Once I was a
crusading journalist, ferreting out corruption in city government and racial
bias in the courts. Them was the good ol’ days. These days my job is redistributing household objects. Every day, I take
toys, clothes, dishes, newspapers, trash, groceries and the like, and remove
them from one place and put them in another. And my loved ones, who want to
encourage me in my new pursuit, do so every day by going to those places where
I have put those objects and randomly strewing them around the house, so that I
can have the pleasure of finding them again, and repeating the process.
Sometimes this involves other objects, so that, for instance, I need to get a
sponge to remove the peanut butter that has mysteriously appeared on the
bathroom mirror, and then I get to put the sponge in the washing machine, and
then the dryer, and then I get to put it back in its original place by the
kitchen sink. That requires a high degree of skill that only experts in my
field have, which is why nobody else in this house ever attempts these kind of
feats. It is a lonely line of work, when you think about it, but at least you never,
ever run out of opportunities to practice. The most fun, of course, is when you get to match random objects--when, for instance, that filthy sock you have discovered lodged under a sofa cushion (could this explain that interesting dirty-laundry odor that has been plaguing the living room for weeks?) turns out to be the mate--the mate!--of a sock that has been languishing in the Orphan Sock Bag for many weeks. Or you recognize a piece of Barbie's Princess Palace that has been stuck in the collected goo behind the coffee machine for God knows how long, and you can reunite it with its plastic brethren in the toy bin upstairs. Those are good days. Bad days are like today, when I just look at the ruin and destruction that is my house after a weekend, and I say, The hell with it.
In fact, today is the day for my cleaning ladies. However, they are from Mexico, and today is also the day when immigrants are supposed to go on strike to make the point that immigrants are vital to the U.S. economy these days. So added to the usual weekly uncertainty of what time of day they'll show up is the added uncertainty of whether they will show up at all. JJ, who owns the cleaning service, gets a new cellphone number every week, so calling her is out of the question. So, suspense: will they or won't they?
My friend Devra called to inform me that my first book is now listed at Barnes and Noble under the title "The Breast: A Journey Through Depression." So "beast" has become "breast." This opens possibilities. It could be the memoir of a flatchested teenager--but no, that's too obvious. A cancer memoir? Maybe. Or maybe a Kafkaesque tale of some woman who wakes up one morning as a gigantic tit and is consequently disowned by her family, kept in a back room and fed food scraps.
Put "call Barnes and Noble" on my to-do list. Gettin' pretty long....