TheBanyanTree: Let Me Count the Ways

[Tobie Shapiro]

April 30, 2000000000000000000003



My dear friends,

	I'll share this with you if you promise not to call Adult 
Protective Services on me.  Sometimes, as you know, these things just 
will have out.  It ain't pretty, but writing it is lots better (and 
tidier) than doing it.  Also note, that I probably couldn't actually 
DO all these things, so there is some exercize of the fantasy 
muscle......always good for the mood.

	Love,

	Tobie



Tuesday, April 29, 2003

Let Me Count the Ways


#1	While stopped at a major intersection in the dark bad night, 
waiting neatly at the red light, I climb out of the passenger seat, 
leaving the car door open, walk out into the middle of the cross 
roads and stand there.  In my shabby purple canvas coat, my oversized 
blue cargo pants rolled up for a cuff, because I don't shorten with 
needle and threat, my hair on end, brittle and baby fine, I raise 
both arms to heaven in prayer, or defiance, or surrender.  My 
chartreuse and pink and orange crazy striped socks show between pants 
and old brown suede stained clogs.  I stand there just like that, 
painted white in the night lights, until someone who isn't paying 
much attention to sight or plight plows right through me, ruining his 
car's hood, his windshield, my cunning outfit, and his whole evening.

#2	I take the bus to the University, walk through Sather Gate 
and take a right, proceeding straight to the Campanile.  I buy a 
ticket and take the elevator up to the top where the carillon bells 
hang, huge and tiny, have been there since they were dragged or 
hoisted a hundred years ago.  Nightly, morningly, they chime their 
corny slow bonging tunes in spastic rhythm.  All around the top 
balcony of the Campanile, the openings are sealed with suicide proof 
thick glass (or is it plastic?)  that was installed forty years ago 
after the second ambitious depressed person leapt off the top to his 
death below.  The first ambitious depressed person was actually also 
insane:  my cello teacher's father-in-law, a holocaust survivor who 
didn't really survive, an honour - such a trend-setter.

	except for those nasty glass barriers

So I climb up on the ledge, lift my arms in prayer, defiance, or 
surrender, and wait for heaven's last breath, which sucks me up from 
the low height, lifts me up, snatches me gently up, carries me off, 
up into the sky, past the clouds, up into the sky.  I am so far away, 
no one can even hear me run out of oxygen and explode in the 
stratosphere.

#3	I stuff myself down the garbage disposal and reach back out 
to turn on the water and flip the switch.

#4	I write in this journal until I croak from neglect and old 
age.  Also, the sheets, by that time, are so filthy you could die 
from it.

#5	I keep on doing what I've been doing, living the same life I 
am living and have been living until it catches up to me and I yank 
my soul out by my lungs and fry to death in my own anguish.  This is 
done quietly so as not to interrupt the real people.
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.remsset.com/pipermail/thebanyantree-remsset.com/attachments/20030430/6a26cadb/attachment.htm>