"we're like those uncharted continents in the sky, clouds passing before the sun. we are vast and unknowable, billowing in many directions at once, capable of either drifting peacefully or exploding into great fits of grey violence. but in the end we are only mist, molecules of water that happen briefly and coincidentally to exist in the same place at the same time—but not forever. we are only mist, capable of being pulled apart, capable of disappearing completely in the face of the wrong gust of wind or the slightest change in pressure. and yes, sometimes we do get to bathe in that bright warm sun but other times, we cover it up completely."

“I used to help Borges cross the street when he was blind.” The old man leaned in close to me before I noticed him standing there. His glasses framed his one good guy, the other milky and blank. “Jorge Luis Borges,” his Spanish pronunciation thick with a British accent.

“The writer?”

“Yes. I helped him cross the street.” He sounded like an English colonial in WWI, dignified in the face of death and decay. “Wonderful man, really. Spoke beautifully. I never cared much for his writing though. Myself, I didn’t get it.” He frowned.

“In Argentina?” I said, looking around, trying to see if there was anyone else at this wine and cheese event that wanted to talk to me, anyone that could help me escape the clattering dentures of this English colonial. Who was this guy?

“Yes, I lived there for quite a number of years, lovely country, before I emigrated to the U.S.” He leaned in even closer. “It was for a woman,” he whispered. “You know how it is with Latin women, you simply follow the passion.” He chuckled and leaned back, repeating the phrase ‘Latin women’ to himself.

“Not really. I don’t really know how it is,” I said, shaking my head.

“Well,” he said after an awkward moment of silence. “That’s how it is, my boy. Borges, anyway, he was the head of the Biblioteca Nacional in Buenos Aires, beautiful, lovely building, down the street from my flat. Every day he would try to cross this incredibly busy street, half-blind but still so proud, cars zipping by, to get to the Biblioteca. I would see him from the front windows and the dodger nearly got himself killed. So I started helping him. This, of course, was before he got his secretary who would help him, and before Perón fired him from the Biblioteca Nacional.”

“Evita?” I smiled weakly.

“Oh she was a spicy trollop,” he chuckled and nudge me with his elbow. “Her husband, of course, Juan Perón. He became president in, I believe it was 1946, yes, that seems about right. Borges's offense against Peron was little more than adding his signature to a pro-democracy petition. The poor fool. Peron dismissed Borges from the Biblioteca Nacional and ‘promoted’ him to the position of Buenos Aires poultry inspector.”

“A blind poultry inspector.” No one else was looking in my direction. I was stuck.

“Quite. Borges resigned of course. After the Revolución Libertadora, the military government overthrew Peron and reinstated Borges as head of the Biblioteca Nacional. Borges loved them, sang their praises for anyone to hear in that lovely speaking voice. He actually went so far as to call the generals ‘gentlemen.’”

The old man scoffed, his dead eye peering at the carpet.

“’Gentlemen’, as if he had never of the desaparecidos, as if he had no idea what was happening in the country, as if those motherfuckers weren’t kidnapping thousands of people in the night and kicking them out of bloody airplanes into the ocean, never to be seen or heard from again. It was a terrifying time. ‘Gentlemen’. Disgusting.”

The old man ate a cheese cracker. He continued with his mouth full, dentures seeming to move independently of his jaw.

“By this time the poor bastard was completely blind, could not see a single thing. Politically as well, so I suppose. So he hired that secretary to shepherd him around like some dog, some seeing eye dog. I saw them from my front window for years. Later, at the age of 86, as he was dying, Borges married that poor girl.”

My friend Mindy, who had invited me to the event in the first place, was looking in my direction. I made a motion to her and turned to the old man, “It was nice meeting you, I should probably—”

“He was a lovely speaker though,” he continued, completely ignoring me, tongue scouring his mouth for any remaining cracker crumbs. “Just extraordinary. You could almost forgive him his politics when you felt his words raise the goosepimples down your arms.”

“This has been nice,” I said and started to inch away, slowly.

“Of course he lectured in Spanish but personally he spoke English, whenever I would help him cross the street, he knew I was English so he spoke it to me, and he always spoke with an Irish accent.”

I was still only a few inches away, I tried to wave Mindy over. Maybe she could save me.

“An Argentine with an Irish accent, just beautiful. But his writing? I never much cared for it myself. Didn’t get it.”

Wind Fish

So I kind of forgot about this. It's a post I made on a friend's blog called "Things You See While Eating," which is exactly what the blog's about--kind of a sociological people-watching experiment. Here's my contribution, semi-based on reality, semi-based on improv class (so its a bit silly), and semi-based on Link's Awakening.

http://thingsyouseewhileeating.wordpress.com/

---

Chicago, IL

It was the kind of place that was painted bright pastels, the kind of place where the staff was enjoyable rude, the kind of place owned by oily curmudgeons and wide-eyed cranks and reformed dreamers, the kind of place that made a mean turkey sandwich. I went through them pretty quickly, cycling through every sandwich shop in the neighborhood a week at a time. But this place, this was my new favorite because I could get both potato chips and potato salad—because potatoes are too delicious for just one kind.

With snow on my shoes, I trudged down the steps to the current week’s favorite basement sandwich shop. I sat down with my order and I dipped the potato chips in the potato salad and wondered at the true goodness of potato magic. The sandwich was too salty, the pastel rainbow on the wall looked more faded than usual, and I wondered if it was time to move on and start dining at the place across the street, Farakan’s Deli Dog.

I pulled out my current book, something about the Spanish Civil War, and tried to disappear. I try to evaporate right there, to slip back to 1938, to feel the sand and the sun and the oil of the rifle sliding between my fingers, to hear the sound of military chants floating on the air of Andalusia, to try to forget that I work beneath florescent lights.

“Yo, I ever tell you bout Johan?”

The voice was not Castilian.

“No, man. You never told me about no Johan.”

I looked up. It was these two guys, a big one and a little one, sitting at a table across from me eating pastrami sandwiches and talking loud enough to fill up the basement room, their vowels hanging from the ceiling, their saliva dripping from the walls, their laughter tunneling through my ears. Didn’t they know the Anarcho-Syndicalists were about to be routed by the Fascists? Can’t they shut up for one minute while the war reaches its inevitable and bloody turning point?

“Let’s go, bro. Who’s Johan? Lay it on me,” the little one said waving his hand.

These two guys. The little one looked like he wanted to be the big one. They were wearing overalls and workman’s boots, both with paint and plaster stains all over their clothes, heavy coats hanging next to them.

“Johan was this one, this guy, that Mindy used to know in college,” the big one says, biting into a potato chip. He’s bald with a beard.

“Oh man, how is Mindy? You really lucked out with her man. She’s really got the uh—” The little one made a squeezing motion to his chest. “You know?” He’s clean-shaven and wears a beanie cap with a hardhat sitting on the table next to him. His overalls fit better and look newer than the bigger guy’s looser, more frayed clothes.

“Hey man, lay off. That’s my live-in girlfriend you’re talking about there.”

“Yeah, well don’t think I ain’t takin’ a turn at her when you’re done.”

“Ay! What’d I just say?” The big guy pounds the table making the hardhat jump.

“I dunno, you were saying something about some dude named Jamal or something.”

“Johan,” the big guy says and glowers at him. “So Mindy used to know this guy. Said he was studying to be a marine biologist.”

“Mindy went to college? Man, brains and beauty, bro.” The little one motions to his head and his chest.

“She was there for like a semester before she dropped out. Then I think she used to just hang out wit her college friends for a year even though she wasn’t in school no more.” The big dude took a sip of his drink. “So anyway, this Johan. The dude liked whales and the college had a whale tank. It was a weird place she went, there was like a whole freakin’ zoo and a seaworld in there. Guy got in the habit of whale watching. He’d roll out of the dorm, ride his bike down to the tanks and just sit there watching them for like hours at a time.”

I was listening now. I was still holding my page open, still staring at the words like I was reading but my eyes were silent and listening.

“He didn’t have many friends or nothing. He was friendly with some people in his classes and some of his teachers or whatever, but you know, what she was saying, he didn’t hang out with anybody. Didn’t go to the bar after class or nothing.”

“Maybe that’s why he was staying in school and Mindy had to dropped out,” said the little guy.

“Yeah probably. No friends to drink with, I’d do homework and watch whales too.”

“Or at least watch some Van Damme movies or Skinamax or something.”

“Yeah, really. So eventually this Johan guy started getting in the tank with them,” the big guy took a bite of sandwich and continued with his mouth open. “With the whales. Even though only the caretakers and like the professors were supposed to be in there. This guy would climb into the tank every morning when no one was looking and swim with the whales.”

“Nobody kicked him out?”

“Not at first. Guess they didn’t have the heart. She said this guy was like a dolphin. He looked like he was traveling through the water without moving his hands or feet, he’d just kind of glide. He’d do rings around the whales and only come up for breath as often as they did. Like some kind of merman.”

“Or a mermaid.” The little guy held up his arm and let the wrist go limp. They both laughed.

“Good one,” the big guy shook his head, put a chip in his mouth. “Every day this guy was swimming with these freakin’ whales. She said crowds started forming not to watch the whales but to watch him slide through the water, grab onto their fins and pet them and everything. She said it went on like that for months until one day he refused to get out of the water when the caretakers came for feeding time. They called in campus security and everything. It was a big deal. The crowd started chanting ‘Attica’ and shit. And the next day, the crowd showed up but he didn’t. He just stopped coming. Dropped out of the marine biology program. Straight up switched his major to genetics.”

They sat there eating for a while. “Was he tryin’ to genetically engineering himself into a whale or something?” said the little guy.

“Actually, and don’t tell Mindy I told you this, cause she said it was all just a rumor, but it’s the opposite.”

“What?” the little guy said around a mouth full of pastrami.

“He decided the whales were too much like human to be animals. He was trying to free them from their bodies, from their whale-shaped prisons.”

“Oh, gimme a break.”

“I swear this is what she said. She was still hanging around the campus now and she said everyone was talking about it, everyone was saying ‘whale-shaped prisons’ and talking about weird genetic manwhales walking around pretending to be college kids. Any time they didn’t like somebody, or wanted to stop hanging out with a kid, they decided it was cause the person actually was a secret manwhale freed from his ‘whale-shaped prison.’”

The little guy rolled his eyes. “This guy turned the whales into people?”

“Said they were better than most of the regular people he met,” the big guy looked at his watch.

“Well you can’t argue that. Look at all these assholes,” the little guy waved his arms around the deli. “I wouldn’t mind having some whales in here if this is the best we got.” He looked over at me and I quickly averted my eyes back down to my book.

“You keep it up you’ll have as few friends as the merman. So,” the big guy took a sip of his soda. “Nobody had even seen this kid in a couple months when she says people heard these weird sounds at night, and shadows moving across the moon. The next day there were a bunch of smashed cars and some broken pavement out in the parking lot of the aquarium. Looked like a hurricane had torn through or whatever. And inside, the whales were gone. Poof, just gone.”

“And where was the merman? That Johan?”

“When they finally found him he was naked, wet and shivering, and standing at the top of the campus radio tower staring at the sky.”

I closed my book and went to throw away my garbage.

“What?” the little guy said, eating the last of his chips.

“Said he’d succeeded. Johan said he’d set them free.”

“You telling me those whales flew out of there?”

“I’m only telling you what Mindy told me.”

“So what happened?” the little guy said.

“I dunno. That was around when she stopped even going to the campus. I was thinking about it though. About how nice it sounds.” The big guy touched his beard and looked at the hardhat. “Just watching whales swim around, no home but the water, no worries but when you’re gonna breath next, all the fish you can eat. That’s gotta be good.”

They got up to leave, not bothering to pick up the trash on the table. “Yo, you think Mindy slept with that Johan guy?” the little guy said.

“I dunno. But if she did I’ll fucking kill her,” the big guy said with his hand on the door.

“Then I’ll have the corpse to myself. Lookout world!” said the little guy as the door closed behind him.

I picked up my coat, felt the hole in it and put it on. After wrapping the scarf around my neck, I stepped outside. At the bottom of the stairs leading back up to street level was a puddle of black silted snow that had melted and pooled. The air was cold and blank like a razor blade. I started walking up the steps and thought through the windows in my life: the bedroom that looked out on a brick wall, the lunches that were underground, the office that looked into another identical high-rise.

My breath was a fog that uncurled itself away from my face and hung suspended for the second before it disappeared. The air was mirrored and glacial, a shade that sparkled clear and ancient like blue Antarctic ice. And I stood there shivering and I lingered, staring at the sky, waiting for whales.

The Tomb of Roland Burris: A one-act play

Based on an actual conversation at work.

Me: Did you hear about Roland Burris’ tombstone?

S: No, is he dead?

Me: No, unfortunately he still breaths our air and drinks our water and it looks like he will soon be our US senator.

S: How unfortunate.

Me: Isn’t it? Anyways, turns out the guy bought himself a plot and erected a mausoleum to use as a family tomb.

S: Sounds gothic but not that unusual.

Me: And the guy had the words ‘Trail Blazer’ carved in big block letters under his name followed by a list of his many, many accomplishments with extra room left for whatever he might do in the future.

S: You’re kidding. What kind of achievements are we talking here? First man on the moon? Getting his GED?

Me: 'First African-American to: serve as Illinois state comptroller, serve as Illinois attorney general. First Non-CPA member to: serve on the CPA board.'

S: That’s an accomplishment?

Me: Well he blazed the trail, sure. He was the first. The level of hubris is almost unfathomable here, like something from a Greek tragedy.

S: If only this were the Trojan War, I’m sure he would have already been brought down by his pride. That or by a griffin or a hydra or something.

Me: Maybe by Cerberus.

S: Sure, three-headed demon dog, that would do the trick.

Me: So I figured now is the time that I should invest in my own plot and tombstone and put all my extraordinary accomplishments on it. That way history will never forget my intense and immense glory.

S: So maybe just a small 8x10 headstone for you then?

Me: I was think more like 15-foot tall obelisk made of volcanic rock. That way there will be four sides on which to record my historic deeds.

S: How about a normal-sized tombstone that’s just 15-feet thick. That way people will notice your accomplishments when they trip over them.

Me: Another good idea to consider. Maybe I’ll just have a statue of myself standing holding two stone tablets with my list of accomplishments on it. Like Moses.

S: And clad in flowing robes and a beard. Hey you could get the guy who did the Michael Jackson statue on the cover of HIStory.

Me: Or the blind girl who made that godawful plaster head that looked nothing like Lionel Richie in that one Lionel Richie music video from the ‘80s.

S: I understand she’s hurting for work these days.

Me: I don’t think I want to be as humble as Burris either. I’ll include accomplishments that I haven’t yet accomplished. Yet.

S: Give yourself some motivation to get out there and really strive.

Me: Sure, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. ‘First man on Jupiter, first Caucasian-American to lead the NAACP and/or the Nation of Islam.’ Now that its engraved in stone I kind of have to do it. No more sleeping in on Saturdays. 'Star of The Goonies.'

S: Well, what with all these accomplishments your engraving costs are going to be unreal.

Me: Maybe I’ll save some money by just scrawling all my achievements in marker on a piece of cardboard and leaning it on a rock.

S: Or just use the office printer to print up a list of accomplishments and just tape it onto a marble slab.

Me: It’s a laser printer, right?

S: I believe so.

Me: I’ll just send the marble slab through the printer, let the lasers carve it up for me.

S: Lasers are so awesome.

Me: So is Roland Burris.