All Wet

If its raining or snowing or wet in any way, only one newspaper in the daily delivery of the New York Times to my building gets wet. Mine.

If a paper is damaged, ripped or wrinkled, it’s always mine.

Its because I live on the 15^th floor of a 16 story building.

My question is why in all the years that pile of newspapers the lobby has grown with new subscribers, why have the apartment owners on the floor above me never chosen home delivery?

Is this a metaphor? Am I the person who will always draw the short straw or inevitably choose the one rickety chair in a room full of perfectly stable ones? Is it always my shoes that are making that annoying squeaking noise? Why when everyone was talking in my high school classrooms, did the teacher choose me to chastise?

Oh well, I guess by this stage of my life there is not much I can do to change my karma. But I can choose just to wonder about it rather than totally believe in it.

There are plenty of things to contradict this verdict. Sometimes a parking spot magically appears just when I need it. One of my children may call just to shoot the breeze. Or a dog may amble over to me unbidden in the park just to say hello and get it's ears scratched.

I choose not to be too pessimistic because if I did I would be like that Lil Abner character, Joe Btfsplk, who walked around with a dark cloud over his head.

But I do know that if Joe’s cloud bursts into a thunderstorm which newspaper it will rain on.

Phantom Writing

A friend of mine, a recently retired professor of English Literature, has been writing what he calls phantom essays. They are more or less the type of essay you would find in scholarly journals.

He has published his share of books and articles on Victorian poets. I found the books in the New York Public Library catalog.

He has chosen not to publish anymore. He sends his essays to friends and colleagues who have expressed interest in receiving them. This saves him the fuss and bother of going through the publishing process.

His reasoning is that few people would read or remember them anyway.

In one essay he talks about mandalas, the enormous intricately and beautiful, sand paintings Tibetan monks painstakingly create and then destroy upon completion. The monks believe that nothing is permanent. Each creation is a step to a higher state. They believe that the real beauty is in the act of creating the art rather than preserving it.

Beauty is ephemeral. We appreciate art in the moment.

It is the process of production that is important. The creating not the creation that is the their central issue. Think of the poem “Ithaca” advising us to enjoy the voyage not the destination.

The act of writing is a journey. It leads you to places you might not have otherwise explored. To write is to come alive with an idea, an inspiration that you try to express in words. You transcend the ordinary. You are taken out of yourself. You become a writer.

Someone once said that a writer is a person who writes.

There is real purpose in the professor’s phantom essay. It's the act of writing itself that matters to him.

I do appreciate the monks’ courage in destroying their art. But I think I will keep mine.

Ithaka

BY C. P. CAVAFY

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY AND PHILIP SHERRARD

As you set out for Ithaka

hope your road is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.

May there be many summer mornings when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you’re destined for.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you’re old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn't have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

C. P. Cavafy, "The City" from C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Translation Copyright © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Reproduced with permission of Princeton University Press.


Source: C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems (Princeton University Press, 1975)

Lord and Taylor Luddite

Pick a card. Not just any card. Pick a credit card. Notice the raised numbers on the front. And then look for the customer service number. I’ll bet you can’t read it because the customer service number is exactly in back of those raised numbers on the front. They are all scrunched up aren’t they? I’m just asking this so you will understand.

You see yesterday I spoke to a Lord and Taylor Customer Service Representative. I was amazed to have finally reached one.

My first attempt to read the number on the back of my Lord and Taylor Charge card, the scrunched up one I just told you about, produced a lengthy sales pitch for a free trip to the Bahamas with an added outing to Bermuda for only $659.00. I listened for a full minute before hanging up. $659.00 just wasn't free enough to continue.

I tried a few more variations on what I thought the phone number might be but I didn't get Lord and Taylor or anymore free offers so this ploy began to wear thin.

Just in time I remembered that on the bottom of their website screen where all my troubles had begun there was a tiny little box labeled “contact us”.

This was about paying my bill.  You see, a year ago I bought a shirt for my grandson, Nicky, on Lord and Taylors’ website and since then I no longer receive my bills on paper. They come online. It is all quite safe, with a user name, password, even a personal flower I was required to recognize just to prove it was me trying to pay my bill.

The only problem was I had so much difficulty getting past the user name. It’s all my own fault. I chose a user name and filled in the little box and checked off  “remember me”. Only my username was one letter off.

Each time I tried to pay my bill I was told that I had the wrong user name and after 5 or 6 tries I would create a new user name and pass word, which I dutifully wrote down in my little red password book aka an address book.

Now here’s the problem. Each month it reverts to the original user name.

So I decided to pay via my smart phone, but Lord and Taylor didn’t recognize the device and asked what high school I went to and I told them and entered my user name and login and guess what. Nada. Nothing. I tried again. Same routine. I tried the routine on my free Samsung Tablet Time Warner sent me, which I have a very bad relationship with, and once again was rejected.

"So enough," I said.  "I'll  call Lord and Taylor. I know I’ll sound like a Luddite but I think I’ll ask for my billing to be restored to the paper mode just to simplify my life."

The phone number worked. The usual overly enthusiastic fake voice welcomed and thanked me for choosing Lord and Taylor, told me how much I owed, which I knew, and how much credit I had, which I didn't.

Then the nice voice began rattling off options for me to choose from. I’m used to this, of course, from multiple exchanges with automated fake voices, and was happily reassured by the fact that number 8 was actually an option to speak to a customer service representative. 

I was a bit naïve to expect that it would be that easy. A different automated, though nice, lady said it would help matters if I stated clearly exactly why I wanted to speak to a customer service representative.

I guess I didn’t state my problem quite clearly enough because that automated voice sounded clearly annoyed. I told her I wanted to stop online payment and switch back to paper and she didn't seem to like that and asked me again and again to say clearly what my reason was, just to make my experience speaking to an online customer service agent easier.  

So by now I feared for my blood pressure, and started to punch the 0 button repeatedly as I suppose I should have done from the beginning. But you have always been a rather sedate store, Lord and Taylor, I guess I expected too much.

Even the online bill, which I have come to hate, asks me to be sure I recognize a picture of a nice flower, which I being a city girl don’t recognize but pretend to just to make the billing thing happy in order to proceed with my payment.

And magically, I was placed on a waiting line for an agent because all of them were serving other customers, who probably wanted to give up on online billing too

I didn’t wait too long and I didn’t have to listen to too many repeated suggestions that I return to the automated payment system

An actual live person, always a treat, answered and asked my name and the last four digits of my SSN. I complied without argument, having gotten over my outrage by now at this question. I figure its hopeless.

So I answered these questions and she said nicely “How can I help you?”

And I told her.

I said, “I’m having trouble making online payments. I made the mistake of entering my user id and then checking off the little “remember me box”. But the user id I entered was off. It’s completely my fault and I am sorry very sorry truly I am.

Anyway, I can’t seem to get beyond that point. For the last several months I have created new user ids and new passwords but it just seems to go back to that old one. So, Miss Representative, I’d just like to go back to a paper bill. Could I just give up on the online thing? Please?”

“Well if you would just check your web browser and…

“No, no, no,” I said.

“Well really its very simple all you do is…”

“No, no, no,” I said again.

Now she was beginning to sound like the automated lady, “Look, she said, it isn’t hard.”

“Yes it is. I’m tired of the whole thing. I’m old and tired of fighting with websites with flowers and questions about my high school. I just want to go back to an old-fashioned paper bill I can pay with a check in an envelope with a stamp and a cute little doggie return address label. And make my life meaningful again.”

“Well, if that's how you feel about it, I’ll take you off the online billing option.”

“Oh thank you,” I said.

“Is that all?”

“Oh,” I said, “when will I get the paper bill?”

“After the next billing cycle.”

“How do I pay this billing cycle?”

“You can pay it online,” She replied.

Saturdays in December

“I don't know what I am going to do with myself tomorrow, Pauler.”

“You don't?”

“It's the first Saturday since August when there will be no football games.”

“Poor lamb.”

“I’m desolate. Just think, not one college football game until the Bowls after Christmas, I’m bereft!”

“I know what we could do to take you mind off your sorrows, we could go shopping! Christmas is just around the corner. We could shop together. It would be fun.”

Silence. Complete and utter silence.

“Shopping in New York City is an adventure. It’s a worldwide attraction. You think all those tourists come to NYC for the history? Not on your tintype. They come here to shop.”

“Terrific.”

“Why Macy's attracts 20 million visitors a year while the Statue of Liberty gets less than four.”

“Who cares.”

“Just think about Macy's. It’s still the world largest department store.

You know that statue in Straus Park? Why it’s dedicated to former owners Isidor and Ida Straus who died in each other’s arms on the Titanic. Isn’t that sweet?”

“Sweet. Yes.”

“Oh Jim, think of the sacred shopping traditions observed each year! And we could actually participate in the most revered! We are right in time to share in the Christmas rituals of buying presents for our loved ones.”

“You've got to be kidding.”

“There are so many rituals. Too bad we missed Black Friday.”

“Isn’t that Black Tuesday?”

“No that s when the stock market fell. We observe Black Friday to prevent that ever happening again.”

Small groan. “ I don't care anything about this. You know I hate shopping.

I can’t bear to enter a department store!”

“I can tell you where to find the most charming boutiques in the Village very near English teashops and small patisseries. “

“I m watching the news. You can stop now.”

“You would love Chelsea Market! It's located in a renovated factory. It retains all the amazing ancient equipment  beautifully preserved just for shoppers to look at. And there’s a butcher shop there named Dickson just like my mother’s family. And I know how fond you are of them. We could have our picture taken under the sign and send it home to Ohio.”

“This is ridiculous! Why are you carrying on like this?”

“Gee, I can’t imagine.”