The moon is never
as big or bright as it appears on screen. We are much smaller than we think we
are.
Spiders cast
enormous webs over the landscape when the floods swamp the land. How far away
they wander in the wind. We might seek to imitate their ways, if we only knew
how.
When the big rat
finally died under the refrigerator and his stench filled the house, it took
many days to breathe calmly again. Then we began to miss his midnight
pitter-patter.
One morning, there
were four giant magpies in the yard. They pushed away the blackbirds, the
sparrows, the fantails and the thrush. When they left, the tui sang his victory
song. The monsters never returned.
Is it a curse?
Whenever I open the door, it rains. When I travel to a tropical island it is
cold and there is coup d’état. Big
hotels should pay me to stay at home, indoors.
Someone came to the
door when, as usual I was wearing my bright red braces, and sporting an
overflowing long white beard. Are you—you must be Amish, he said. No, I am
Jewish, I answered. He went away and never came back.
An early morning mist and a
near-freezing temperature. A baby
hedgehog, looking sick and lonely, leaned against the bushy doorstop. Did it
think it was its mother?
Bang! Another bird dazzled by the
sun’s reflections slams into the kitchen window. Sometimes they lie there
stunned for hours, then flop away. Sometimes, they don’t. If they survive, do
they tell their mates what they saw in the giant’s nest?
At the mall, as we slowly hobble
about, we see children. They are incredibly tiny as they walk and hop about.
Some look like they are happy to be there. Some seem perplexed and frightened,
wondering where they are. Still others ask to be picked up and then fall asleep
in their parents’ arms. I too have to find a seat to rest.
With thirteen jars of various kinds
and from different countries, we opened our pickle museum, gradually munching
through the seasons of the year. When I was young, my grandpa told me he worked
in a pickle factory: he would stand at the end of a conveyor belt and as each
gherkin or cucumber slid by, he gave them a dirty look. He thus produced
various degrees of quarter- and half-sour and full sour pickles. I am still searching for the very sweetest-sour
one he must be creating now in the other world.
In the beginning, through the mists
of time, there was an Italian bakery across the street from my school. In the
afternoon, on the way home, you could go in, and for a nickel, you could get a
big slice of pizza. The taste was never the same, as they used what dough was
left over, and whatever ingredients they found that day. Yet the smell, the
colour and the texture have never been found again, though I have travelled
through hundreds of cities on many continents. Though I can travel no more and
have only my dreams to search through, that special exquisite piece of pizza
seems closer and closer.
