haiku for the day: circles

Sometimes life seems to run us around in circles. We quit our job. We just can’t stand the people who work there. Besides it’s a dead end. Then we go on to Job # 2. Job # 2 turns out to be Job # 1, only in a different costume.

We get a divorce. Then we meet and marry Spouse # 2. Guess what? Spouse # 2 may not be Spouse # 1. But they turn out to act to be Spouse # 1 in so many ways. Some might say we have lessons to learn. We keep yelling at the universe, “Haven’t I learned my lesson yet?”

It seems that every time we come to a fork in the road we take it.

do not turn on red
city intersection sign
for no turn on red

 

Near 500 words: The man in the glass booth

“Say what?” the man in the booth asked the woman. The mic he speaks into muffles his voice and the words come out garbled.

“Say what?” she asked. The words from her end come out garbled. It’s not the best of mics.

Neither heard everything the other said. Isn’t that like life these days? How much do we hear from another person? Before you know it, we’ve jumped to all sorts of conclusions. If this example of two strangers throwing their words at each other proves anything, it proves maybe we are losing our hearing. Unlike our ancestors.

Our ancestors heard everything. They had to. It was pure survival. But isn’t listening required for a good relationship. We get to the point with our partner that we think we already know what they will say. We’ve heard the pattern of the conversation from their end for so long that it has embedded into our brain. No wonder we have gone to texting.

Perhaps this is what hell is like. We approach someone there and we ask a question. Our voice is so muffled that the other person can’t understand us. “Say what?” they say.

“Say what?” we respond, thinking if we could only text. Our fingers are going crazy, making the motions of texting. Maybe. Maybe not.

If we could only listen. If we would only listen. Unfortunately there is so much noise going on in our brain. If haiku has taught me anything, it’s taught me this. How little I listen.

Oh, sure. I hear. My hearing ain’t that bad.

So what happens to the woman and the man in the ticket booth behind the glass at the train station? Or at the gas station?

The woman, instead of getting angry, stops and thinks, then she slows down her words and gives them voice. She smiles and says, “When’s the next drawing?”

The man behind the glass gets it. “At eleven tonight.”

She slips him a five-dollar bill. “One quick pick.”

Finally, he understands. The two of them have adjusted the tone of their voices to the mic and to the listener. He prints her a ticket and slides it through the window with her change.

She smiles, turns and walks away, putting the ticket to her dreams into her pocket.

A man, in his thirties, comes to the booth, asks when the next drawing will be.

“Say what?” the man behind the glass asks.

Thirty shakes his head and walks off. He’ll go elsewhere, perhaps to one of those vending machines for lottery tickets.

haiku for the day: the jukebox

The haiku below was inspired by Ellis Paul. He so expresses my sentiment. 

Darn those are some great songs. Gosh there’s so many songs I would add. Sinatra singing “It was a very good year”. The Righteous Brothers and Dion and Thea Gilmore and Beethoven doing The Emperor Concerto and Ode to Joy. Maybe some Vivaldi Four Season. Definitely Miles. And definitely this one from Ellis Paul. There would be a lot of choices. I know it would be a grave I could be proud of.

the jukebox running
’round my head, all the songs
those beautiful songs.

haiku for the day: parents

Life can be confusing when we’re growing up. You go to your father and ask if you can do something. Your dad says, “Go ask your mother.” You go see Mom and ask for her approval. She throws a curve back at you. “Go ask your father.” After three or four rounds of this back and forth, we come up totally confused. And that’s the whole purpose of the exercise. Neither parent has the courage to tell you no. So their solution is to refer you back to the other when you ask. Now you would think that they are doing this little drill spontaneously. But not really. As they used to say in the movies, “It’s a communist plot.” Since Day-One of your little life, they have this drill planned. In fact, they practiced it while you were still in the womb. 

a mother says look
a father says go, so we
go without looking

Denise

Denise had a cousin who was nothing if not a dreamer. Denise’s cousin died of a broken heart.

Denise decided that was not for her. She had big dreams. But nobody in the family believed her. Not her brother, not her sister. They went their separate ways, found spouses, settled down. Each had a son and a daughter. Her parents liked their children’s spouses. And when they had kids, they made her mom and dad so happy. They now had grand children to spoil.

Denise’s mother kept asking, “When are you going to get a husband and have kids. All those guys you hang out with are gay. They are not husband material. Find a guy. You’ll be a happy Mr. and Mrs.” Her dad said nothing. He wasn’t a talker.

Now Denise liked her sister-in-law well enough. They went shopping and laughed and gossiped the way women do. Her brother-in-law, Marvin, only talked politics. The president this. The president that. And he was loud about it. “Oh, that’s just Marvin,” her sister excused her husband. “He’s got a good heart and he cares about the world.”

Right, Denise thought.

The times she saw her brother and his wife became fewer and fewer. They seemed to drift away from the family. Denise thought it was because of Marvin. He was a hater. Little did she know that her brother’s father-in-law had cancer. Her brother and his wife were helping her mother.

Denise always liked her nieces and her nephews. They seemed like good eggs. Her brother’s daughter especially. She had big dreams like Denise. That was when Denise decided to be a role model and really pursue her dreams. She had talent. She knew she did.

So she was going to New York and become a Broadway set designer. It had been something she wanted since she could remember. When she was seven or eight, she watched a tv show and she wasn’t at all interested in the actors. She wondered how the sets were made.

Oh, sure she liked boys but they were never as handy dandy with a hammer as she was. She could drive a nail into a board, and she could drive it straight. When she went into high school, she joined the drama club. Her drama teacher was sure she had the goods to be a set designer par excellence.

After high school, she let go of her dream. Her mother convinced her that life was too scary. She had to make a living, everybody told her. So she went off to nursing school and became a nurse. It was the easy way out. Dreams were risky, and they were scary. The closest she came to Broadway was the Community Theater.

Now she was in her early thirties. She finally had her education loans paid off. It had been a hard scrimp. She saved and lived with her parents to do it.

Seeing her niece one day made up Denise’s mind. It was now or never. She decided it was time to grow up and prove she had the goods. Be the woman she was meant to be.

On her last night at home, she and her mother had a fight. The next morning her mother didn’t come down to wish her good luck. But her father gave her a ride. In the car, her handed her $1000. “Just in case,” he said.

She wanted to cry but she didn’t. She pushed back her tears.

“Call me at the office if you need help,” her father said. At one time, he’d had dreams. He had not had the courage to pursue them. So he knew what his daughter was doing and how hard it was. But it was the right thing to do.

They pulled up at the bus station and went inside. Her dad bought the ticket. It was a round trip ticket just in case. Denise refused it. So her dad paid for a one-way ride to the big city. Then they hugged.

He left her sitting on a bench waiting for the bus.

“Man, I can do it,” she told herself, caught the bus and left town. As she rode the bus, she thought about all the stages of her life. That was then. Now she had the future ahead of her. She was thirty-two and just starting. And she realized that it is never too late to pursue her dreams.