Friday, May 28, 2010

At the Post Office, Take 2, Except Not

home and safe. long line at dc plus bukowski = destruction of the english language. an elderly couple in front of me:
Joe American: Look at how few of the stations are open. Great job, Obama.
Jane American: [chuckling] Oh, you.
i looked up from Post Office, imagined a sarcastic response:
Right, because every minor inconvenience is Obama's personal wrong-doing. If McCain and Palin had won the presidency, all these foreign nationals would be shot as soon as they stepped on US soil, so at least we'd have those stations at our disposal as well...
but fantasy!Icarus is braver than I shall ever be (cf the post before this).

but lines, man, hanging out with raised emotions (even though those emotions be low-level anxiety and disgruntlement flavored with a light salting of despair) with the same select group of people results in a bizarre and artificial emotion of camaraderie, particularly when this is a line, many of whose denizens feel it is perfectly acceptable to air one's dirty laundry at higher-than-normal-speaking-volume. we might almost have been friends, once.

Wif laughed when I told her about my Bukowski-tinged dreams. She said, "You let yourself be too strongly affected by the literature you're reading."

She raised her hands to the sea and sky and said, "This is P'mouth! You're back!"

She pointed her hand at me and said, "It's you, in P'mouth!"

and then i drove back home.

5 comments:

Miriam Vaswani said...

Well Ferencz, I'm pleased to see that my parting gift has made an impression...even if it's driven you slightly bonkers. Well done for making it home safe and reflective.

Sláinte xx

Andrew said...

It's definitely made an impression. I was tempted to write a whole post about it, but I think the allusions in the post from today's date are enough -- being beatnik is cool and all when you're young and beautiful and your name is Kerouac or Cassidy and you're speeding across country, but to be a post office employee and beer-bellied and gross is...well...gross. I was glad, at the end of the flight, that I had chosen to buy Lawrence's Sons and Lovers and not The Plumed Serpent. The latter, plus Bukowski, might have resulted in an internal combustion of some kind.

Speaking of Ferencz...?

Miriam Vaswani said...

I think you own me a story first, young man. I can't be the only Scheherezade around here. Then you'll get some Ferencz action.

Oh, Bukowsky. Is it possble to love and hate a person all at once? It is, and I also think it's sensible to know thine enemy.

We have a Bukowsky-themed bar in Glasgow. It has a wicked beer garden. I'll take you there one day. In the meantime, I hope you're drinking with reckless abandon from the cup of Portsmouth.

Andrew said...

Beer garden? A garden of beer? I think I know it, and its name is Eden.

Stacey said...

You make me sound much deeper than I am. ;)

And Miriam, take me, too!