with the rest of the head. He wears big rings on his fingers, big stones and diamonds inherited from his Highness mom. He is however, a king in the reform, and in the “retreat”. He is off drug for a successful three months, although his tobacco chewing habit is more established than before. Ghetto King Phil is very attentive to the world affairs and works till small hours in the morning, listening to the most democratic or less republican talk shows to stay on top of the international affairs. He has some leisure activities: watching video while eating popcorn in the TV room till lights off is one of them. He plays bass guitar too, very professionally, and attends AA meetings on many of the weekday nights. He collects many useful items such as boots and jeans, women sweaters and slippers, and generously gives them away. He rules his bed and the cases under his bed and his closet in a very sovereign, yet chaotic manner. He just let things pile up and then transfer them to the table and start to sort them out, and put them in small piles and sit for long moments pondering how and why he has so much things to rule. For all the things he has had, he one day discovers that he does not have an alarm clock. He never needs one because the shelter overseer keeps the most punctual time for the sake of the running of the place. 6.30am, the lights will be turned on, and by 10.30pm, after 3 warning off-on, off-on, and off-ons, the lights are off and within two minutes, snoring at a very large scale is heard all over the world and King Phil is drowned in his talk shows. However he has got a job and he has to wake up and get up early, no late than 6.30. Think of it, the King has to work. That kindly disgrace of the proletarian ethics.
It should not be a problem if he wakes up by 6.30 am, when the lights are turned on. But the King can’t, just as everyone else does, wake up, by the noise those lights generate. He stays in his sleep longer than the lights and if left on himself, he would never wake up until 1 pm in the afternoon. He has issued an order that he be waken up by 6.30 to the most alert resident of the Paradise, Miss Altera. She did not, however, think it necessary to carry out the decreed, since by 6.30, she assumes that the King is awake. So the King explains to her that he can’t be waken by lights. He must be awaken by her. To this order, Miss Alerta ignores. A Ghetto King has no real authority to demand her service. Ghetto King got himself an alarm clock and sat it at 6.am, to give him a 30 minutes allowance to become awaken.
For two mornings, his alarm set off as it is set and off it goes, off and off and on and on and on till about 80 measures, each measure lasts two seconds. It sounds as dou- dou- and douddoudou, doudoudou. with each measure its temper goes faster and more urgent and more demanding. It does not sound as loud as the fire alarm, nor as loud as the siren. But when the Hall is still cozy under graying darkness, the alarm sounds exactly like an alarm. It is jarring , demanding, unquieting, and alarming. It seems going on and on, and any moment it’s supposed to stop, it does not. It is supposed to alarm the King up to his sense and he will turn it off, but he is not being disturbed at all. It is a bizarre situation only to be encountered in Paradise at Brookside. For one thing, the good residents are holding their breathe under the daily conditioning of self discipline. On the other hands, out of the daily exhaustion of roaming homeless, foodless, jobless, or of being fully engaged in job-hunting, house-hunting, and food-collecting, net-working, emotional taxing, no one is yet, after a full 3 minutes of being alarmed, having any initiatives to interfere.
The shelter is dark and silent, but by no means quiet. Compared to the night tranquility thickened by different levels of intensity of snoring, the big communal living room for all the residents are heavy with disturbance. From the four corners of the building, agitation is felt, beds squeezing, bodies flipping, and then a baby’s cry is heard. It is from the two months old baby Matthew. He is the only one who is not going to hold his breathe. He is disturbed and he protests from his crib behind the closed doors of the individual dorms for the families with kids.
Two male residents raise themselves up while the alarm was in full blast. They are not, however, paying any attention. They rise from their bed to go to the rest room before rushing outdoors for their first drag of the day. The overseer of the shelter is a new recruit of one day experience. He does not know quite what to do. He just graciously waits and waits hoping any minute the alarm would wake up the King and be turned off. He seems to be thinking of whether intervention is necessary When he does nothing to interfere, other residents are not making moves, behaving like English, just wait and wait, gentlemen walk, they never run. Eventually, Navaho, one of the residents throws her blanket away and sits up on her upper bunk bed. She waits and waits, thinking any minute the King might wake up and turn that damned clock off. But nothing happens except the annoying alarm , steadily and urgently sounds its alarm. Hope is higher and higher with each measure of alarm piecing the surprised unrest. “That damned thing must be made in Japan. “ Navaho thinks. “Made in China” would have stopped at 40 measures and only the Japanese doing a hard job to keep their competitiveness longer
After another 10 measure of alarms, Ghetto King’s snore rise above the alarm. It sounds fuller and fuller, more glorious and thundering, more intimidating and unchecked by any human decency and gracious tolerance. This is too much. The alarm is becoming a crime of public offense that unnecessarily disturbs the residents. Navaho could not hold herself up any more, she looks up and down, trys to get hold of her stuffed animals. She has placed them too far to reach, so she has to pick up her pillows and throws it at the Ghetto King. But it produces no effect. At this moment, Sam, the Ethiopian prince, in a position of prime minister on a chess board, is eventually aroused into erecting himself out of his bed and put his big palm on the throat of the King and chocks the King into gasping and therefore into opening his eyes and mouth at the same time.
This trick works and the Ghetto King jerks himself into the fear of a murder or in the good consciousness of pacifying the deeply disturbed sleeping public, putting his guitar bass plugging fingers over the Damned made-in-Japan and grubbing or another 5 second to find where the off switch is. At this moment, the whole house woke up and suddenly there was a deadly silence without any sound, either from the alarm, or from the residents. The Ghetto King is resurrected from his bed and he stands on his bare feet. As if in wakefulness, he slips his feet into a pair of kitty head slippers and flips and flops to the man’s room, the slipper mows and mows like kitty while he walks in them.
The next night, or rather the following morning of the next night, the same thing happen again. The Ghetto King’s impotence of hearing is widely publicized now and he got 4 stuffed monkeys thrown at him and two more landed on the neighboring bed where German Scholar sleeps. James, President of the Man’s room, goes right up to the King’s bed, ready to straggle him up into standing up. Before he is able to enclose his hands on the King, the house overseer Mr. B.B stops him and goes ahead himself to place the alarm clock close at the King’s ear. To his despair, the King’s ears are plugged and being blasted by the radio that is broadcasting the morning news. Under such heavy volume of noise, the King is still snoring. Mr. B.B. shakes the King into wakefulness and makes the declaration of attention that the alarm clock not to be used to awake everyone else but its owner, and the King be responsible for his own alarm management. By then, the whole house is wild awake. The lights are on and the residents are on their beds watching the King being dragged out of his double layer comforter of feather by one dignified female resident who threatens to kill the King if he keeps turning an deaf ear to the noise the alarm clock make. Novaro demands that the King returns the stuffed animals she throws at him. Ghetto King good humouredly throws them back at her as if she is the wide receiver from the 49ers. She reckons him to come over and asks him why he needs an alarm clock, since he doesn’t need to get up before the lights of the house turned on .”The King does not wake up by himself, nor by the alarm clock. but alarm clock is the only way to get me up by waking someone else to wake me up.” he explains without any embarrassment.

still life--oil pastel painting

my life stands still at tea time.
A quiet conversations

SAVE FACES

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WHEN COMMON SENSE FAILS， RULES RULE

WHEN COMMON SENSE FAILS， RULES RULE

Mr. Doolittle has been experimenting with the policy “when common sense fails, rules rule” for the last two months and it seemed to have worked very effectively. His conviction of the policy came from his own firsthand experience in a homeless shelter. The site manager of a homeless shelter in God’s county for 8 years，Mr. Doolittle has operated under the guidance of a church charity which has proudly encouraged all its followers to get involved in organized benevolence.
Mr. Doolittle is trying to gain more insights into human nature while implementing creative ways of governing, which in the shelter, is modestly job-described as overseeing. He believes that salvation should come from a higher consciousness of being than as the result of the lust to rule, or even worse, punish. The lust to rule, to him, is a lower form of social reality, a reality tragically grown out of necessity to impose. Like a car, you need the wheels as well as the brake to move without being killed. His practice ensures that people get plenty of leg room to find out common sense is the brake, and self-governing is the best way to survival in a communal situation, most of the time rather packed.
Most people live in homes, families of spouses and children, in their houses, or apartments. No matter where you live, there are set of rules openly or secretly negotiated back and forth between or among the members sharing that space. In the instance of his own family, he believed that his Mom had more common sense, but his Dad ruled because he was the one who brought home the bacon. But Mom’s governing style has distilled into him a sense of common sense and because of a natural alliance of mother and son relationship, he unconsciously followed his Mom’s vision to navigate through life.
Mr. Doolittle is recently promoted to the senior staff statue-the-coordinating supervisor. Now with all the other site managers under him, he is happily sandwiched between the boss and old pals. He stations himself professionally in an office, where high shelves are fully stocked with used but clean blankets, sheets, towels donated by the Holiday Inn, and food from the food bank. The office used to be a two-car garage and this is where he has contemplated human behaviors and preached his private gospel of God’s grace: “God cannot give us any other help than self-help.” He loves this little quotation by Thoreau--the woods poet. He draws a lot of poetic inspiration from him while alone in the office. There are two kinds books he reads, the little book by Thoreau on Man and Nature and all the volumes of Preys serials by James Pergerson, a good combination of insights in his boss’s eyes.
Thoreau’s poetic simplicity in living in and with nature and Prey’s confessional revelation of predator’s nature keep his mind well balanced. He was drinking his tea when one client knocked emotionally on the door, complaining that the other site manager was giving her a hard time concerning the issue of cleaning the bath room. She got a write-up for not fully completing her chore and it greatly upset her.
“Yes, dear, what’s the matter?” Mr. Doolittle very cordially leaned his head towards the lady to lend her his big, car door ear. He would have an earful of blabla and blabla. He knew that from his experience. And he did develop a good habit to listen with great attention, and polished grace. He had been helping the running of people‘s lives. To him, this is of great importance. In fact, he did not get much of his own to run. He did not have a wife, did not have children, and had no romance at this moment. But he has been spiritually heavily yoked to a mission to serve the poor and the needy and this has been a solid anchor in the stormy water of life.
“Yes, my dear?” he asked again. His very cozy, family oriented attitude took that lady by surprise. She had a conviction that the other site manager was pushing her around, and she got to find some justice.
“Fanny, Ms. Fanny, what’s the matter, my dear?”
“Oh, the bath room, the toil, the stool, and TP in the trash can, oh, …”
“What about it?”
“So dirty and soiled. I am not going to do the dirty job. Why me, people have to clean after themselves. And they haven’t learned to flush the toil yet after they’ve done their jobs. ”
“Yeah, yeah, people are people. We know those people. They take this place as their home and they do the same thing as if they were still in their own houses.”
“No, I don’t think that’s what they think. They wouldn’t do this in their own houses. It is only because they know there is a chore list, and I just happen to be the one to clean the shit. You need to go in and see for yourself who did it. I am not going to do the dirty work. I am not…”
This has been the routine, the number one issue in family shelter. With at least three families sharing a house, some issues bound to come up. Cooking time, loud TV at night, showers either too early about 4 o’clock in the morning, or too late when a line formed outside the bathroom for the morning urges, baby running out of room in winter with nothing on but diapers, smoky stinky socks that knocked people off, and the number one issue, always, the number one issue, who took the Toilet trash out.
“Ms. Fanny, calm down, my dear, would you? Yes, that’s it, calm down. What about I do it , and would that make you happier for the day ?”
Ms. Fanny stood there with her eyes blinking. Her tears were on the verge of dropping. She was not quite sure to wipe them or to let them fall. They were so lovely, they were real tears, tear of sorrow and tears of joy. Mr. Doolittle always thought woman’s tears had the effect of sun on snow. It could melt a hard boiled soul in seconds. Someone like Mr. Doolittle always retained a soft spot for tears, especially female‘s tears. That spot reacts easily to the clouds that carry rain drops.
Ms Fanny became a little bashful. But what else could she do but stuck to her guns that she was not going to clean other people’s shit? She felt a bit too tight in her chest, a squeeze between her conscience and her expensive up-brining. She told everybody she had been a very expensive lady before and led a very expensive life, and used to have three household maids to clean and cook when she lived in Lisbon. But she gave up everything to marry an American, and he dumped her afterwards. She looked at Mr. Doolittle with lamentable eyes and said in a little girlish voice that she appreciated the concerns that Mr. Doolittle showed her towards the issue and she would do her job next time if he could warn other resident to flush the toilet after they had performed their bodily functions.
It was Monday evening. The compulsory house meeting was in process. All the single male residents , or clients as they came to be called, in other two houses, filed one after another into A house, a house three families were sharing. All the chairs were laid out, they were taken quietly. Everyone sniffed off their cigarette butts while having hot coffee in the cups in their hands. Not much conversation was going on. There were female residents and two babies. Men’s rowdiness seemed automatically balanced off towards polite indifference, or rather, intended inattention.
Mr. Doolittle was chairing the meeting. He coughed a dry cough and started “Have we any new comers today?” He cast his eyes to the left and to the right. Two hands raised. “Welcome, welcome to our shelter, you all know the routines, routines , this’s where we begin, let’s introduce ourselves to our fellow travelers, folks.” A light-hearted running down of names by their owners went clock-wise and people were really polite and affirmative in their voice.
“The same thing, as always, the old residents will tell you, our new comers, that we face the same old issues, always the same thing, the shower leaks, toilets flooded, no toilet paper , table manners, cooking privileges, the same things that go in any extended family. We are the big family, one family, of course, female residents and their babies, diapers and tampons. No baby dirty diapers in the trash can in the kitchen. How many times we have stressed that? For God’s sake, put the dirty diaper in a plastic bag and dump it immediately outside in the big trash can. Also, do I have to remind you again that you need to take shower everyday and use de-odorant for your BO’s? We got nine or ten big fully bodied guys in one house, there bound to be overdose of male odors. This is America, and we Americans are used to taking care of our hygiene seriously. Is that so, Ms China, you tell us since you are from a country with a long history and packed with millions and millions of people.” “Yes, ..” Ms. China blushed a little, and jumped into the dialogue with her rather good yet, with a distinctive Chinese flavor of English. She was non apologetic about her English. “Yes, I don’t mind share our wisdom of living in close quarters. The house will be good if everyone of us think of good manners. Good manners are very important when people live in groups. Some people will think good manners are bloody British imperialistic. No, they don’t own good manners. Good manners are natural result of social closeness, crowdedness, and packed existence. Good manners are lubricating the friction of our elbows and we need to own our good manners as part of our identities even when we are in shelters. This is where true manners are verified”. She sat down again and raised her head to Mr. Doolittle.
The door opened and Mr. Lincoln rolled himself in in a wheelchair. He was an old gizzard, as he called himself, a son of a San Francisco whore house madam, he proudly boasting to any one. He always enjoyed house meeting. It was a place he showed his years of life experience, a smart ass in the rough streets. He waves his hands to his fellow travelers as if he was on stage. He was most fond of the new site manager, an oriental woman, he secretly made himself fall for her. He called her Meili (meaning pretty in English) when she was not around. Meili was sitting besides Mr. Doolittle and returned his warm gaze with a vague smile.
Mr. Doolittle cleared his throat and looked at a piece of paper in his hands. It was a list of points to be address at the house meeting. House meetings were stages to him, where communal dialogues were conducted. In a country where individualism was the main stream of thinking, communal living for any extended period of time is always associated with confinements. Such confinements were usually associated with jails, prisons, reform programs or army barracks. Homeless shelters were in many sense truly communal living. The biggest shelter in this city housed about 160 singles, male or female in such closeness that it was tough for some people to adjust to. Homelessness in a way was a freer bargain with nature, as long as space was concerned. But the weather in North Bay was not very negotiable in winter. It rained a lot.
Mr. Doolittle had to address those psychological spots at every house meeting. It was here the voice of common sense was heard. “People complain about things, as always.” Mr. Doolittle took the stage. “We appreciate the fact that those complains brought to our attention, to the staff’s attention first. It is always best to settle our difference through the process of democracy. Our democracy is that everyone has a chance to speak. Well, today, the complain is, let me see, Refrigerator noise. Ah, refrigerator makes noise at night, well, what can we do about it. Do we need to do away with frig, or do we put up with the noise? Or can we do anything about the noise? Haven’t we addressed that issue many times before, through different angles and giving each ample consideration? Oh, yes, we have new residents and we have to do it all over again. Ok, let me see who can address the issue in a fresh light and come with smartest solution?”
“Yes, Mr. Willington, what do you say?”
“Check into a hotel room without frig.”
“Good suggestion, but I know you are kidding, aren’t you? Let’s have another suggestion, Mr. Washington, please.”
“Shut that damned thing down and eat spoiled food.”
“Mr. Washington’s suggestion is out of question so far as I can tell. Anyone for it? No? no body? No one is willing to kill the noise and eat the spoiled food. Common sense, common sense. Other suggestions? Mr. Lincoln?”
“Ear plug or learn to live with it. If you make yourself to listen to it, not to fight it, maybe you two can get along. I learned to go along with things instead of forcing it my way.”
“Very well, that’s a very good suggestion. Very good, full of common sense, and constructive and workable. Good. Then we can’t order the frig to be quiet, and we will have to learn to put up with it. Some evils in the life of mortals are necessary evils. One has to come to grip with this half-truth. The other half of the truth is that truthful evils are still evils. We still have to face them as factual truth since God does not seem to think it is not necessary for them to exist. So let’s live with necessary evils and the half truth and be truthful about them.” Mr. Doolittle was very satisfied to be able to deliver his message about the common sense. Such moments of reflection on God or truth always filled him with great delight. When truth was reflected by someone alone, it did not seem as profound as shared with millions and millions. It was a delightful experience to reveal truth to others when they were least expecting them. “Any more to say?” he looked at the faces turning up at him and smiled, “Next, smoke and got shut out. How has this happened?”
Mr. Lincoln raised his hands. He was a Vietnam War vet. He was in a wheelchair and could walk with the help of a walker. He spoke with a strained voice. “I got up to smoke and the door shut up, and I was locked out.”
“Did you lock it or someone locked it after you went out?”
“I did not lock it, I need to come in after a drag, of course I wouldn’t lock it. But someone did it and I was locked out 3 o’clock in the morning, and it was freezing cold and raining. I did not see anyone coming out. I did not quiet know what to do, to see the staff or just knock. To knock on the staff office door, or the door of B house, I waited and waited in the cold until some one came out for a drag.”
“Well, I personally believe this to be only an accident. We don’t encourage you to smoke at 3 o’clock in the morning. If you are quiet, and don’t wake up the house, you are ok with me. But if people start to complain about people coming in and out of the house at small hours, door opening and shutting, then we really have to talk to you to be more considerate of other people. This is common sense to be considerate of others. So, friends, make sure you understand when common sense fails, rules rule. If you people
make too much noise and start to disturb others, you are to face consequences. Ok, next, shower in the morning.”
“Yes,” one hand raised among the clients. “4 in the morning, someone is taking a shower. Is it really absolutely necessary to have shower in the morning that early. Can he take his shower at night? My bed is right next to the bathroom and there is only a very thin wall between me and the shower. I am not able to get enough sleep because I am awaken up at 4 in the morning.” It was Mr. Jefferson talking.
“Well, shower schedule is always an issue with us, one shower for 9 or 10 people in the same house. shower time has been a constant complain, a source of conflict. We will discuss this at our staff meeting next time and give you guys a guideline concerning the shower rules. Yes, Mr. Jefferson, what else do you want to say?”
“I think the bottom line is that when you live in B house or C house, with 10 people sharing one shower, and it is basically a time management. From 5 pm to next morning 9 am people will at any given time need to use the restroom. Especially in the morning, when nature calls, you got to go. I think we need rules about morning shower. I suggest a system that will work better than self determination of when to take a shower. I suggest that at least no shower after 6 in the morning and no shower early than 5am. I really don’t understand why you need to take shower in the morning when everybody will rush to the bathroom. One should take a shower in the evening or before 10 at night. Unless someone comes back from digging the ditches, he can take a shower before going to bed. I know that the women shelter Lily House doesn’t not allow anybody to take a shower in the morning. It really works. We should be able to do it too. If they have the habit of taking a shower in the morning after they get up, they can always change that habit as long as they get one shower a day. I don’t see why they can’t adjust. Come to think and to realize the true nature of living in the shelter, then you don’t have a hard time living with other 9 people in the same house with only one shower.”
“Very well said, Mr. Jefferson, you really got the fundamentals down. I am very impressed how articulate you are. Anyone can be more articulate than him? Yes, consideration for others and for the common peace and good. This is a whole new way of life living with other people in such closeness. But we are bound together for a common goal, that is to safely co-exist, save your money to have your own place and get out. Then we will not go after you about when you can take a shower or when you can smoke. That is the freedom of choice you purchase with your income. Money is the king, and cash speaks. I know it sounds republican, but this is the reality. I would not say it is the truth, but truth only reveal itself in ambiguity. And what we face is true human existence.”
“Who is running this shelter, the republicans or the democratic,” one voice shouted.
“The church charity. We are under the social arm of the church, the incorporated enterprise of the Redemption Worker’s Union. But we do not insist that you are religiously yoked to receive our service. We offer service to all the poor and needy. It is our republic’s heritage since we set our foot on this continent, we were, have been and are, at one time or another of our great history, homeless, until we won our independence for our British Mother Queen . “
“God bless your good heart, Mr. Doolittle.” Said, Mr. Carter and someone yearned. Ms Fanny raised her hand and said with great emotion “Adam took a show this morning after I clean the bath room, and left a mess. And because he was in the shower, my kid had to pee in the corner in the back yard. This is very frustrating.”
“Adam, did you or did not you take a show just before time to close the shelter?”
“Yes, you are damn right I did, but I got a job interview to go and I don’t want to smell bad.” Adam was still in his “Sunday” best.
“Good, good, it is really a common sense to take a shower before the job interview. As an one time thing, I won’t beat on you. But you should not do it everyday. And I personally have the confidence in your common sense not to abuse your shower privilege. Would you not take a shower in the morning just before we are closing? Adam? I know you answer is no, you would not, would you?”
“You damn right I won’t .”
“Yes, I know you. And the kids are kids, when they need to go, they have to go, so if we all bear in our minds try to make things easy for others, others will make things easy for you in return, that’s the golden rule, the rule of common sense.” Mr. Doolittle cleared his throat and looked at his watch.


“Ok, if we don’t have any more complains, let me finish our meeting by reminding all of you that there is no loitering around the neighborhood. It is very important that you remember this. Our neighbors have the right to veto our operation here if they file complains against us with the county. So make sure you all remember, Love your neighbor, and no loiter around the neighborhood. We are very grateful that they allow us to open this shelter here. So be grateful, guys and don’t screw up. Communal life means limited choice and restrained freedom, this is your reality and make sure you suck it in.”
“Then are we being discriminated” asked one client, Mr. Franklin.
“No, no way, we are not discriminating anybody. We only operate under the collective pressure to provide a peaceful shelter life. Our concern here is more on the issue of peace than freedom, which is not in anyway contradictory to the constitution. Full freedom is to the fully responsible citizens. When you don’t pay rent, don’t have a job, don’t pay tax, you are not fully exercising your citizen’s responsibilities. Then your freedom is compromised. This is the fact and come to term with it. The sooner you do it the better and the sooner, the happier you will feel. Well, do we have more to discuss today?”
“Yes, what about snoring, Mr. Clinton snores so loud, all of us have a hard time sleeping. We don’t know how to stop him without causing physical harm.”
“ Well, you all know that snoring is not a punishable crime. I am afraid that we can do really nothing about it. It is like the noise of refrigerator. You either put up with it, or what else, shut it off. Snoring is more difficult. We are really strangers coming together, Even spouse can do nothing about the snoring. I suggest that we make a scale of snoring intensity from 1 being the lightest to 5 the heaviest, and list it on our Intake form, so we would know who is of the heavy snoring habit. And try to group the snoring residents together. They don’t mind snoring if they snore themselves. At this moment, I can’t promise anything, let our common sense guides us and learn to adjust, ok?” Mr. Doolittle looked at Ms. China, and tilted his head. Ms. China shook her head.
“Well, folks, we had a very good meeting, common sense, common sense, if we have common sense, then we don’t need rules, do we? Any more issues? Mr. Einstein? Mr. Kennedy? Well, ladies, we all know that ladies full of common sense, any female issues to cover? No, Ms. Fanny? good, the meeting is over and you all have a good day.”
Everybody stood up , leaving the room, still trying to soak their brains in Mr. Doolittle’s wisdom.
Mr. Doolittle felt very good, he entered the following words in the log book “a good day, all are fine, no fights, no curses, no rats, President day, shelter stays open for the whole day. See you all on Thursday, Guys.”

Mr. Professor and Mr. Leo Stump

Mr. Professor and Mr. Leo Stump




Mr. Leo Stump went to see Mr. Professor. Mr. Leo Stump’s Dad, before he died, told Leo that if Leo ever did dream to write as a writer, he should go to see Mr. Professor. Mr. Professor, Leo’s Dad said, although unrecognized, was nevertheless self evidently great in mind and soul. Mr. Professor was Leo’s Dad’s hero, and Leo trusted his Dad’s judgment. So he laid his simple heart and big dream onto Mr. Professor’s fat lap one sunny spring morning.
Mr. Professor was Leo’s Dad’s good friend. An unpublished writer, Mr. Professor had filled many stacks of paper with passionate handwritings. He wrote stories, poems, fables and plays. But he had never taught in any universities. He acquired that title because anyone seeing him, felt the power of his intelligence and knowledge. He seemed to have carried in his high forehead a room full of old books and manuscripts. But his own manuscripts were never accepted by any publishing houses, and he had since then given up publishing them. When suggested to him that he could self-publish, he rejected the idea as vain. Besides, he did not have the money to do it. Now that he was retired and lived on SSI, and had all the time on earth to write, he found that his writing had become almost his only and lonely world. He showed his writings to Leo’s Dad, and they enjoyed many long afternoons in the clouds of smoke and creativity. Leo’s Dad loved professor’s writings and wanted Leo to study with him many many years ago. But Mr. Professor refused. He said to Leo’s Dad that to have too big a dream overburdened the simple minded. And when simple people had bigger dreams than their simple minds cold handle, it spelt nightmare. Mr. Professor’s encouragement of Leo to remain simple and proportionally ambitious kept Leo growing into an uneventful kid, and then an uneventful young man, and then an uneventful middle-aged man. Now Leo did not want to remain simple any more. He had already acquired a kind of sophistication through life and maybe this expanding of experience as well as conscience would qualify him to dream a bigger dream now. “Dreams never die, they come in at night”, his Chinese girl friend warned him, rolling her slanted eyes， “Dreams were the fever of the heart that remained forever young, they were the Viagra for the soul.” Leo went to see Mr. Professor and told him about his belated dream of becoming a writer. Mr. Professor looked at him straight in the eyes:
“Why a writer?”
“I always have sentences flowing in through my head. If I don’t put them down on the paper, my head would explode, and my heart splintered.”
“Then, do put them down on paper.”
“I have tried, but I have problems. I have blocks. My mother’s voices always shout at me. No, no, this is not right. Don’t say this, this is poor English. No, ….I just can’t put any sentence down without hearing her.”
Mr. Professor shook his head and said, “That’s your Dad’s problems too, but the “sorcerer” in his case was his mom, your grandma. She had always wanted him to write and publish his writings. But your Dad was deadly against her wishes. For many years, your Dad could not write, because your Grandma’s voice was always there. He said he could not stop her voice either. It was not encouragement that he hear from her voice, but rebuke, a disappointment. It was her own dream, not his, your Dad hated to have the same dream as your grandma did. And your Dad hated to be challenged, especially by his own mother. He seemed to have developed a kind rebelliousness against her wishes, any wish, as long as it came from her. So she simply became his curse of creativity. He would just block his creativity simply to upset her. And he had no power to stop such foolishness. He said he would like to take his own chance to invoke his own muses, and he never had the luck to fulfill it until your Grandma died. ”
“He did pick up writing though, did he?”
“Yes, then when he married your mom later in life, your mom refused to recognize her mother-in-law’s dictatorship in arts, and secretly set out to destroy your grandma’s mission to turning her husband into an “starving artist”. She said with religious earnestness that he had to bring home the bacon regularly and the mouths in the house be feed not by divine fantasies but by milk, butter and bread. Your Dad did write sporadically, a line or two in his off-days, but he always dropped his line half way because your mom’s voice was telling him that he was not cut out to be a writer. But then, your grandma’s voice seemed louder than your mom’s. And I believe, towards the end of your grandma’s life, your Dad did come to me. He told me that he was so tired of fighting two women at a time. I think your grandma was winning in the end. One of her husbands was a celebrated poet and they made consorted effort to seduce him into writing when he was in his teens. Yet, all in vain. But writing had become part of his battle, to either pursue or not to pursue. He did develop critical faculty towards writings. Now all the troubles seem to have disappeared since the deaths of both women in his life. Thank God. He could eventually write without voices in the head. But he was not very productive, only managed to put down short lines and wrote a fantasy story of a rape. It was a piece about a rape victim seeing white lights. He never wrote long pieces after that. That’s why he wrote poems. He said he carried your mom’s voice and his mom’s voice with him anywhere he went for too long. It was such a struggle just to shut these two women’s voice down.”
“Yes, my mom didn’t like us spending our time bringing no money. She kept the house, fed us and he got to bring back the bacon. By the way what do you think my Dad’s poems? Are they good?”
“His talents were not proportional to his ambition. His head was big but his voice was weak though violent. That’s why he never quit his day time job. You will make a good student now that you Mom and Dad both died, and your grandmother long gone. Who are you reading? Herman Melville?”
“Yes and no, I used to read him, my Dad loved him, he said I could not talk about writing if I had never read Herman Melville. but he is too tough, all the names in his writings sound alien. I ‘m reading Harry Potter now.”
“Well, then go home and read old Herman’s Mardi before you come to me again, that ancient Herman, he is still the best. He is the reason why your Dad and I are fast friends,” Mr. Professor told Leo.
“You know what makes a good writer”? Leo remembered a conversation with his Dad, who had been gaining a lot insights about frustrated creativity. “Spleen, spleen, spleen.” His Dad said with a fervent outburst that was so rare all those years Leo had known him.
“Spleen, that average 6 oz. blubber, that is where the creative fever burning, cooking the emotions as an electric stove. It is in the guts, where the gut feeling storms occur, the red, blue, and white pulp stuff ferment, red blood flow and infections of the mind start. Have you ever seen your own spleen? I did, in my dreams, in my dreams, I saw it, purple and gray. Thick with red desire to rush to the heart. That’s where the creativity’s shrine is, when spleen is at full tide, great waves crush the soul and great writer like old Herman was transformed from a melancholy young dude to a seaman, and his young talents to write, or rather to yell, to shout, to howl, burst forth. It is from his spleen, that first earthquake of creativity shook his guts. He said that himself. Yes, from the spleen, my boy, the Chinese write from their 9 pieces broken intestines and meshed liver, the Greek write from two parts of broken hearts. Do you feel your pains in the spleen? If you do, you should start to get ready to write. It is not in the brain, not in the head, nor in the heart, it is in the spleen. It is in there that ink turns spleen bitter activities into art, into poem, into prose, into saga, into great pyramids of inflammations of guts. A good writer digs the guts out of his characters he has created from the spleen, from his own spleen.” Leo remembered his Dad’s near cannibal delight in his passionate speech one winter evening when a hail broke out in the North Bay, California.



“Your Dad used to write light short pieces that scratch armpits and pull mustache, a teaser kind of writing, a sort of leisure, cream puff writing, good for the old ladies with pink tea cup and pumpkin pies.” One day, after the April 1st Fool’s day, Leo paid another visit to Mr. Professor. Mr. Professor stood himself up before Leo and looked down at Leo with a faraway look.
“He wrote this:

Lying between the hours
I play with hands
Of time
My ideas
In boiling water
Sprout from coffee grounds

No, no, no, no, I told your Dad he was losing his maleness. He is becoming a soft poet. He told me that he was having mad sex with another woman, who was not your mom. And he was not suffering from spleen pains anymore. There was ‘tender sarcasms’ in his writing, His own words, I swear, his own words. Needless to say, some men channel all their virility into writing, they call it the sublimation of sexual energy. I think writing and having sex share some commonality, both being creative, reproductive. Males are not equipped with the birth channels to give birth to an infant. But they have their own artistic womb, the incubation chamber for his spleen quakes, and rhetorical tsunamis. So, they give birth to words, books, thoughts and arts. That’s the closest thing to “giving birth”. That’s what makes a real writer, the wish to want to get pregnant, to carry an idea as a baby for nine months and to see it be delivered to the world. And they most of the time get impregnated by a woman, a female, whom we call muse.” Mr. Professor turned to Leo and asked him if he knew woman. “I mean, truly knowing. Only a heart breaking woman can get your spleen burst, and then your vision will appear”.
“My mom broke my heart many times, but I can’t write it, I am speechless when I am thinking of it.”
“Well, if your mom failed to initiate your into literary creativity, I don’t see who could, and who would.”
“You, my Dad told me to see you if I wish to learn to write.”
“Me, no, my boy, I don’t think I can teach you. You either have found out about writing now, or you would never get it. How old are you?
“I am 45.”
“Gush, you have such smooth hands and pale features. Do you suffer from any pains now?” Mr. Professor sounded almost maternal.
“Look at your hands, they are so slander, fine nails, long and well-preserved. Have you ever dug a ditch, laid a tile, or flip a bloody slap of beef ? A real writer needs to dig, rip, cut, dismember. Like a worm in the intestines, he goes through every inch of the tunnels of darkness, around every corner of twists. You need to be a butcher, see blood and flesh, dripping with emotions and with liveliness, with breath of fire, a big heavy blob of red passion from the spleen, soak yourself in that juice of imagination and emerge, submerge. Rub it on you , rub yourself in that pulp, rub spleen flavor on your characters, you need dynamics, you need to be infectious, blood-boiling, you understand?”
“Yes, sir,”
“You understand? Don’t kid me. How can you understand? You tender turkey. Your life is like a long nap, your brain is too quiet, your vision too tender, growing up in a small town with more chickens than people.”
“So? Jack London used to live here right next to this neighborhood, and Glen Ellen has only 992 people, not much bigger than our town.”
“Jack London, you talk about Jack London? He is a wolf, he lived in a wolf house, he gnaws, howls, fights and kills. He got white fangs and iron heels, and he burnt down his wolf house.”
“Did he? I heard it was an accident.”
“You heard, what do you know about him. He is no small town kid, he is from San Francisco. A sailor on horse back, a wayward seafarer.”
“Yes, Sir. Do I have a chance to break myself in in writing?”
“You can surely hope, and that’s all you can do at present. But be advised, my boy, writing is a very painstaking process. The agonies of writing are enough to put a gun in Hemingway‘s head. Are you insured? My boy?”
“No, I don’t have the money to insure myself, besides, I am still too young to shoot myself.”
“You never know, you never know, be prepared, if you wish to take up writing seriously.” Then they left together to have some coffee in Starbucks.



They took seats by the window which commanded a view of a sun flooded street. “You said you are 45?” Mr. Professor asked without expecting an answer. It was more a question of an after thought, like a casual greeting “How is the weather?” Mr. Leo Stump however, answered with conviction and eagerness, “Yes”.
“45, Nietzsche was 46 when he died a great writer. And you are writing stories on school notebooks? Yes, I know, it makes no difference what papers you write on. But writing is no merry spring outing. Even the greatest writer old Herman Melville ached at completing a book of monumental size: “Who will read me?” In his time, peopled wrote, not type, no typewriters were invented. You are already in the digital age, everyone write with Words. Yet, you don’t, you still write with pen and school notebooks.” After they brought their hot coffee in paper cups to their little table, Mr. Professor resumed their discussion: “Herman did the number, he said that in a book of one thousand pages--twenty-five lines each--each line ten words--every word ten letters. That’s two million five hundred thousand a’s, and i’s and o’s to read!” Mr. Professor took a deep sip and looked at Mr. Leo with sympathy.
“Yes, I know, my Chinese girl friend calls writing building the Great Wall with bricks of word.” Mr. Leo smiled apologetically.
“Sure, sure, watch your I ‘s and your t’s and your grammars and your own marriages.”
“Why about marriages?”
“People become greater writers before or after marriages. It either inspires them to write about happiness, or about tragedies. It is the turning point when they shed tears and have revelations about God, that sort of thing.”
“How many times you are married, sir, if I may ask?”
“Me?” Mr. Professor was a little taken back at Leo’s straight forwardness.
“Three, three, good or bad, enough shit to fill a big pot.”
“I guess so, my Dad cared little about marriage. He lived alone after my Mom died.”
“What about you?”
“Never married, but I have lived with women, if that means something.”
“While, you may expect some Oscar Wilderian wisdom, then. You can’t live with them, and you can’t live without them.”
“I don’t think so. I can live with them, and I can live without them. It works for me either way.”
“Maybe you will be a late bloomer, a upcoming writer if you really believe in yourself.”
“I just start to lose hair but gain weight. However, I think I am going to grow a beard.”
“Ok, ok, show me something tomorrow, something that you have put down on the paper.”
“Yes, sir. I know my father had always wanted me to write.”
“ He is six feet under, and with a bigger dream than he can ever handle. What has become his dream?” Mr. Professor wiped his mouth over a paper napkin.
“Top soil, I guess.” said Leo.
“Then don’t you mind about him now. Be advised, young middle aged man, Just go home and write if you have nothing else to do and no woman to love.”
They walked out of the coffee shop into the sun lit street.



Leo sat at the table. He cleared the top and laid out a stack of paper. Then he went to the window and drew the curtains. He liked to feel at night when he wished to write. He turned on the lights, and took out his ball pen, he made a pot of coffee and lit a cigarette. He closed his eyes and started to activate his brain power. He was sending signals to invoke his muse and trying to receive his first line that would knock his potential readers over, something like “to be or not to be, that is the question.” Or, “Had I rather be a fool than a wise man.” But all the great lines seem to have been snatched away by higher powers. After a while, he decided that his muse was not on duty and felt compelled to use a cliché, a conventional opening that always convey some sense of immortality and eternity but without a copy right: “Once upon a time.”
One had to put his first foot out, whatever, so as to be able to walk. The first sentence was like a first step. Only after this first step was taken, then the mind started its journey. One should not bind his feet with rules and tips to write. “ Just get over with it, and the story would follow as naturally as the running water.” Leo self helped his efforts.
Once upon a time I was walking my dog Sammy one sunny spring morning in downtown Porkville. I was invited by a stranger to have coffee in the restaurant with him. He came to me, and introduced himself as certain Mr. His name now escaped me. He said he and his friends by the table saw me walking with the dog and it made a very lovely picture on this sunny spring day. They were interested in knowing me and wanted to know if I would grant them the honor of having coffee with them. It was a very cordial and polite invitation. Warm engaging smiles on his face, I could not find any reason to say no and so I said the pleasure was mine. I tied Sammy by the rail and walked in after the new friend. For the convenience of recalling the story, I need a name, and so he got his, Mr. Kent. There were four others, Mr. Marlboro, Winston, Chesterfield and Redding. Mr. Kent seemed to be the host, and he ordered some fresh coffee and a piece of cheesecake for me and he looked at me and said,
“I don’t believe you are married?”
“Charmed.”
“Would you like to be Mrs. Redding?”
“Is that a question or a problem?”
They burst laughing.



Leo put down a full stop, and then his pen. Yes, Mr. Professor was right in warning him that his Dad was trying to put a big dream into his son’s small head. He did not have enough imagination to fantasize what was in that Mr. Kent’s mind to speak the way he did. This was a story his Chinese girl friend told him. It did happen to her and she told him as a joke. He liked the way his Chinese girl friend smart talked to those guys. With laughter still ringing in the air, they chatted away about weather and communism. Then the group dissolved and the story ended. How easy it was to come to the end of the story, to put a full stop to it. Leo remembered what his Dad said about the spleen, the intestines and the crawling into a different person’s chamber of emotions and transforming himself into that character: to speak in that voice, and to behave in that manner. This was the part he had always fantasized, he was directing a life, creating a disaster, or making up a belief, initiate a Gospel of private salvation. This way he felt that he was in control over the life of his characters. He was telling them where they should go and what they should do. As if he was driving a car, he steered the wheel. He carried his characters into a bar, to a hotel, to a jail or to a car crash. Or he could even take them to commit suicide. He enjoyed that part immensely, and that is scrawling, scrabbling, sort of writing.
Yet, in this story, he did not quite know where to take them. They were so flirty yet friendly with his Chinese girl friend, those over well-feds, to borrow a unfit name for them from Nietzsche, those “over”-men. They needed a twist in their bowls. There was too much ego gas in their intestines, and they needed a rip. Leo needed to take revenge on the paper at least, to find judgment on the paper . This has always been done by writers of vengeance. Now he felt his spleen movement. Why his spleen should make a statement about this episode of his girl friend. She was not so much as even kissing him. She thought the episode as trivial and funny, “They are so free speechy”, she commented. She was a good sport when it came to encounters with “small town celebrities,” a category she threw about with disdain. Well, he did not even know whose armpits he was scratching. Leo was very frustrated. Old Herman’s words suddenly loomed large as a ship wreck into his mind: “It is the world of mind, wherein the wanderer may gaze around, with more of wonder than Balboa’s band roving through the golden Aztec glades.” Last night before turning the light off, he did followed Mr. Professor’s instruction and read old Herman in bed.
Somehow he felt better, at least, his mind had wandered, his soul had pained, his fingers had scratched the pen. There were satisfactions in just putting whatever in the mind down on the paper. He felt that action of scrawling on the paper alone had elevated his mind above mediocrity, had defeated his mom’s voice, had lent much comfort to his deceased Dad, and to himself, a good battle even if just to be defeated. Now he could fully identify with the tortured doubts of a would-be writer, his self-chosen rite of initiation.

Of course, the next day, Leo and Mr. Professor met again in Starbucks. They seemed to be closer in a secret delight that Leo had failed to produce a writing, let alone a good one. Mr. Professor was much tender, his eyes addressing the wounds that Leo suffered from a realization that he was not much of a writer. Mr. Professor brought Leo an walnut maple scone to go with his dark French roast and showed a poem Leo’s father wrote to Mr. Professor before he passed away:


Count not the ways
Not the words
Not the days.
My love
To you
For you
Of you
Begins,
Ends.


“I smell a poor spleen here.” Mr. Professor commented, “I do, too, who has he really been in love with though, I have always wandered. ” Mr. Leo Stump nodded.
“literary seduction”. Mr. Professor volunteered his diagnosis. “In the end of his life after his stroke, you Dad felt such impotence to create and he really wished that he had the courage to die. He said dying to him was ‘a private choice, a public duty,’ and he gladly fulfilled both with a diligent heart one day after throwing a party for himself to celebrate his own death. Of course at that time, no one suspected the party was truly a farewell party.” His eulogy, the last piece of his writing appeared in the paper a week later. “A non apologetic busy loafer, I had made a lot of noise before finally dreaming myself into heavenly quietude….. ” Mr. Professor recited the first line, without any emotion in his voice. Mr. Leo Stump had relived this story many times before and he had come to terms with it. Maybe there was some comfort to be had for Mr. Leo Stump of his Dad’s un-materialized dream that a “greater book” had indeed existed in his brain than in the discount tray in Barnes and Noble in bound form, beyond the criticism of Mr. Professor.

A Dream

A Dream

A sea of soundless waves,
Rolling in, blue upon blue,
Churning foams,
White lining clouds;
Fish, whales, sharks, turtles,
Swim into my land.
Seagulls dart
Into crystal wakefulness,
Thoughts loiter
Over sea weeds, and shells;
A solemn rebuke,
Breaks into a rundown hut;
A startled church mouse
Raises its little head;
From the rear pew
A ship wreck appears.

God Is Typing on My Back

God Is Typing on My Back

Naked I lay myself face down,
Surely and heavily,
I feel the hurried fingers of God,
Typing a stream of hitting sound
Just like a machine gun.

Oh, I know God is typing
Ten of his commencements
Inked on my back,
A tattooed Bible,
Line by line,
On and on….

Oh, Dear God,
Do slow down.
Slow down your fingers , please,
It certainly feels hurting,
It also feels funny,
Your finger nails are too long.
A little bleeding is ok,
But this is too much,
A lot of digging in,
A lot of scratching
Raw bare back as a white paper,
Not a good idea to compose on,
It conditions my young flesh
To react like the protesting Lutherans.

I’ve loved you, my lord,
Since the day I was born.
A blue eyed angel,
With a sweet soul.
Only, I was flying too low,
Until my dad turned me around
With his bible and belt,
I was a recruit of Satan
At the age of seven..

Now I grow an adult back,
Muscled, well toned,
Tough and strong,
A battle ground,
For a million little devils
To jump around.
Now your typing rocks them hard,
They are stabbing me
Mad as bee,
With their angry stings.

Put a coma, dear lord,
Pause to have a drag,
And some quotation marks,
As well as a question mark;
A full stop will definitely give me a break,
When you change paragraphs,
When you turn over a new page.
Or pause to contrive another commencement.
That would give me a moment of peace,
So I can go and pee.


I wish to take a chance,
For a quick breath,
Sleepiness happens when you over stretch,
when you have typed too long,
My intelligence is gone.
My mind craves for small death,
A pleasing escape of my killing conscience.

Dear God,
When can you finish?
Your typing is too tedious,
You need a new device,
My back is over exposed
To the eyes of the immortal,
Especially the female segregationists.

Dear God, you are quite a typist,
How many words you can type on an average?
Your words come to millions of millions
How are your fingers,
Are they holding out ok?

Dear God, now I feel that you are slowing down,
Is it time for a Pepsi, or some green tea?
They told me that you never eat
Nor you ever sleep,
Don’t you feel overworked over eternity?

Dear God, I thank you ever ever so much,
For the special concern you showed me.
My back is full of sensation.
Of guilt, of pleasure, of fatigue, of duty.

But my mind is half gone,
My soul is afloat on the stars,
My body is riding the waves of milk way,
And could I see you when you finish?

Morning Coffee With Betty

Morning Coffee With Betty



Betty, an old lady of 52, with inspired taste in breakfast every morning, was not well informed. But she was very intuitive. For some one like Lulu who had an amateur interest in world affairs, Betty’s input of news and events were more entertaining than instructive. That was why Betty’s political stand was highly appreciated this morning by Lulu, who prepared Betty’s breakfast as part of exchange for rent. It was the major part of the exchange and Lulu did not wish to spoil Betty’s appetite and her own chance of keeping her room. Besides, what difference it would make when Betty commented on the important issues that concerned President George Bush? As the saying went “it’s important to participate than to win.” As an American citizen who had never traveled even once outside her own country in her entire life, Betty kept her mind on the world. Betty was mentally global, as the old Chinese saying went： “The scholar knows what‘s happening in the world without setting his feet outside his own hut.” Betty told Lulu that she had people all over the world staying in touch with her at any given time. That must have made the FBI Intelligence workers puzzled at the conversation flooding in over her phone line, she giggled. That was a flourishing joke, she spoke only English she confessed, as an after thought to Lulu.
After the 911 terrorist attack, Betty had tried, as a lot other people probably did , to keep her head above “fear”。“God is there. God knows what’s going on with the world.” she beat her chest with conviction. “I’m not going to share that Heavenly burden of interfering with God’s plan. I trust my God, oh, no, our God, us God. I don’t want to get my head muddled by all the news reports.”
When Betty saw President Bush getting into his airplane to come to California to talk to the Governor David, she commented that the President enjoyed 70 % of the nation’s support. She said solemnly that she supported Bush’s “Presidential position” in “following his father the Elder Bush，trying to make big names for the Bushes” . “They are the Baseball boys, swings their bats impatiently. Hit, Hit, trying to break the record. I won’t be surprised if FBI find out that the Bushes paid Bin Laden to do the dirty attack to get the Bushes famous.”
Lulu dropped her jaw. It was a long and curve-ball shot from what she could decipher. However, old lady Betty knew that her words did not count. She depended on her freedom to comment even she did not have the freedom to convict.
“Last time we had this womanizer President Bill. But we were able to separate his political life from his private life. He was certainly toasted when that intern slut messed up with him. That’s why he bombed Iraq to make us look the other way. His dick is not for the public as far as I am concerned. Now this one of the Bushes has to wipe up the mess he left behind. Dick heads. Jimmy Carter is a good President. He built a lot houses for the poor. Nixon was way out of line when he got busted but boasted that he was at least the first one to visit China in the 20th century. What cheeks.” Then she told Lulu that the cheeks on the face were called cheeks, on the butt, bums, and on the breast, booboos. She had been working at a meat factory for 20 years and knew all the names for different parts of the beef.
“I certainly remember the Nixon visit,” Lulu got excited. She was then 20 years old and she told Betty that the fish the Chinese cook served moved while being “served”. And the Chinese cook made a plate of duck tongues which took one hundred ducks to make. Lulu was eating her Hot-Doodle noodle soup by the table.
“Do you know this thing has been going on for more than a year? Betty asked.
“What? The terrorist attack?”
“Yes, I think so. Remember the cows, sheep and the beef stuff in France, Britain? That’s part of the same plot, now they brought the Anthrax to the Capital Hill and Santa Rosa Post Office.”
“Why Santa Rosa ? This town is of no significance to the security of the country. We don’t have White House, Pentagon . We don’t have majority leaders or minority leaders. We have no Twin towers, why Santa Rosa?” Lulu asked.
“Just to scare you, if such small town of no significance is even attacked, then the terror is hit home, you know? That ‘s how the mind of terrorists work. Well, better be prepared than not prepared, for our own sake.” Betty sipped solemnly from her coffee cup.
The phone rang. It was from Frank, he was on the line asking if Betty was ok.
“No, not good, I am afraid. A lot of things going on. I had pains last night. A sharp pointed pain over my shoulder. It spread and traveled down my back. That’s the stroke pain. I am all wired up. You can come for a few minutes, can’t you? ”
Waving Lulu over, Betty nodded to Lulu to get another piece of carrot cake for her. “He is not coming, ” Betty said with retired enthusiasm. Frank was a practicing preacher, learning to preach to become a minister. He got up and preached in his back yard to the four quarters, east first, then south, west and, north the last. Then, he raised his hand up and prays to the Heaven. He had just secured the lowest mortgage loan rate and he thanked God that moment for keeping the rates down. He was going to move out from his low-end apartment complex into a four-bedroom and two baths house. “It is a house, a house, thank God.” He must be burying his face in his big hands, to catch his big tears, Betty told Lulu.
Then the door bell rang. It was the delivery Guy from Safe-way. Betty was not bothering to introduce the delivery guy to Lulu. She busied herself choosing the items she loved to stock up for the Halloween and Thanksgiving. She still seemed to suffer from the annoying stories of her girl friend Gene about the same delivery guy that brought food to their doors.
He, whatever his name, Betty deliberated to Lulu, the delivery guy, one day after putting the boxes of sweet and sour pork dinner in Gene’s refrigerator, asked Gene for a “hug”. “Oh, man, oh, boy, oh, my,” Betty made delicious little protests “You know what? What would be the next, a kiss? A squeeze? No, a good strategy that Gene made clear to the delivery guy that she would not do it. And Gene was extremely upset and asked me if she should report it.” Betty looked at her cake intensely.
“What’s your line?”
“Of course, hugging is not to be encouraged. That’s what you will expect if you give in this time, an inch given, a mile taken. If you give him a hug, then next , he will want another display of affection in some kind of this or that form. He might even ask other single females for hugs. He is in uniform, He is incorporated. He should know the ethics of employment and service. Poor Gene is very sad that she could not help wanting to report him. She doesn’t like to do it and she feels empty if that guy is fired. Besides he might counter-reacts saying she is inviting. Bad situation, bad situation, a local terrorist case.” Betty was now pouring herself another cup of steaming coffee that Lulu made sure was permanently heated.
“Did Gene do it, I mean reporting it?” Lulu was very intrigued.
“She is taking time, taking time to….oh, I’ve so much to think about, so much to think about, the Anthrax, my pains, my small toe’s numb, now. I did not get much sleep last night. I have so much on my mind. Gene, you, Social Security Card, your Green Card, my bankruptcy, my Medicare, the middle east;… They put a stop on my payment, because some idiot has typed my ex husband’s gender as female on my benefit form. What’s going on, the world is going crazy. …Oh, mine,…” Betty agonized. “You don’t understand my pains. You look at me. You look at a fact, as an intellectual , as if you are a scientist, looking through a telescope. But you don’t feel my pain. You know my pain, but you don’t have the same sensations. You don’t feel the clutching of my heart muscles. You don’t feel the pinch of my temples. You look at me, with some doubts, maybe, even.. I know, I have been there, done that, I was a care giver myself before, my patients, they never trusted that I did feel for them and I don’t trust you feel it for me either, even if you want to. Physical pains are not communions. But I have developed such ability to sympathize. Why I have leg pains. There is nothing wrong with my legs. That’s Sarah’s leg pain. Those big, fatty, lumpy legs, their veins crawling as grape veins, but only more aged, drier. Why do I have breast pains? I am so old, how do I feel the swelling of the breasts? That’s Lucy’s. Lucy’s next door. That bitch, looking for single man all the time, makes her breast thrill and expand. Pains, lust of pains. I have them all, Lulu, the empathy pains. You don’t know. You are intellectual, a teacher before, an artist. You look at us as objects. I know. But I am aren’t complaining no more. I am tired, I need to go back to bed, and cover myself. I hate the pains. Not half of those pains are even mine. ”
She picked up her coffee cup and wobbled towards her bed room. It was in her bed, in this room, with curtains drawn, she would lie her heavy and tired body down and contemplate.
Lulu started to clean the table when Betty yelled from the bed room: “Please, dear, I want some more coffee, hot and fresh, just make a new pot, and bring some Irish creamer. “
Lulu brought in fresh coffee and the Irish creamer.
“You know Lulu they are my pacies, my pacies.”
“What is a paci?”
“A paci is a, a rubber to suck on, you know those rubber nipples for the babies, when their mothers’ nipples are not available. Baby suck those rubber nipples and they are satisfied and their mouths shut, they can’t cry unless they drop the rubber nipples?”
“Oh, paci is short for pacifier?”
“Yes, you got it. This is I believe, an American invention, and you got kids?”
“No, never given birth, and never breast fed anybody physically. ”
“Well, then, you might never know the sensation. But everyone needs some comfort, that’s what my coffee does, my Irish creamer does, my carrot cake does”
“I take comfort in Chinese poem.”
“Well then, it won’t cost you anything to read poems.”
“Tears, I shed tears.”
“Silly you. Who cries over poems nowadays? I remember the days when I used to read poems. But it is too long ago and too feminine to me. When my ex made me mad, I don’t read poems, I pick up the wooden cross and smash his head with it. That’s my heavenly wrath. That’s me, Betty, the meat packing strong arms. I flip slaps of meat day in and day out. I got strong arms.” Betty ‘s cheek looked fresh and well circulated.
This morning at breakfast, after Lulu laid the table and placed Betty’s French toast and bacon on a silver rimmed plate, a cup of 50 ounce of orange juice, and steaming coffee in front of her, Betty declared that she had made new decisions.
“I decided this morning that I will never give my own food away in exchange of friendship. I am suffering from compassion fatigue and I am bone tired of such petty benevolence. It’s very painful to lose friends. And how many I have totally lost since I moved in this apartment complex? Let me tell you, two sisters in F 5th, the guy in L 3rd ,Mark No.1 in A 8th, Mark No.4 in H 3rd, Steve in S 9th… total 6 of them. ” Betty recalled her lost and sadly chew on her bacon. “Six of them, I know they would not talk to me anymore. It pains me to lose friend, Lulu, ” She stood up and went to the bookshelf and pulled out a little book called “Friendship”.
“This book was given to me on my 50th birthday by Lulu , my sister-in-law, your name sake. That’s why I remembered your name and picked up you as my live-in caregiver. She is the only member from my ex’s side who had treated me nice, though my ex’s father, the old chucky Jock, my ex father-in-law started to write to me two letters a week, asking me to go back to his family.” Betty signed with some lamentable attention to her butter melting over the French toast.
“Well, see, ” Betty put her book in front of Lulu, and lifted through the pages. “Oh, here, this one, by Oscar Wilde, by the way you know he is a very well know movie star…”
“A movie star? ” Lulu was amazed, She did a paper on Oscar Wilde’s Novel “Picture of Dorian Gray” while she took English Literature course at college.
“Yes, a movie star. And this one, here, let me see, I will show you. This page, here, oh, he is also a famous poet. This is what he said of friendship--
“I always like to know everything about my new friends and nothing about my old ones.” Lulu read it aloud.
“Oh, no, not this one, another one, it must be on one of the pages. Let me see…” Betty took the little book in her own lumpy hand and turned the pages.
“Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.”
Betty pointed this line to Lulu,
Lulu looked at the page and the quotation was attributed to Aristotle.
“Artist Turtle said it. ..” Lulu shouted.
“So, whatever. I love it, I know it from my heart. And I trust God. God has told me that I should not give away meals in exchange of friendship. Misfortune tells the difference. I have to feed myself first. I have to feel sufficient in God’s hand. I had times when I did not have money for a cup of tea or a cookie. I buy food, stock up, Look at the food I have , I know God is looking after me. I use to cook large pot of soup the last week of the month, every month, in case some families can’t last to the end of the month. But people start expecting me to give my things away. They came and asked “Betty, can I have this, can I have that? I can’t bring myself to say no, because God asks me to share. But you can’t share with greedy people. You make them greedier by giving.”
Betty cut her French toast neatly into small squares and dripped maple syrup over them, timing her bite with the dripping. Her delivery of little bites into her month was elegantly executed. In her little domain of French toast, Irish creamer and dark roast coffee, she was the queen of the house.
“Mark starts to expect gas quarters from me now if I don’t feed him from time to time.” Betty inched her body a little way to the east to get out of the morning sun on her eyes. Mark was Betty’s male companion. He was a tall, curly haired, half Indian and half Spanish. He was the maintenance guy for the complex. He was at least 15 years younger than Betty, but the age difference worked for both of them. At least, she was too over worked to want to take care another “husband”, and he was too comfortably taken care as a “side job” to want to be one. Like the saying went, “why buy the cow when you can have free milk.” Mark met Lulu for the first time yesterday at dinner. He sloughed towards her and looked at her as if she was a fireplace. He came in just from the pouring winter rain, and the room must have felt as cozy as a womb. That was why he advanced towards Lulu, and said straight forward to her “I can pregnant you.”
“How?”, Lulu looked at him straight in the eyes. “By the way, my name is Lulu and I am the new care taker for your mom Betty.”

Betty wanted some more juice, “That’s why I stock sweet and sour pork for him. He likes it. I am using the Safe-way delivery so I can save on my gas quarters. I don’t want to depend on him to drive me around, doing grocery shopping. ” Only then Lulu suddenly remembered Betty listed as her chores to ride her bick to get grocery. To save 1 dollar bus fair. When one had to cut corners, one had to cut corners.
“In times of war, being frugal. In slack season, eat porridge. ” Chairman Mao’s quotation suddenly jumped into Lulu’s head, “Save every penny for the revolution.” Such wisdom was shared by peoples the world over. “Break your penny into half and save .” People in China used to describe the way of life in old Shanghai.
“Do you realize that I don’t have any more visitors? How many have visited me since you moved in? Carol, Kathy, Frank, oh, Edith. But Edith forgot to buy the Banana. For me. She did return the 2 dollars. Carol came with 3 cupcakes. We finished two, threw one out. Kathy came to return the soup jar. I offered her tea. She did not ask for it. Mark No.1 came. True, he came, to get some of the meatballs. I offered him a pastrami sandwich I brought back from a friend’s birthday party. Mark is a good swindler. He did drop the video and get some new ones for me without asking for the gas quarters. ” Betty looked out of the window and asked Lulu
“Did you hear that he is offering you free ride while you were packing his sandwich?”
“Yes, I remembered. He said if ever I was out in the rain, all I needed to do was to call him and he would come to pick me up. ” Lulu answered.
“He got a Pontiac, it is like a boat. He dumps all his money into cars. ” Betty commented.
“Yes I heard him. It’s very kind of him to do so.” Lulu filled Betty’s cup and pushed it closer to Betty’s hand.
“But Lulu, I am telling you now and you should listen, all men are charming when they first meet you. My Mark No. 1, oh, God, isn’t he charming? He came to the door and shouted over my fence: resident, resident, Madam, Madam. He never calls me Betty, He expected me to call him “maintenance”. I didn’t. He wanted to keep the tension going. At last he blew all that tension away. He ended in my bed one night.”
“You must like him or even love him. He must have done a good job maintaining your system.” Lulu commented. “But he is wild .”
“You got a good eye for man. I got a full king size, and what you expect when he came in from the rain, and I just need a drinking buddy. Got me pregnant. I did not know that my oven can still bake. But you never know how he got me pregnant. He knew some black magic and I got used to having him in my bed, especially in rainy seasons. ” Betty was putting the last piece of bacon into her mouth.
“The rainy season is starting, and now I have you in the house, I can’t let him stay anymore. “Betty said.
“He can stay for the nap when I go shopping.”
“But he said he preferred not. He said he enjoyed staying in his car and listening to the rain. I never know what he is thinking. He likes meatballs and I always have meatballs ready for him. He feels shy when you are around. ”
Lulu grinned to herself.
“Ok, Betty, sip your coffee, nibble at your carrot cake and I will leave you so you can snatch up some sleep.”
Lulu left the door open just wide enough for a cat to come in, in case Betty’s cats Kelly, Smoky or Buttery would so incline. Betty said that Smoky had a pair of reincarnated eyes that reminded her of her male companion Mark No.1.