Wednesday, December 02, 2009
My Little Sack of Ravings - plus Hippodrome Part Tew
You know what’s a lot easier than writing things? Having other people write them. Typically I’d be ashamed - yes, I can feel shame, technically - to use someone else’s words when I have so many of my own. But then I remember that I lost my freaking notebook, people, and that had all kinds of writing in it, if you limit it yourself to the hebephrenic clawscrabble which honestly is all that I had in it writing-wise. Regardless - regardless! - I remain so distraught by this obvious conspiracy to deprive me of things I thoughtlessly discard in my wake, that I am prepared to let a guest writer take the helm for a trip (or tripe, as I originally typed it) around Chucklehut Acres. Just so long as that guest is providing essentially the same hebephrenic clawscrabble I wound up losing in the first place. Which is not, I think, going to be a problem today.
I’ll give you clues to our mystery writer, and maybe you can guess who she is. Fun-citing, huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?
Right, Fun-citing. So here’s clue #1: It’s probably a woman. Dammit did I give it away? Not yet? Let me try harder with a few more clues:
#2: Probably-she re-uses before she recycles.
#3: Probably-she smokes, apparently a variety of cigarette brands.
#4: Probably-she is probably Jewish, and not just nominally but “Gevalt mein Kreplach” Jewish.
#5: Probably-she may be just a tad psychotic. Just a tad, mind you.
If you can guess my guest blogger from that description, you just go tell her to log on and surf on over hereabouts and drop me a line. I found her “Cosmed” bag - the one with the stylized orange woodpecker design and the pinyin subtext, just the right size for toting a 40 on the bus? - The one she was apparently using as a combination ashtray-notepad? - The one on which she memorialized the following… well, let’s call them “ideas”?:
Talk is cheap.
Laughter hurts.
My Id will not produce scented tampons.
Moses has been told “go to hell” by the congregation. Rework service next November (and remember to find a newspaper and memorize the date.)
1. Obey thy GOD efran [?].
2. The LORD thy God shall obey my punctuation.
3. The Lord shall suffe [suffer?] .
(and continuing on the other side, upsidedown as if written Kerouac-style on a big old roll of paper: )
[seven musical notes on a musical staff; the word “trestle” -?- is written next to it]
I like singing sunshine songs!
Mary killed my family.
Have a hearty holiday
and kiss my empty blessing
2. Moses is not Santa Claus
for holly and the ivy
he must find in garbage cans
the crusts of bread suffering
3. Save us father from thy jail
nails a son of Stephen
wind the ancient pentecost
around.
Shalom.
(and along the side of the bag:)
P.S. I apologize for
the effort made.
Now everyone I
love is overly
“astonished.”
See, now that’s blogging. And they say we need an ethics panel? Harrumph, I say. And also I say, thanks, disjointed probably-Jewish probably-lady. That is some damn quality stuff you cranked out there, and I just went and found it on the sidewalk like it was a fifty dollar gold piece with an apple pie underneath it. And aside from it actually being an old paper bag full of cigarette butts and covered in ballpoint scrawls, that’s pretty much what it was. So I’m a winner both ways, excepting I seem to have misplaced my gold fifty-dollar pie. Which is actually typical of me.
And for the young at heart and sturdy of tuchas, I’ve put the second installment of my chanukah story in the extended entry. Click through. What, were you born in a barn?
Hippodrome Story: Part the II-nd
The atmosphere on the other side was almost overwhelming after his long day of snowy solitude and the closeness of the vestibule. The air was a blend of stale barnsmells - hay, wood, seasons stacked and stored - and the frenetic scents of hundreds of agitated men - their unwashed outerwear, their hair pomaded with goosegrease, stale and sour; their breath, panting and hungry, reeked of greed and garlic. Every man in the huge barn had come replete with dreams of greatness, which each had realized to greater or lesser extent. Some gambled in sumptuous haberdash and some, like Dov, in tattered remnants of homespun. Most of them seemed to fall somewhere in the middle, though - men of petty means and limitless avarice, staked to every zloty they could find, a year’s hoarding come down to a single night, the seventh night of an eight-night festival, the same as every year, here in this old barn, smoky and noisy and seething like a pit of serpents: the Hippodrome.
The same as every year, except this time, Dov reminded himself as he weighed his dreydel in the palm of his hand, this time he was there too. He realized that he looked like the others, or at least the most indigent of them. Some well-heeled patrons scoffed behind his back, deriding the craven pauper with the chutzpah to walk among them, but Dov felt the slight as if it were some story he was hearing and not a matter for personal offense at all. Thought he appeared to be part of things, Dov more accurately felt himself over them, or maybe through them. Though he was in their midst, they did not touch him; unreality eddied around the indivisible dyad that was himself and his pony. In utter contrast to his entire life of toil and humility, tonight he was irresistible. He was infallible. And he felt lucky. Sidling up to the nearest Miracle table, he anted up.
The Hippodrome was organized into five areas: only one was truly the “course;” the rest were ancillary. Miracle was ancillary, a stakebuilder, where a zloty or two could meet a sackful of chavers and bring them all home - but it remained a small-time game because any streak of luck scared off the other players. Easy to win small, but hard to win big - and therefore forever relegated to the pit of the Hippodrome. Plus, the fact that kids played it didn’t help. Twelve Miracle tables lined one wall of the barn, circular tables with wells in their centers; a few men stood around a few of these, shouting and jostling each other. Beyond them stood some larger tables for Chelm, ringed with raucous men challenging each other; three rigs for Dagesh; three large round Sampson pits; and in the back, the Methuselah courses, still yet and quiet at this early hour of the evening. Dov noted the finals table on its dias, a mirror angled above it for the championship yet to come, and sensed as he approached a fairly quiet Miracle well that all was as it should be.
Dov gave one of his five remaining zloty to the attendant, and took his place among three other men. The table around which they stood had a surface about a hands-width wide, surrounding a circular well as deep as a fist, its bottom surface a disk of polished stone that glinted in the lantern-lit barn. Each man held a dreydel, or one lay on the table before him. Dov put two more zloty into the kitty, under the attendant’s watchful eye, as the other men there looked him over dubiously. The attendant removed the kitty from the table and turned to Dov. “New pony,” the attendant barked. The other men sharpened their gaze, curious what this shabby shlump might do.
Dov pulled out his dreydel and gave it a desultory flick from the hip; it leapt in a graceful arc, entering the well like a living thing returning home. Around him, jaws dropped. The cast had been effortless, casual; the pony had landed square on target and spun intently, gliding across the polished surface, until with a clatter it struck the wall and tumbled to the stone. Gimmel. As if ordained. Inside his chest, Dov’s heart sang. His eyes, however, remained like two blue chips of ice from the millpond beyond. No reason to celebrate yet, he thought. Just let the pony run. I’ll have a lifetime to cheer him on after tonight.
“Gimmel!” shouted the attendant, handing over the kitty. Dov tipped the bowl into the canvas sack tied to his waist as the others at the table looked sourly upon him. The kitty had eaten 6 of their zloty. Now, it had coughed Dov up a nice golden hairball. Beginner’s luck, they wordlessly resolved, anteing again - but keeping an off eye on the underfed scrapman who’d just appropriated their potential winnings.
With eight zloty back in the pot; the first man pulled out his pony, a gaudy handful of painted oak, and tried to replicate the hip-flip that Dov had demonstrated. Unfortunately, his pony soared off the table altogether, landing amid the Dagesh rigs where an outcry was generally voiced as he shamefacedly recovered it. Naturally, his turn was effectively forfeit - a rulebook Nun.
The next man took no chances with his sturdy pine dreydel, spinning it from within the well; it landed solidly and ran decently till collapsing on - “Shin!” Clenching his jaws, he paid two more zloty to the kitty. The third and fourth men also shinned, and also visibly bit back curses upon doing so and paying their two-zloty toll. The kitty was by now loaded to fourteen zloty as the throw came again to Dov, the stranger among strangers, the last winner too, and on both scores an object of suspicion. As he began to pull his mahogany pony once again from his pocket, the man beside him, florid and pockmarked, his nose running into his mustaches, lodged a shrill challenge: “Pony check!”
The call brought attention Dov would have preferred not to have aroused, but it was all part of the outspinning of the evening and so he awaited the Emetznik in something like repose. A knot of men gathered, a small crowd, Dov at its center like the void at the center of a whirlpool, his pony resting cool and ready in the palm of his hand. Within moments the Emetznik arrived, tall and finely-arrayed in the black and white of Yom Echad, an imposing figure, a staff of justice risen from a roiling river of human frailties. The crowd parted. He inquired in a clear, quiet voice, easily heard: “Who challenges?”
The man next to Dov indicated himself with a small wave of his red, runny nose. The Truthteller turned to him and asked with measured tone, “Who’s challenged?” The other man shnozzpointed to Dov. Dov stepped forward and let the Emetznik look right into his eyes, perfectly calm though the air all around him was charged with the others’ anticipation. A corner of the Truther’s mouth crept up as Dov handed over his dreydel. All was going accordingly.
Upon the pony touching the Emetznik’s palm, the tall man’s eyes sparkled. He could feel it, too. He turned, still imperious, to the table and placed in the center of its well a small glass beaker, which he filled from a flask until Slivovitz reached a marked level circumference. He moved the tumbler to two or three other spots, verifying the table first. Satisfied, he tossed back the brandy and, still unflinching, raised up Dov’s pony and released it briskly into the well.
As it spun, everybody watched in silence. A truthing bore the possibility of unmasking malefaction, invoking ignominy, and rendering retribution, and for these possibilities alone it would already be a prominent event at the Hippodrome. But atop that and beyond it was the verificatory aspect of this ceremony, the way in which a truthing actually established truth; it was decided by expertise, proof and acclimation, and this tripartite redundancy invoked total confidence in the verdict. The Emetznik’s word would be good tonight, and was never to be questioned thereafter. The proof, in fact, of the truth of his truth, was that it actually constituted the historical record. He not only told truth, he personified it. As against the operation of such a grave personage, the potential ejection of a mere gonnif was of pale significance.
The Emetznik had spun the pony into the well even as the vapors from the brandy shuddered through him. The rush made him limber, let him let the pony do the work, removed him from the process so the essence of other things could emerge. It was a powerful gift, divination, and he took it seriously and not for granted. The slivovitz shiver released the dreydel to do the talking. But this time the dreydel spoke so clearly from the outset that the test felt like a formality. Not that formalities weren’t important - in many ways they were indispensable. But this dreydel was true, he could tell right off. With the shabby man’s eyes shimmering at him through blue fumes, he felt almost as if he was being tested himself.
The dryedel spun within the well for a short eternity, erect as an obelisk. The Emetznik retrieved it with a smooth sweep of his arm, returning it to Dov without flourish. “True. Good luck,” he announced formally and firmly. But as he walked past Dov on his way back to his bench, did he whisper, “Not that you’ll need any”?
There’s more of this available, if you’re interested. I’d like to know what you think of it so far. Oh and btw that word I couldn’t come up with for the first section? I think I’m gonna go with “crux.” Worth waiting for, eh?
