IT'S FICTION MONDAY

Even though it's Tuesday - I'm a little behind

PART II

THE DOOR

If you missed the first part of the story, click HERE

2

“Merci,” Bon said to the woman, turned and walked up the street feeling stunned.  He heard the woman behind him saying, “Monsieur, air you sure you air OK?”  Bon waved a hand, tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, righted himself and continued on.

            This was too unreal.  He thought of asking someone to pinch him, but he couldn’t remember the words in French, and anyway, he knew this was real, as unreal as it was.  This was no dream – Bon could tell.  “Everyone can tell,” he thought.  That whole “pinch me” thing from the movies suddenly seemed utterly absurd.  He was awake and he was, incredible as it seemed, in Paris.  He dug in his pocket for his phone, swiped it on but he had no bars.  He’d never imagined he’d need international service.  He didn’t have international service.  Digging back into his pocket, he was relieved to find his wallet, that also contained a debit card (Bon fortunately had several hundred dollars in the bank) and his driver’s license.

            Nonetheless, the next three days were extremely difficult for Bon, so to make a long – at least what felt like an eternity to Bon – story relatively short, here are a few of the highlights of those three days:

            Bon went to a money exchange and got some Euros, then to the American Embassy and tried to spin a story about how he had flown into Norway, where they had not stamped his passport (a reasonable story to Bon, because that very thing had once actually happened to him) then, after a brief stay in Oslo, he had gone from Oslo to Bergen on the train where he had procured work on, and boarded, a fishing vessel bound for England and then France.  The fishing vessel, really a kind of factory boat, had let him off in Normandy, his new friend Olaf telling him not to breath a word to anyone that they had hired someone from outside the European Union.  Bon had promised. He explained that during his train ride to Paris, all his belongings except his wallet had been stolen, including his coat, where, he said, he had kept his passport.

            Bon had difficulty remembering the name of the fishing vessel, as well as any other name than that of his friend Olaf, explained that his lapse of memory was because he didn’t speak Norwegian.  The pretty young Assistant Consulate, Élodie, with whom he spoke, reminded Bon, that if he had ever actually visited Norway, Bon might have noticed that Norway had the highest English speaking population, per capita, in the world.  Having in fact been to Norway, Bon knew this perfectly well, but hoped Élodie did not.  Also, Élodie told Bon, that at this time, Norway was not strictly a member of the EU.  

            Knowing that if he started talking about magical doors – and he very much wanted to: Élodie was so pretty, he thought she might understand, like the pretty foreign girls in the movies always understood – he might spend a long time….  If he told her, he might well spend a long time, perhaps a very long time, somewhere he probably didn’t want to be for a long time, so he stuck to his story, as absurd as much of it was.  Why couldn’t they find his plane ticket?  Iceland Air?  It doesn’t seem you were a passenger.  Are you a terrorist?  Do you know any Muslims here in France?  What have you been doing since you got here?

            Bon spent a day and a half in solitary detention.  Although he was very lonely and only had a very thin mattress on a concrete floor with only a paper blanket to keep him warm – no books or TV – the food was excellent.  Much better, he imagined, than it would have been on American soil.  For dinner he had a steak (not big, but well-seasoned), fries and even a crème caramel for dessert.   In the afternoon of the second day, he was escorted into an office, obviously to a higher-level Consular Assistant than Élodie had been.  Élodie had been French. 

            “Sit down,” said the big American man behind the big wooden desk.  He was fiftyish, balding, with a roundish, clean shaven face that exhibited a tired and very no-nonsense expression.

            “Thank you sir,” said Bon, sitting in a green padded chair with wooden arms, across from the man.

            “Call me Mr. Burdens,” said the man.

            “Thank you Mr. Burdens,” said Bon.

            Mr. Burdens looked at some papers on his desk, then stared for perhaps a full minute at Bon without saying anything.

            “Bon,” said Mr. Burdens finally.  “That is how you say your name, Bon?”

            “Yes Mr. Burdens.  Bon, like the German city - Bonn.  Bon Ironsmith.”

            “Not short for anything like… Christ, what would Bon be short for?”

            “Bonhommie, maybe?” suggested Bon. 

            Mr. Burdens stared at Bon for another 30, unbearable seconds.

            “Bon, you’re full of shit.  I’m not sure what kind of shit you’re full of, but whatever kind it is, I don’t want it in nor around my Embassy anymore.”

            “No, Mr. Burdens, I see,” said Bon.

            “Bon.”  Mr. Burdens paused for what must have been another full half-minute.

            “Bon,” he continued, “You’ve just won the lottery.”  He picked a thick envelope up from the desk.  “This is a ticket to Philadelphia.  Air France.  Good Airline.  And a new passport.”

            “Oh, Mr. Burdens, than…”

            “Bon?”

            “Yes Mr. Burdens?”

            “Shut the fuck up.  Listen.  We couldn’t find anything on you.  Nothing.  Just that you’re some flunky in an architectural firm in Philadelphia and live in a crappy neighborhood.  Everyone we talked with gave you pretty good references, no one seemed to think you were capable of anything alarming…. of anything really.  They WERE surprised you were somehow in France. Your mother….”  Mr. Burdens rubbed his forehead.  “Your mother gave me a headache. I…”

            “My moth…”

            “Bon.  I said shut the FUCK up.  After speaking with her for half an hour, I found it hard to believe you weren’t already dead, perhaps having preferred to off yourself rather than listen to her lather of… of… utterly nonsensical… talk, if it can be called talk  – ‘Oh, Mr. Burdens, thank you so much for caring for Bon.  Would you like a roast beef sandwich?  Or perhaps you’d like to take a swim?’”  Mr. Burdens rubbed his forehead again.  “Now, seeing that, obviously, you are not dead, Bon, it’s hard to believe that you haven’t turned to drugs or alcohol, to forget."

Mr. Burdens paused, then said, “Bon?”

            “Yes Mr. Burdens?”

            “I want to forget.”

            “I understand Mr. Burdens.”

            “I very much suspect you do understand.  And I want to forget you, or that you were ever here.  And most of all your mother.”

            Bon was silent.  He didn’t want Mr. Burdens to yell at him again.  He looked at the floor.

            “Bon,” Mr. Burdens said, “Stand up.”

            Bon stood up. 

            “Take this envelope.  Go downstairs, out the main entrance.  There is a little silver car there.  Get in the little silver car, in the backseat.  It will take you to the airport.  I never want to see you again.  You are of course, welcome to come to France any time you like, with a passport of course – this is your privilege as an American Citizen.  But, Bon?”

            “Yes Mr. Burdens,” said Bon, reaching out to take the envelope.  Mr. Burdens didn’t let it go.

            “I NEVER want to see you again.  If you are here, and you see me, say, walking down the sidewalk, hide.  Do we understand each other?”

            “Yes Mr. Burdens.  We do.”

            Mr. Burdens let go of the envelope.  Bon stood looking at him, wondering what to do next.

            “Go,” said Mr. Burdens.  “Silver car.  Don’t say another word.  You’re welcome.  Go.”  Although Bon was thin, as he walked out of the room, he had the peculiar feeling his buttocks were somehow enormous, the most visible part of himself.

******************

“Flunky indeed,” thought Bon on the trip home.  He had graduated from University of Pennsylvania, had done very well, and landed an internship with one of the best architectural firms in the city.  Mostly they did corporate interiors, which he wasn’t crazy about – like most architectural graduates he had grand ideas of grand city plans and wonderful houses with waterfalls in the living rooms – but it was starting to be good money and, in fact, he had been hired on after his internship.

            “So why on God’s Green Earth do I live in this dump,” he thought as his cab from the Airport pulled up in front of his house.  Actually, he was kind of glad to see it.  Even though he hated it, it was “home”, and there was comfort in the mere familiarity of it.

******************

Bon began going down into the basement every day, especially around the time the “magical” thing had happened, which had been just after getting home from work – that had been a Friday, thank God: he had only missed two days of work.  Nonetheless, the next Friday, nothing happened. 

            He began consulting astronomical charts, astrological charts as well, looking for evidence of sun flares, meteor showers, volcanic activity....  Nothing seemed to coincide with the opening of the door.  He would have liked to think it had just been his imagination, but he still had some Euros in his wallet, as well as the multiple calls per day from his mother, to prove that it hadn't been.        

            Gina, one of the new interns at the office, kept asking him about France, what had inspired him to just take off… She wouldn’t let it go.  She sensed there was something peculiar about his answers – most of the people in the office didn’t seem to care or to even have noticed: they were too involved in their own lives and projects.  But Gina wouldn’t relent.  Gina was very young - 21 (at least to a 27 year-old, six years seemed like a big age difference) but she was also smart, an excellent draftswoman, and she had fetching little ringlets of hair that surrounded her roundish, happy and very pretty face, with the most voluptuous lips Bon could ever remember seeing.

            “If you’ll stop bugging me about it, I’ll tell you at dinner tomorrow,” he said.  He had stopped at her desk, because yet again, she had said, “This whole France thing.  Quelle mystere.”

            “That is, if you’ll have dinner with me,” he said, blushing.  He rarely asked women out because sooner or later he knew he'd have to show them his dump of a house.

            “I can’t wait,” she said, seeming to bob up and down a little in her chair.  Bon got the feeling she liked him.  "Like, right after work?" she asked.  Bon hated that use of "like".  But people could change.  "Sure," he said.  "Like, as soon as we're done?"  He was mocking her, but she just nodded happily.  "Cool," she said.  When was it smart people started talking like that?  Bon smiled at her, and it was guanine.  She was smart and pretty.  Christ, she'd gone to Brown.  Did everyone talk like that now?  He felt warm in his chest as he walked away from her desk.

*******************

That evening when he got home, after he took off his coat and made a cup of coffee, he went to the basement.  Light came from under the door.

TO BE CONTINUED NEXT MONDAY

BACK TO HOME

I'm afraid I'm a bit behind on work, and so on my blog.  I'm afraid Fiction Monday will have to wait until tomorrow.  Don't worry though: our hero Bon is in for some new hair-raising adventures.

Today will have to be Sunday Funnies.  Remember that this is from a man's point of view: women get something like 80% more messages than men on most personal sites.  When I bothered to dabble in that world, it was my experience that men had to try much, much harder to get responses.  If you weren't GQ good-looking like me, it's possible you might never get a reply, no matter how interesting you are.

ONLINE PERSONAL ADS.  ALWAYS A GOOD LAUGH.

Hm.  Slow evening.  I don’t do the internet dating thing anymore, but I think I’ll have a look, just for laughs.     

“Not looking for anything serious, so if you just want to hang out, go dancing, I love fine restauraunts, sent me an email.”

            I’m pretty sure that means an expensive evening with no second date in view.

OK, next ad.

                        “I LOVE life!! Easygoing, happy. Make me laugh! Laughter a must!

                        Personal Motto: Carpe Diem!”

            Next. Click.

                        I like the outdoors, the beach, sports (you bet! I’ll watch football with you

                        Sundays). Like to party, go to the beach, anything outdoors.  I love to

                        Laugh!  Love the beach!

            Click.

                        Easygoing, honesty is very important to me.  I love to laugh.  Laughter is a

                        Must!  Like to ski, snowboard, travel, going out, fine dining.

            Blah blah blah.  Who wrote these things?  Maybe there’s a little book you can get with ubiquitous personal ads in them. 

            Who’s paying for all the above activities?  And what’s up with the honesty thing anyway?  Everyone thinks they’re honest, or at least if they've lied they at least believe they had a good reason for it, or else they’re a sociopath.  No body’s going to look at an ad that demands the prospective date be honest and think, “Well! That sure cuts me out of the picture. Good thing she mentioned she was looking for someone honest.  God only knows what would have happened when she found out what a fucking liar I am!”

            And laughter.  Jesus H. …..  We all like to laugh, right?  If someone is funny to us, they just are; if they’re not, they’re not.  We all hope someone finds us funny and that we find them funny, but you never know.  Once again, who would think, “She’s gonna hate me, I’m such a bore and all.”  If this man exists,  his ad might read, “Dour, humorless man seeks same.  Dislike job and people in general, but mostly only women, so don’t be shy.”  I don’t think so.

            So, we’re really weeding out the phonies here, aren't we girls?  Actually, if someone has been chronically attracted to dishonest and unfunny people in the past, they will probably continue to be so.  Telling a date he must be honest is like…. Nothing I can think of.  It’s just stupid.  Honesty and humor are experiential; they are not products.  Telling someone they have to make you laugh is like telling someone they’d better make you cum four times the first time you have sex – it might give him a touch of performance anxiety.  It just might.

            I’d say, if someone wanted to scare off the honest men and make potentially funny ones hyper-self-conscious, keep writing those adds that insist on “honesty” and that someone “make you laugh”.

            Next time I’ll talk about people who say they want someone with “No baggage.”

BACK TO HOME

HERE AT DOUG'S DAILY MEDITATION IT'S

FREEDOM FRIDAY SUNDAY

Say whatever you want, do whatever you want.  Today you can eat Freedom Fries, or FRENCH FRIES!  No limits!  Post an image.  Make it inflammatory.  Make it patriotic (whatEVER that's supposed to mean).  C'mon kids.  What have you got lose , aside from the NSA showing up at your door?  Why not leave a message for the NSA right here?  They'll be sure to see it.  What about that first amendment*?  Let's see if it's still really there.  

If you want to post a photo or comment, post it here, or send it to Knowewetwo@aol.com (for photos, art), or message me, Douglas Ferrin, at Facebook, and I'll get it up as soon as I can.  Remember, on Freedom Fridays, ANYTHING GOES!  I'll post WHATEVER you send.

*Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Do you have grievances?  Do we have a grievance?  Oh YES WE DO!  By the people.  You are people.  Feel free to peaceably assemble here.  

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RUSH AND BIDEN FINALLY AGREE:

GET YOUR DAY STARTED WITH

DOUG'S DAILY MEDITATION!

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WHY DRUNK DRIVING IS ENCOURAGED

© Andrew Warhol Estate

About 100 people in the “lower 48” die in automobile accidents, daily.  That’s the number of people who died in the World Trade Center, on 9/11, in a little over three months of automotive death activity.  Over 90% of those are alcohol related.  In spite of organizations like MADD and stiffer penalties for drunk driving, the statistics of death to alcohol consumption regarding automotive death has changed almost not a dot in the 50 or so years that statistics on such things have been kept.  Road-side bars and Mall bars, with little or no public transportation to them, nor, more especially, from them, continue to be built and flourish, and although the idea of the “sober” driver has been a nice idea and an interesting though half-hearted advertising campaign for liquor companies, it is one that has not been widely practiced.

       I believe the “system”, meaning our government, including state and local governments, does not want to see an end to drunk driving.  Not only is it an enormous source of revenue that most municipalities have come to heavily rely upon, most parole boards and agencies that deal with the follow-up of drunk driving, also including jails and prisons, are privatized and would lose considerable of their business were drunk driving to end.

       However, I believe the biggest incentive to encourage drunk driving (and encouraged it is, through alcohol advertising, television shows and movies in which people drive drunk and rarely get caught - most particularly police officers who leave their crony bars after several shots, well over the legal limit*) is this: no more automotive deaths, no body part transplants i.e. kidneys, hearts, lungs, etc.  Most transplant parts come via fatal automotive injuries and, as I said, and as is fairly well known, most of those deaths are due to alcohol consumption.

       As a society, we have become heavily dependent on criminal behavior as an increasingly large source of government revenue, but that is a discussion for another time.

*I believe Hollywood movie-making and, not only corporate advertising, but government agendas as well, are frequently intermingled: think of the plethora of Army, Navy and Marine movies that yearly get produced, using genuine military hardware (such as aircraft carriers, jets, etc.) and how those movie "spots", if you will, increase the number of people signing up to "serve".  Just as you see Corn Flakes in a movie, or Pepsi, and know those "spots" were paid for by the sponsoring companies, so, I believe encouragement for alcohol consumption is also paid for and subsequently endorsed in similar movie "spots".

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Kevin Bacon in

THE FOLLOWING

If any of you have followed "The Following", I hope you find it as absurd as I do.  Kevin Bacon and many of the other actors (including the wonderful Jennifer Ferrin, a third cousin of mine - Jennifer, will you marry me?) are excellent, and give wonderful performances; the gloomy cinematography also gives the show a sense of horror and realism.  Beyond that however, the show is silly.  The lead villain, Joe Carroll, played by the masterful James Purefoy, who portrays a literary scholar, has accepted a ditty from an Edgar Allen Poe story, and, as compelling as Poe's writing often is, Carroll, the literary genius, accepts this bit of fiction about death (that I'm reasonably certain even Poe didn't believe, except as a vehicle to scare his readers), as gospel truth, and has taught this gospel to his witless and infantile disciples.  

As brilliant as Carroll is supposed to be, and as excellent as Purefoy's acting is, it is impossible for me to believe he has committed his life to a scrap of Poe's writing, and also unbelievable that his followers are somehow rarely caught while performing their hideously violent deeds.  Charles Manson*, who was, it turns out, really after a record contract and begrudged that he didn't get one,  drummed up an idiotic story about needing to eviscerate people to really love them; he and his crew were immediately caught and incarcerated.  Joe Carroll's followers commit crimes of murder on subways, in large crowds of people where police would inevitably be nearby, yet somehow the police are never there and somehow the disciples never get caught. This seemingly unstoppable and random violence is the only thing that gives rise to the tension and terror of the program, but it is so unrealistic that my disbelief is never suspended.  

Kevin Bacon seems to be the only cop in the universe, and he must somehow, single highhandedly, bring down the lot of Carroll's menagerie of ruthless murderers.  As dumb as many police seem to be, there are still plenty of them around, and splattered blood and screaming victims, even to the most dimwitted of police, rarely escapes their attention.  When was the last time you were in a New York subway station and there weren't several armed service men there?

Because the crimes are so visceral and unpredictable makes their perpetrators no less infantile.  They want attention, obviously had violent or somehow very bad childhoods, and continue to act out their grudges with their parents, siblings, whoever abused or mistreated them.  This is Psych 101, dressed up in shadowy film direction, good acting, decent writing and expensive production values..  In the end, although I've tried, I just can't watch it.  Not because of the extreme violence, but because of its sheer stupidity and, at core, the infantile nature of the characters.  The Blood and guts wants us to take these people seriously, but in the end they are violent babies with nothing worthwhile to say.

*Although seeing himself primarily as a musician, Denis Wilson of the Beach Boys said, "Charlie didn't have a musical bone in his whole body."  This kind of reaction, after being rejected by every label he approached, very much pissed off the musician in Charlie. 

Illustration ©2014 Douglas Ferrin

A PARABLE

So this guy named Mark, we'll call him Mark, but it doesn't really matter.  Actually it kind of does because he's from Boston, and everyone calls him "Maaak," and often when he calls the gas company or other services, he has a hard time being understood.  "Mack?" they ask.  "No!" he says, "Maaak," he yells, "With an AH," wanting to say with an "R", but it frequently takes him hours to do what for others would be a simple transaction, because of his Bostonian accent.  This is not really the point of the story, although it is kind of funny, and ultimately it has cursed him throughout his life and it may be part of what leads him on his quest.
     One day he sets out to find the meaning of life.  He knows well it doesn't lie in a mere name, or a simple identity that no tele-operator can understand.  Mark is Catholic, and is dating a Jew - mostly because he hates Catholic women and she hates Jewish men, but be that as it may - he hears tell of a mystic, somewhere deep in the Himalayas that can answer any question, including the meaning of life.  He goes to Nepal, finds a Sherpa named Madwan (who dies in a snow storm on the way back from their trek, but that, too, is another story) and sets off to find the famed mystic.
     He searches for years.  Madwan almost leaves him at several points, but Mark bribes him with with money.  Mark is wealthy because he is from "old money", although his money begins to dwindle, thanks to his promises to Madwan and Madwan's family, which he keeps - Mark is an honorable man - and the need for renewed supplies.  Hiking around the Himalayas is not cheap.
     Finally, at the top of a wind blown peak, he finds the mystic. Incredibly, the mystic sits with only a loin cloth in the sub-zero temperature, and holds a cup of tea.
     "You are Mark," says the mystic.
      "Maaak," says Mark, and the mystic nods.
      "Mystiic" says Mark, "what is the meaning of life?"
      The Mystic says, "This tea cup.
      "A tea cup?" Mark says unbelievingly.  "Just that stupid tea cup?  I've searched for years for you and it's just a fucking tea cup?!?!"
     "OK," says the mystic.  "So maybe it's not the tea cup."

IT'S FICTION MONDAY

Every Monday, here, will now be FICTION MONDAY.  To kick things off, I'm going to serialize my new story,

THE DOOR

Illustration by Douglas Ferrin ©2014

He could see the crumbling stone wall with its dirty little four-paned window reflected in the floor of the basement.  That meant water again.  “Not again,” Bon mumbled and he felt around for the light switch.  Somehow he had never acquired a physical memory of where that stupid switch was.  He always reached too high, too low, not far enough in.  “Whatever,” he said a little too loud for his own emotional comfort, the thought shooting through his head that now he was talking to himself.  He had thought that kind of behavior started only when you got old – Bon was 27.  “Shit,” he said just after he had finally found the switch and clicked it on.  The “shit” was not only about the extent of the water, which went from wall to wall, but also about talking to himself.  “Txhaaa,” he breathed.  “Stupid house.” 

            It was a “furnished” rental – a big old long, narrow brick house in Germantown, Philadelphia.  Cheap.  Falling apart.   He was always embarrassed when he brought people over, although most people his age thought it was cool he had this big old place to himself.  It wasn’t cool.  It was drafty and lonely and too far from Center City.  In winter (thank God it was Spring now), the rooms he never used got the hottest from a clanky old radiator system installed “Before The War,” his landlord had told him, though Bon thought it was probably the First World War, not the Second.  Maybe his landlord had meant the Civil War.  The house was old enough.  His bedroom was freezing, so sometimes he slept in the dining room because it was always sauna bath hot.  “Dining room” was a floor plan kind of name rather than a name that denoted actual use: it had an old top-opening freezer whose motor chugged when it ran (which was always because it was so fucking hot in there), a beat up Victorian sofa and armchair with matching rips and carved claw feet.  It did have a long table that had once been painted, although now the paint, what appeared to be lead white now turned yellow, only remained in mottled bits around the tops of the legs and here and there around the edge of the table top.  Once he had put a bag of groceries on it and it had wobbled so badly it seemed it would topple over.  He had never used it again.

            “Christ,” he said, starting down the stairs, which creaked under his slender weight.  There was a sump pump down there but it had previously spit the water out so close to the house that it had seeped right back in.  Last Summer Bon had guiltily put an extension on the hose running outside from the pump and had pointed it toward the neighbor’s house (that also had basement water problems), hiding the hose with slabs of glittering, quartzite stone, the standard rock along what had, in George Washington’s day, been a pretty valley on the Wissahickon Creek.  Now it was semi-ghetto.

He had to splash his way twenty feet or so to where the pump switch hung loose on the wall.  The cloth covered wiring was as old as the radiators and the pump sat perhaps an inch above the water on an unsteady wood block (once the water had been so high it had half covered the pump).  The pump also sparked when he turned it on.  Electrocution was a reasonable expectation, Bon believed.  No doubt Bon was right.  Feet drenched, he got to the switch and, scrunching up his face for what he divined would one day be his inevitable death, flipped it up.  Still alive, he let out a sigh as the pump slowly chugged into life.

Next to the switch was that door.  The house was built like a row house (although there were four feet separating the houses on his street); the switch and the door were at the narrow end of the house that faced its back, not its front.  If it had been on the front wall it might have made sense, perhaps leading to a once existent utility tunnel, maybe a stairway to a hatch opening onto the sidewalk.  But there were no services that came in the back – gas, electric, sewer, water, cable, all from the front.  He had opened the door a few times, and there was nothing there but a packed dirt wall.  It wasn’t even bricked up, as he expected it might have been if something had been closed off.

He stood looking at the door.  He was starting to hate the house; he had hated the house all winter, but now he was really starting to hate it.  He, too, had thought it was cool when he had, thinking the place was a steal, almost greedily signed a year lease.  Thank God the year would be over in two months.  It had been a long year.

“Pbhhwew,” he blew, shaking his head at the absurdity of the door – the whole ugly setup - rolling his eyes, then turning away and splashing toward the stairs.  “Pbhhwew,” he said again, looking back at the door.  The bottom of the door was under water but he thought he saw light down there, as if coming through the little slice of space at the bottom of it.  No way.  It was just light on the little waves his feet and legs had kicked up.  But he stopped and kept looking and when the little waves were gone the light was still there.  “No way,” he said, not caring anymore if he were talking to himself.  Then he realized he didn’t care anymore and he was afraid he was giving up, caving in to this loser of a house, maybe starting to feel like a loser himself.  Like his across-the-street neighbor Ted, who still lived in his mother’s house, the house he had grown up in, whose mother was long dead.  Actually Ted had gone away to be a hippie and had moved back when he was forty or so.  Ted had silver hair and a skanky beard and was always either shaking or drunk.  At first Bon didn’t believe it when Ted had told him that he had played with the 60’s and 70’s band Sweet Molly, had played at Woodstock, but Bon had looked it up and it was true.  Which made Ted more pathetic.  Ted made Bon feel pathetic.  “I’ve got to get out of here,” he murmured, hitting himself mentally for yet again talking to himself.

After he was convinced that the light really seemed to be coming from under the door, or else some truly weird trick of the light and water were going on, he splashed over and yanked it open.  He was blinded by brightness, his eyes having gotten used to the dimness of the basement.  “Whoa,” he said, as water poured out onto a low stone step then onto asphalt.  As his eyes adjusted to the daylight, he saw a row of mopeds and motorcycles parked on what he could now see was a sidewalk.  Across the street were shops.  A sign on one said, “Spa Jean de Beauvis”.  The architecture looked familiar, but he couldn’t immediately place it.  He stepped out, was almost pushed out, by the water, onto the walk, then stepped away to dryer land.  “Whoa,” he said again, looking around, then back at the door, which was now dark green and closed, although a little water still trickled out from under it.  He rushed back to the door and tried to yank it open – it wouldn’t.  He yanked harder.  He banged on it.  He yanked.  He banged again.  Then he heard footsteps and noticed no more water flowed from under the door.  It opened.  An elderly woman with an apron answered.  “Monsieur?” she said with a look of impatience.  “Qu’est-ce que je peux pour vous?”

“I live here,” he said.  I mean, the water – where am I?”

“Vous… vous Américains, toujours en expectant qu’on peut comprendre ce que vous dites . Mais qu'est-ce que vous voulez?”

Bon peered over her shoulder into what seemed like an enormous, well-kept house, a large curving staircase behind the woman.  From inside another voice said, “Annette?  Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?”  Annette turned and said, “Chez pas, Madame, ce Monsieur a frappé, j’ai répondu, il est apparemment un Américain…”

“Américain?”  the other voice said with apparent interest, as a pretty thirty-something woman, smartly dressed in a deep blue, knee-length dress, approached from behind Annette.  In a thick French accent she said, Annette stepping aside, “Uh, ‘ow may I ‘elp you Monsieur?”

Bon stared at her, utterly disoriented.

“Monsieur?” she repeated.

“I, uh…. My basement,” he said.

“Basement?”

“See this water?”  Bon held out his hand to show the water, that now flowed down the gutter of the street.  “It came from my basement.  This door….  I…”

“Alors,” the woman said.  “I don’t understand you.”

“Madame?” said Annette.  Bon had forgotten she was there.

“Ah oui.  Ça va. Tu peux continuer.”

“Madame,” said Annette as she hustled away, apparently busy with other things.  The woman looked back at Bon questioningly.

“I… I’m not sure I understand,” Bon said.

            “’Ave we met?  Do I know you?”

            “No, no, I don’t think so.  This was my house, I mean, my basement… sous-sol,” he said, beginning to remember his spotty French.

            “Zis ees not a ‘sous-sol,” the woman said half smiling, her brow creased in dramatic confusion.

            “I see that, I…. I, uh, may I have a look at your basement?” said Bon, peering around the woman.

            “Monsieur,” she said, “Zees ees my ‘ome.”  She looked down at his soaked shoes and pants.  “You are perhaps, ‘ow do you say, dangereux?”

            “Me?  Dangerous?  No, no, not at all.  I was in Philly… Philadelphia, then….  Where am I?  What street is this?”

            “Where are you?  You are Sérieux?”

            Bon was silent, didn’t know what to say.

            “Zees is Paris, Rue Sommerand.  In ze sixieume.”

            “Paris?  Really?”

            “Really,” the woman said with a tone that said only an idiot wouldn’t know that this was Paris.

            Bon let out a deep breath.  He felt dizzy.  “What am I going to do?” he mumbled, beginning to believe he had actually gone through the door, that door, into another land.

TO BE CONTINUED NEXT MONDAY 

©2014 Douglas C. Ferrin
All rights reserved

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SUNDAY FUNNIES

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WHAT IS AN ARTIST?

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUIZ

An artist is?

a)      Someone who is anti-social and likes to be and work alone.

b)      Someone who spends all their time at parties.

c)      A brooding social misfit.

d)     Someone who is gruff and likely to embarrass you at a party.

e)      Someone you may have worshipful feelings toward, like Michalengelo, because their work makes you feel warm inside and because you don’t understand how or why they do what they do.

f)       Someone you distrust because you don’t understand how or why they do what they do.

g)      Someone who must have another job to support their art.

h)      Someone who, if they do not have another job, doesn’t really have to work for a living because making art isn’t really working.

i)        Someone you envy because they have “talent” and because you “can’t draw a straight line”.

j)        A pariah.

k)      Someone who takes a lot of drugs, or drinks to excess.

l)        Poor.

m)    Lazy.

n)      An unspeakably rich workaholic like Picasso.

o)      Someone like your aunt in Des Moines, who paints, or used to.

p)      A womanizer.

q)      Crazy and earless.

r)       Someone who doesn’t deserve public assistance because they sometimes take pictures of Christ in urine.

s)       Someone like Andrew Wyeth who does things you just love.

t)       Someone who sucks off the system.

u)      Someone like one of those guys on TV who makes a really great painting in half an hour that looks “just like a picture”.

v)      Someone like Rembrandt who did pictures that are now worth millions.

w)    Someone who lives in a garret and can’t sell their paintings even though they’re beautiful.

x)      Someone who makes ugly things for public places.

y)      Someone who has a God given Gift that should not be wasted.

z)      All of the above.

Correct answer on next page.

©2013 Douglas Ferrin

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It's the Weekend and

IT'S PARTY TIME

Alcohol seems to just about have it all!  By far the most toxic of all the drugs listed, although crack, from what I've seen, is perhaps the most life-damaging.

*Heroin includes most opiates including oxycodone, oxycontin, dilaudid and any form of hydro-morphine or hydrocodone such as Vicodin or Percocet.  To read more about Heroin and its derivatives, click this LINK.

REMEMBER: When buying street drugs, you run the risk of being robbed, beaten up, arrested or murdered.  Also, street drugs are often "cut" with unhealthy and sometimes lethal substances.  

Also remember that opiates may make you stop breathing, permanently.

Link for drug scales at Amazon

My check list is a little spotty and there are a few typos - sorry.  Feel free to comment and add to it.

AN ACTUAL MEDITATION

Collection, John Thonrton.  Maine Farmhouse, By Douglas Ferrin 1985  Oil on panel 12" X 16"

A number of people have signed onto this site from India, Japan, and other eastern countries, I believe in the expectation that it is actually a thoughtful, meditation site, and not a grudge and humor site.  Here, then, is what I believe at the bottom of my heart; perhaps this is something for people to meditate on, perhaps not.  

My Grandparents were Quakers, I was raised liberal Episcopalian - I don't mind women Priests and gay Bishops -but I am a Christian - we were taught tolerance above all; I married a Jew and I have two Jewish children (who I love more than anyone on Earth) and who, irritatingly enough, tend to dismiss my beliefs:  I believe in proselytization by example, as did my Grandfather (who did Quaker missionary work in Mexico - in other words, doing work with people silently; he would talk, but only about God when people asked).  I believe in the Resurrection, Prophecies fulfilled and the blood of Christ.  However, what follows, I think, is somewhat more universal and constitutes the meditation.

What I believe.

There are no ethics to be found in nature alone:

Nothing of difference can come from an indifferent universe.

Without pain we could not discern good.

Men create evil.

We all die.

We all have been alive since the beginning.

Ultimately, there is only despair without God, or whatever name you give to what gives us life.

This thinking has kept me alive and sane for my entire adult life.

HOW TO DRAW PORTRAITS LIKE A PRO!

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After a long day of fire and violence, workers finally sat down with Doug to negotiate.  Reporters wait expectantly outside the boardroom door, where deliberations are being held.  One exhausted worker, who came out shortly after midnight to use the restroom, said everyone is hopeful work will resume in the morning. Updates will be reported as soon as they become available.