A Sackful of Sayings No. 4

One night the tram came off its tracks.  No one knew exactly why.  A worker said to try the next station, maybe two.  We trudged along, decided to hale a taxi, and when one finally came, we were already nearly where we wanted to be.  Only time had disappeared.

Too many monsters and myths are now seen as childish metaphors, and many of them I just admit can be catalogued as clichés.  It is hardly worth while exploring one’s own memories any more.

In 1943, on a troop train with my mother, going to California, where my father waited to be sent into the war, we stopped in Chicago. The wind was wild, dust blew in my eyes, and one galosh was lost out on the platform.  Will it ever be found and turned in?

Aphorisms should be short, epigrammatic, witty, but kvetching requires a degree of style that has already passed away, like the last survivor of your childhood.  Pithy or pity, the apothegm will soon lose its point like an overworked pencil.

Clowns have no business rising one or two in a car on a public carriageway.  Groups of seventeen or more show their understanding of individuality.

History is a series of discombobulations.  It can be traversed by newer and newer contraptions.  The record of this is a phantasmagoria of illusion.

Elephants never forget.  They have monumental memories and can find a drinking hole in a valley not visited for a life time.  Unfortunately, if the valley has been dammed for electricity and the wonderful modern lake shimmers in the sunlight, the elephant can never find the dusty path required to re-join his herd.

Cupcakes wrapped in wrinkly paper remind me of manuscripts of incunabula used to stuff the bindings of morocco volumes of city council records.