While Posting My Schedule...
I was stapling my performance schedule to a telephone pole in the small burg of Short Term Memory, when somebody jabbed me on a wingbone with a sturdy fingertip. I spun round to find a short, bull-necked man in a Tommy Hilfiger polo shirt, Dockers slacks, and penny loafers.
"What'cha nailin' to my pole?" he said.
"Performance schedule. How do you mean: your pole?"
"Well, it's in front of my shop," he stabbed a thumb over his shoulder at a little ice cream and pastry parlor, crowded with chatty patrons, some of whom were shouldering cell phones even as they continued to talk with their snacking companions. "...obstructing the view of my patrons, so it's essentially my pole."
"I see." I went back to stapling.
"So what are you, a performer? You in a band?"
"I'm a singer/songwriter."
"Mm hmm. What's that? You write songs and sing 'em? You don't play other peoples' music?"
"Sometimes."
"What else do you do?"
"FedEx ground delivery."
At this his chin went slowly up, like his neck hid a hydraulic pump, his mouth popped open, and his tongue probed his cheek. Now he got me.
"So you don't do music for a living..."
"No. I'd like to."
"But you don't."
"No."
"Then why do it at all?"
I looked at the flyer with my picture and my schedule, impaled over other similar flyers amidst a sea of rusting staples where countless other fleeting flyers had hung. In the distance, storm clouds were gathering. Rain would come. The flyer might have the life span of two hours. Three at best. Why did I do it?
"I mean," he said, "I don't mean to get personal, but since you're freely utilizing my phone
pole to advertise your services, I felt I had a right to ask. So, why?"
"Why do you sell ice cream and pastry?"
"Easy. People want ice cream and pastry. Shop's full, you can see it's full. I don't have to advertise. It's like that movie, baseball movie, if you build it they will come. People like to eat. They like to eat sweets. If you make it, they will eat. Do they come to hear you when you play?"
"Sometimes."
"So, by implication, sometimes they don't."
"That's right."
"So they must not like what you have to say. Sometimes. I mean, it doesn't matter if people like me or what I have to say or not. They like Rocky Road. They like Heavenly Hash. They love raspberry danish and hamentash. They come. They leave satisfied. I'm like a Santy Claus who gets paid. What're you? What're you to the few people who show up to hear you, sometimes, that you feel you're important enough to tack this poster to my phone pole? What're you in the grand scheme of things?"
"I'm a threshold, Mr. Ice Cream Man." It burst out without my having to think about it.
"Yeah. That means. What? People trample on you on the way to getting somewhere else. You sit in a corner and strum a ukelele and moan, 'Oh my woman left me cause she don't understand why I'm a whiny, music-playin' man,' as the patrons of some restaurant or cafe file past you, ignoring your -- I don't know, your verse -- ignoring you, on their way to what they really want, an ice cream cone, or a scone, or a Yuengling lager. Right? Boyohboy."
"Sometimes it's like that. Yes. But other times, the times I live for, I'm a threshold to places they don't ordinarily go, where they can share lives they wouldn't ordinarily peep into, walk a mile in shoes they might otherwise never get to try on, and that can be a threshold to humanity, man, it can be a summons to life change, an awakening. It can be uncomfortable. Like exercise. But the end result, I believe, is that if you allow yourself to cross the threshold into the worlds that I lay out before you, you come back both hungry and a little satisfied. You get fed, not on ice cream, but on a kind of bittersweet manna that expands the heart and cleans scales of complacency from the eyes and reminds you that, hey, life can be more than just your forty acres, your mule, your wife, your idiosyncracies, your shop of confections, and the stuff you usually call wisdom which may be nothing more than a system of rationalizations for a way of life that you know is steadily choking off the wonder, openness, and honesty you had when you were still a kid."
He chewed it over.
"And then, yeah, other times I'm the noise polution on the way to the crumb cake. But I'm trying to sprinkle that fairy dust that'll take your imagination to the places I believe it was created for. It's up to you whether you let it affect you or not. The priest chants the mass and swings the censer, the incense fills your nostrils, the bells chime and the veil parts for you to set aside your animal lusts, and your industry concerns, and your debts and debtors, to go to a place unsoiled by the business, social, and political facts of the moment, where you can nurture a part of you that gets ignored 99% of the time; but a part which, in those moments when you let yourself be transported, you know is real and vital and necessary. Do you stay put with a gallon of good, solid ice cream in each hand or do you go on that journey?"
"Yeah, all right. Okay. Plus you deliver packages to people with legitimate businesses. Go ahead and leave the poster up. You want a ice cream or somethin'? I'll cut you a deal. "
I nodded. Hell, I like ice cream as much as the next citizen. Before following him into his shop, I looked once more on my flyer, with fondness and pity, even as the rain began to spit the grunge off the streets half a mile a way, carried by the wind in my direction.
It read:
"What'cha nailin' to my pole?" he said.
"Performance schedule. How do you mean: your pole?"
"Well, it's in front of my shop," he stabbed a thumb over his shoulder at a little ice cream and pastry parlor, crowded with chatty patrons, some of whom were shouldering cell phones even as they continued to talk with their snacking companions. "...obstructing the view of my patrons, so it's essentially my pole."
"I see." I went back to stapling.
"So what are you, a performer? You in a band?"
"I'm a singer/songwriter."
"Mm hmm. What's that? You write songs and sing 'em? You don't play other peoples' music?"
"Sometimes."
"What else do you do?"
"FedEx ground delivery."
At this his chin went slowly up, like his neck hid a hydraulic pump, his mouth popped open, and his tongue probed his cheek. Now he got me.
"So you don't do music for a living..."
"No. I'd like to."
"But you don't."
"No."
"Then why do it at all?"
I looked at the flyer with my picture and my schedule, impaled over other similar flyers amidst a sea of rusting staples where countless other fleeting flyers had hung. In the distance, storm clouds were gathering. Rain would come. The flyer might have the life span of two hours. Three at best. Why did I do it?
"I mean," he said, "I don't mean to get personal, but since you're freely utilizing my phone
pole to advertise your services, I felt I had a right to ask. So, why?"
"Why do you sell ice cream and pastry?"
"Easy. People want ice cream and pastry. Shop's full, you can see it's full. I don't have to advertise. It's like that movie, baseball movie, if you build it they will come. People like to eat. They like to eat sweets. If you make it, they will eat. Do they come to hear you when you play?"
"Sometimes."
"So, by implication, sometimes they don't."
"That's right."
"So they must not like what you have to say. Sometimes. I mean, it doesn't matter if people like me or what I have to say or not. They like Rocky Road. They like Heavenly Hash. They love raspberry danish and hamentash. They come. They leave satisfied. I'm like a Santy Claus who gets paid. What're you? What're you to the few people who show up to hear you, sometimes, that you feel you're important enough to tack this poster to my phone pole? What're you in the grand scheme of things?"
"I'm a threshold, Mr. Ice Cream Man." It burst out without my having to think about it.
"Yeah. That means. What? People trample on you on the way to getting somewhere else. You sit in a corner and strum a ukelele and moan, 'Oh my woman left me cause she don't understand why I'm a whiny, music-playin' man,' as the patrons of some restaurant or cafe file past you, ignoring your -- I don't know, your verse -- ignoring you, on their way to what they really want, an ice cream cone, or a scone, or a Yuengling lager. Right? Boyohboy."
"Sometimes it's like that. Yes. But other times, the times I live for, I'm a threshold to places they don't ordinarily go, where they can share lives they wouldn't ordinarily peep into, walk a mile in shoes they might otherwise never get to try on, and that can be a threshold to humanity, man, it can be a summons to life change, an awakening. It can be uncomfortable. Like exercise. But the end result, I believe, is that if you allow yourself to cross the threshold into the worlds that I lay out before you, you come back both hungry and a little satisfied. You get fed, not on ice cream, but on a kind of bittersweet manna that expands the heart and cleans scales of complacency from the eyes and reminds you that, hey, life can be more than just your forty acres, your mule, your wife, your idiosyncracies, your shop of confections, and the stuff you usually call wisdom which may be nothing more than a system of rationalizations for a way of life that you know is steadily choking off the wonder, openness, and honesty you had when you were still a kid."
He chewed it over.
"And then, yeah, other times I'm the noise polution on the way to the crumb cake. But I'm trying to sprinkle that fairy dust that'll take your imagination to the places I believe it was created for. It's up to you whether you let it affect you or not. The priest chants the mass and swings the censer, the incense fills your nostrils, the bells chime and the veil parts for you to set aside your animal lusts, and your industry concerns, and your debts and debtors, to go to a place unsoiled by the business, social, and political facts of the moment, where you can nurture a part of you that gets ignored 99% of the time; but a part which, in those moments when you let yourself be transported, you know is real and vital and necessary. Do you stay put with a gallon of good, solid ice cream in each hand or do you go on that journey?"
"Yeah, all right. Okay. Plus you deliver packages to people with legitimate businesses. Go ahead and leave the poster up. You want a ice cream or somethin'? I'll cut you a deal. "
I nodded. Hell, I like ice cream as much as the next citizen. Before following him into his shop, I looked once more on my flyer, with fondness and pity, even as the rain began to spit the grunge off the streets half a mile a way, carried by the wind in my direction.
It read:
posted by Jack Erdie at 12:37 PM
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