This Person Was Not

Had just had my hair cut.  I suppose I miss the silly routine I’d enjoyed in Beijing for the last twelve years.  One can only imagine that Laurent’s business, there on San Li Tun is in the toilet, just now.  Here in town, Anne, whom I called and was randomly assigned and who also, I discovered, also does my wife’s hair, was very pleasant.  My ears got a bit soaked on the wash-down but besides that all went well at my new salon de coiffure.  She travels.  She is repulsed by the President.  We had a lot to talk about. 

Couldn’t connect with my wife, who’s phone bill needed paying, so I walked down the road, looking for a place to dine.  In my pocket was my brand-new copy of Mahmoud Darwish “Why did You Leave the Horse Alone?”  A Palestinian poet from Acre, his grace and his bitterness cast me off towards Ibrahim Nasrallah and Emile Habibi, where what is yours is taken and resistance is noble, but futile and the fantastic is necessary to make sense of the overwhelming force pressing down upon you. 

I have driven by “The Main Course” in New Paltz, one hundred times or more.  Somehow, I thought they sold fresh seafood. As a pedestrian I learned, a bit more about the town than I’d ever seen otherwise driving through.  Rather The Main Course is a lunch place, where you order at a counter and they call out your name a while later, a bit too loudly on their karaoke mic.  I’d hoped to have my wife join me there, but I drank my wine and ate my sandwich and slowly came to realize that she was not online and would not be able to find me.  Piling through the Darwish I was, when I noticed a peer aged woman with a kind smile who was, of course my old high school classmate.  How grand.  I’ll have to go and say “hi.”   But that classmate died the year before last, I recalled morbidly, simultaneously. This person was not that person.  I looked once again and resigned myself to the cold facts.

Still no wife.  I walked then.  Walked down Main Street.  A proper pedestrian on the Main Street I’d otherwise only driven down.  No.  I didn’t pass a place where I might procure a blazer.  That’s one thing I was looking to buy.  Yes.  I did pass a Starbucks and a strong triple espresso would do just fine.  "Huh?  Yes.  Thank you.  No lid." And after that I continued along past a couple offering a Christian publication of some denomination. I made eye contact.  They looked cold. Couldn’t reach my pop on the phone.  He might have met me.  Alright then, take a left on the rail trail and walk along it home.  It’s only a mile.  And sure-enough my gal rang me halfway back.  And no, I was unable to overcome my spiteful feeling till long after I was home.  But it was a fine walk, even though I was striding snarky. 

Friday, 01/31/20