S T R E A M # 3 3

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This is not the time for apple pie and pudding. No, this is the time for wilted roses in the dust layered over the seventh floor of a condemned midrise apartment building. The apple pie and the pudding will have to wait. But that’s the good thing about well-prepared food: it has patience. You might say the same of the well-prepared person. Who eats apple pie and pudding during the same meal? Such a gourmand must have one heck of a sweet tooth. And the sun rises on the blue statue of your great uncle Samuel. He was an adventurous man. Well, for his time, he was considered adventurous. Today, however, folks would dismiss him as something of a shut-in. When your great uncle Samuel ate, he only ate apple pie and pudding. (Didn’t see that comin’, did ya?) I gained a pound over split pea soup, several dinner rolls, and half of an egg salad sandwich on rye. It had to be all that bread. Nary a forkful of apple pie, nor a spoonful of pudding. I wouldn’t touch pie – the lard involved and all that jazz, not to mention all that sugar. There’d be lard in the crust, right? I think so, but I can’t say for sure. I’m sure it tastes great, but I’ve committed myself to the wilted roses. You may mask or you may ask or you may ask your mask, “Why?” That is your right. And I may respond, “Why not?” Just because you place a value on your thing and place no value on my thing does not mean that you’re right — that is, that what you value is, in fact, truly valuable. Certainly, certainly, it may be valuable to YOU, and that IS significant — but ONLY to you. It is not necessarily significant to me. And that’s the rub. If I ACT like I value what you value (when I really don’t), then, of course, I’m attempting to manipulate you for some hidden agenda. But this is the way of things. Honesty is not valued as much as we lead ourselves to believe. We WANT to be lied to. We WANT others to say: You’re brilliant; you’re gorgeous; you’re talented — even when we KNOW that, in all respects, we’re middling at best. Here: Have some apple pie. It’ll make you feel better; that much, we know is true; that much, we can believe. The pudding is good, too. When have you had bad pudding? More often than not, when you’ve had pudding, I’ll wager that you’ve enjoyed it. I’m a hack. We both know this. The difference between you and me? I can AFFORD to be a hack. You CAN’T afford to be a hack; hencethus, you are successful. Eat your pie and your pudding. I’ll get a broom. I’ll sweep the floor. I’ll dispose of the wilted roses. Well, I may or I might save the wilted roses. I may or I might seal them in a plastic baggie. I may or I might store them in my safety deposit box which is really just a safe deposit box with a “ty” erroneously tacked on to the end. There they’ll wait (the baggied [sic] wilted roses will) with my treasury bonds and my grandmother’s wedding ring and all those old silver Kennedys. Those roses, the roses that they were, they’ll turn to dust, though, even in that baggie. But at least I’ll have the dust. And the dust will be all I’ll have to remember you by. Bottom reached. 
1 July 2007

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