Tarmac Meditations #117: Work in Progress

The minister’s granddaughter had a laugh out of a Toulouse Lautrec poster. You make me laugh she said that first night. I better, I said, otherwise it’ll just get weird. Frank Zappa said that.

“I’m glad to hear that you are writing” she said. After a considerable silence, she added, “What a horrible price I’ve paid for your writing.”

I put the phone down and wondered, not for the first time, who was this person I had married one day last June. “Are you kidding me?” I thought later, slouching like DeNiro but just feelin’ tired. There is plenty more to say but before all that there is a price to be paid. Did she know that words are priced in blood and virtue, in boredom and in sin, that words cost the earth and more until they want to be found and then, harder still, until you are ready to hear them.

From the start there was red and orange glowing. At the end there was fire. Leaving before the embers had died required making a shady deal with an enlightened Beelzebub. Jane Gowan said that a long time ago, when I was foolish enough to think that I was ahead of the game. I still like it even if I don’t know what it means.

Photo Credits

Photos are © Michael Lebowitz – All Rights Reserved