Brother, Brother

My brother was up in the middle of the night. He poured himself a bowl of sugar free cheerios and poured some honey in the bowl. He went to the refrigerator hemp milk and poured the milk in the bowl. He sat down in the couch to eat. It was the middle of the night and the house was quiet. He took the cheerios from the bowl and put them in his mouth and discovered they weren’t sweet. He thought — perhaps in my confusion I poured the honey somewhere else. There were other bowls on the kitchen counter and it was night. I might have been inattentive and poured honey on a dirty bowl from the night before.

My brother was old enough that he was worried about his own mind. He took index cards out of the drawer and picked up a sharpie and wrote on one “this bowl” and on the others “not this bowl” and he put the card that said “this bowl” on the bowl he wanted to pour the honey in and “not this bowl” on all the other bowls and then he looked at what he had done and had a feeling of coldness in his stomach. Who did this? Why did he do this? What did “this bowl” mean? He looked at one of the bowls with the card on it and said “this bowl has a card that says it is not this bowl.” Who would write that?

He wished his wife would kiss him and make the panic go. He jogged to the bedroom using one hand to keep his pyjama bottoms from falling but she wasn’t there. He went to the garage and looked in and saw his wife kissing the body of a man in the backseat. Was he asleep? He had a split second decision — either the woman kissing the man was not his wife or…the man she was kissing was him! But if the man she was kissing was him who had made the disaster of the cards and bowls?

It was too terrible to think about! But he had to. It was as if all his practice since he was a little kid forgotten by Mommy when she went off to work had been for this moment. He went to his accounts and figured out exactly how much money he had and wrote a check made out to cash and left it for himself on the car. Once he had his money and the stranger who he was didn’t all would be well. 

He had been spending money and tasting honey his whole life long, he just hadn’t been him. He was in the car.

The fool with the bowls and the cars was somebody else. Some stranger probably or somebody he had just briefly met while he was doing something more important. The sooner forgotten the better. He closed his eyes and struggled to get to sleep, hopeful, even confident that he would not wake up.

Revealer of the Mysteries

I finally had a chance to ask Richie to clear it up for me. I thought he had vanished, and indeed there was no record of him on the internet since the 90s and people who had cared about him a lot and put a lot of time into looking for him hadn’t found him, ever since an incident when some guys had lured him into a bar in midtown and locked the door. But I have my own ways of getting information. Here’s what I learned:

1. You can compare human beings to dolls whose eyes are cameras and who print out photos within our hearts, and we have the ability to go over those photos later using the analysis tools in the heart. So the heart is a bit like a lab. (When I asked him if the heart “sees” he said that was a stupid question.)
2. Colors mean things and anybody who doesn’t know that the meaning of say mauve is different from dark orange is like deliberately amputating a part of themselves.
3. When we curse ourselves we bring social realities into being that get stuck in damaging patterns. It is like a crowd in New Year’s Eve at Times Square where somebody gets panicked, starts running, then a few more start running, then people have to run to get out of the way and then the whole crowd is moving and you must run or get crushed, and then some fall and they are. Crushed. They are crushed.
4. Crushed to death?
5. There is no death.

Avenue B Storeront Law Office, February 1982

My father wanted to go but Shukach sent Rodriguez to get him

to listen to his complaint and they didn’t let him

 go

So

He had to listen to the complaint of Shukach

Who was the surviving member of a pair of twins from Lodz

And seemed because of the air to be wearing rouge

The twins the law had proven unable to both catch

Though it tried 

and one, the elder by eight minutes, died

In jail. “The county didn’t give a damn

Do you think we could win that one?  I am

Pretty sure I have a case.”  “Who’s the lawyer, you or me?”

My Dad asked Shukach and he

Made a sad face like he was three

“You are, Mr. Kaplan, you are a great man.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, Shukach.  Don’t flatter me

Just it would be nice if you could be a little bit more concise

Or if not that at least precise

“Of course.”  “Because my wife–” “Mrs. Kaplan” “Yes.  She…”

“I know she is a wonderful woman.” “I wouldn’t go that far

But she’s  more wonderful than you are

And she’s waiting for me.”

“Just five minutes Mr. Kaplan” he kept my father there 

for another hour trying to explain

the reasons for his complaint 

Although he did not want to complain

My father said “You could have fooled me” 

It was because of negligence on the part of the city

That he had lost feeling in his right leg below the knee,

And had essential tremors of the hand like palsy

“What’s that worth?”  “If you fixed watches for a living, a lot

But since you don’t, not

So much,Shukach

Not so much.  

Anyway my wife is waiting for me–”

“I never had a wife, I never had a girlfriend. I’m alone.

Since Ernie died.  I was once in love.  That girl

Who used to work here, Fatima?  Arab girl?

She was so sexy she made me want to die.

Looking at her it was like I had gone crazy.

I followed her to her apartment, her brother Abdul

Said if you come here again, I’ll kill you, fool

He said he’d slit my throat from ear to ear

With a razor.  I said I didn’t care.

That’s how crazy I was.  That’s how I knew I was in love.

I didn’t care if I died.

Whatever happened to her?”

“I don’t know, Shukach.”  

“Dead.”  Rodriguez 

 says.

My father says: “I think we’re done.”

“Really, we can’t get anything?” “No.” 

“I meant money.”“I know what you meant.”

 “So?”

“No.”

“I don’t see how their race is relevant.”

“I know you think we’re ignorant

When Ernie and I were in Byelarus

When it was still the two of us

We taught a bear to dance.  

That’s funny don’t you think?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think.

I really have to go, Shukach.

Although I’d be lying if I said this didn’t resonate

Your life.  Your loneliness.

I can relate.  

Somehow.  Somewhat.  Help me lock the gate.”

“We both had beautiful singing voices.

We sang songs from Kiss Me Kate.  We’d sing

Sinatra.  We sang My Way

But made it Our Way.  

Don’t you think what I went through is worth something?”  

“Yes. I’ll give you five dollars to let me go.”

“I’m serious. They called us the Singing Twins from Lodz.”

“I’m serious too, Shukach. Apres moi le deluge

Do you know what that means?  It means it’s done.

Finito.  It means, I, Ben Kaplan, I’m the last one.”

“But we don’t hear you complain.” “Untrue

That’s all I do.  

That’s all I know how to do

That’s all any of us knows how to do.”

Carapace of Diamonds, Carapace of Hearts

Ah, you know how it is, said Dillip. We come into the world naked and unprotected, looking for love, and the blows of life harden us. We build up a thick shell around ourselves, but then, oh then, that’s where the magic happens. Our shell has to do all the work a person has to do to live. It has to decide who to trust at work. It has to let some touches land and make other glance off, like rain off a roof. It has to smile in the sun. It has to draw close the nourishing kiss, while it fends off the shattering kick. It has to breathe. It has to pulse out, pulse in, pulse out, pulse in. And then don’t you see said, Dillip, and his face was up against my neck, I felt his tears, his sweat, and his moist breath. I felt his body against mine, first sobbing, then trembling. Don’t you see? The carapce becomes a heart. It is as vulnerable as what it grew up to protect.

I won’t hurt you, Dillip.

What I wondered had become of his original heart, the one that this new carapace of hearts had grown up to protect? Had it shriveled away to a dry kernel? A seed of who he could have been, if fate had been more kind?

Had it merged in the world of dreams I wonder, to be there a train, or the sky, or me?

I couldn’t ask him. His breath was soft and regular now and his eyes were shut.

Sweet dreams.

Pretty Good, Really Good, Darn Good

“I can make a blade so sharp that just to hear about it, will cut you.” said Pretty Good. And all the listeners bled. Except for the Sweet Prince, cause he stopped his ears with his thumb.

“I can make a blade so sharp that just to think about it will cut you..” Said Really Good. And all the listeners fell over. It was so real, the blade of Really Good! Except for Blue King. He was fine. Cause he had learned not to think.

“I can make a blade so sharp that even if you don’t think about it your head falls off.” said Darn Good. And their heads fell off. Every single one of them. The Blue King too.

But the Queen and her maids came out of the tower and saw all the heads.

“I can make a bandage that heals so well, just to hear about it will make it all better.” said Pretty Good. My she was pretty! Those that could hear got better and thanked her.

“I can make a bandage that heals so well, just to think about it will make you all better.”And a couple who could still think got better.

“I can make a bandage that heals so well, even if you don’t think about it, it gets all better.”

Blue King’s head started to rise from the floor of the palace. Up, up, he went! Soon we couldn’t see him any more.

Is he better? Of course he’s better!

All better? Let’s hope!

Where’s he at now? We don’t know!

Darn Good wiped the blood then darned the socks.

It’s Okay to Not Be Okay

Sometimes the most dangerous thing is to be safe.

The goal is to realize there is no goal.

Only the things you do for no reason reveal who you are.

Your most particular self is your most universal.

Some day soon you will realize there is no such thing as time.

If you do not love the part of your lover that hates themselves you do not love them all.

The most important thing to pay attention to is what your consciousness is like when you are not paying attention.

Even the one who despises himself respects himself as one who despises.

The only way for a paradox to work is to believe both sides of it — the moment you accept that reality is paradoxical, paradoxes become inert for you.

And you need new paradoxes.

Are there new paradoxes? Actually that is the only sort of paradoxes there are. Every time you look at a paradox you are not seeing that paradox, you are seeing something new that has the same name.

The sameness of two things that are the same is different than the sameness of two different things that are the same.

Of any two things: they are the same, or they would not both be things, and they are different or they would not be two.

The concept horse is not a horse. But it is now.