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African immigrant customer: they call me an uncle tom because I say stop complaining. I say, if you understand the country I came from, you know that America is a paradise and you have opportunity here. There are people who hate me for whatever reason, and they have the power and I don’t, so what can I do? But I have to worry about what I have power to do, and there are things I can do in this country. Yes, cops stop me in my own neighborhood and ask me if I live here. Yes, there are terrible cops: there are good cops, bad cops, and terrible cops, and I tell my kids, say yes sir and no sir. But I have been all over the world and the thing to know, whoever you are, is that you have an opportunity here.

Customer’s story about mortgage broker: this guy was a white guy and wasn’t giving her a good rate based on her credit history, and she thought there was sexism involved, so she went to this discount broker, an Indian guy a friend knew, who was like yeah with that credit rating we can definitely give you a better rate, and the customer’s realtor, who’d recommended the first broker, said well you should really go back to my broker and see if he’ll match what the other guy gave you, and she did, and he did, but he did it in a way she found fake, and she really did think he was sexist, so she went with the Indian guy and she got this great rate.

Customer’s story about acrobatic feat: She was so tired from that afternoon’s bike ride (this was many years ago) that in the middle of the night, in pitch black darkness, instead of going to the left where the bathroom was (which word she merely mouthed, she is so modest) she turned to the right, where the stairs were, and tumbled down them. That sounds really dangerous, of course, but in the midst of her chaotic tumbling and falling, she suddenly started laughing and did a somersault, and when she landed she was fine and still laughing at how absurd it all was. No injury.

Dog having energetically wandered off course
— leash yanked hard to starboard,
— sheet trimmed — the owner’s curse
hurriedly left he yanks the cord —

but the “furry sails are full” — so
the frenetic friendly mermaid of the sidewalk’s seas
trees and rocks clambers up my knees without aid
And I extend the opened palm of “hello.”

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enfrentamientos armados —

Customer showed attendant pictures of cruise to Panama. Customer showed attendant pictures of recent family cruise. Customer showed attendant pictures from trip to Greece. Customer showed tendentious “funny” political youtube — a youtube of an actually incredible soccer goal — of a recent Saturday Night Live sketch… showed him latest jokey internet meme. Customer showed picture of her walking, picture of her running, picture of her resting, picture of her dramatically collapsing after having run. Picture of her meal, of her meal with friends, of her alone at the empty table afterwards. Customer wanted to show video of Abiy Ahmed doing pushups. Attendant shown beautiful pictures of native Morocco and Tunisia, of the mosques and fruit trees of the horn of Africa. Attendant shown “portrait of customer as a young man:” incredibly handsome in the snow on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, black and white. Another, Vietnam era, color, posing with his squadron on the carrier deck. Attendant shown live eagle nest cam by dad. (Should we see what the eaglets are doing?)

Yes, attendant did have copy of Whitney Huston holiday album. Tig was name of the pit-mix dog of the gal. Zero was name of the cat of Tony’s that had been struck by a car and lived. Will had been the name of the young man of yesterday who saw a future in hyperbaric medicine. “Maybe a version that could travel with sports teams.” Brian in Charleston this weekend, Nancy in Chicago next weekend — Rick, Margo, & Max. Shared with Max my theory that when people say they’ll see you “tomorrow” you never actually see them the next day. You may see them soon — and if they say they’ll see you soon you may in fact see them tomorrow — but you won’t see them tomorrow, if that’s when they have said they will see you. (It may even be a certain type of person’s polite way of saying that you should probably not expect to see them too soon.) Cheerful teenage gal with Giant shirt who apologized for the happy cartoon figure on her credit card, which she figured I was mystified by (because I’d been slow in processing the transaction); said she had chosen it when she was “much younger.” Cute happy teenage girl working at Giant: small mocha blended coffee drink with whipped cream, later to be identified as “Z.”

The smallest moment I can currently remember: a wednesday, a thursday morning, man who orders a cappaccino with an extra shot (these days a father of two). This person let’s go of his credit card microseconds before I have held onto it myself, so that instead of ‘handing’ it to me he has ‘dropped’ it in my hand, dropped it ‘micro-inches’ — such that I’m led to ponder momentarily, what is the difference between ‘catching’ and ‘being handed to.’

Then the incident in which a customer’s tattoos were in Ancient Greek or a facsimile — “I apologize — but could I take a closer look at your forearms there.” Three statements: two on the underside beneath each elbow, the other on the underside of his right wrist. “Don’t fear death.” was the one I read most clearly (beneath right elbow.)

Customer ordered large iced americano with extra ice and large iced latte. Customer ordered medium caramel latte with soy and extra shot. (Was taking advantage of her daughter being at camp to clean out her room. Found sandwich.) How much space did you need to grow mushrooms? (Not MUSH ROOM) Customer not getting joke then suddenly getting it and going ballistic with laughter (then going on about his drinking binges, his magic mushroom trips, his escapades with nudists…) Customer not getting, then getting, the joke (and laughing modestly). Customer asked which Rolling Stones song it was that mentioned Needles, CA. Customer was thrilled to hear another customer had gotten a job finally. So was another customer, and another — It was so great. Attendant also expressed his congratulations, we’d all been part of this struggle. Customer himself expressed relief, satisfaction, “I mean — finally.”

Customer’s daughter already in school: wants to make devices with physical therapy applications. Person thinking of self as “dude,” called “babe”; person thinking of self as “woman,” called “this gentleman.” Customer said “you can’t talk to nobody about their addiction: they have to hit their bottom first.” (Customer had sensed the presence of addiction in the odd sleep and activity patterns of a friend.) Local artist needed photographs of her work put from cd-rom onto her hardrive and from there onto an online application for an art show. Customer couple ordered two everything bagels with veggie cream cheese, a medium latte, and double macchiato. Early sunday morning, no customers, attendant read in Luke of the sinning woman who had wetted the feet of Jesus with her tears and washed his feet with her hair. “Those who have sinned much have loved much.” (Attendant, walking home, had recalled Lou Reed’s introduction to the song “Sunday Morning” on the Velvet Underground record Live at Max’s Kansas City and wanted to hear that song “Sunday Morning” again.)

Attendant at certain point realized he was having a good day yet didn’t want to jinx or otherwise alter it by making any sort of statement about it having been good: but his feet felt good, always the first thing; then business was steady, not too much or too little; then, of the customers he knew well, they were being well behaved, respectful of each other; then, of the customers he didn’t know at all, they seemed to tolerate or appreciate the eccentricities of the known ones. I worked harder and longer than usual and yet it seemed like an especially light burden.

Customer failed important technical exam at work. Customer said never buy a house with dormers. Customer asked what the name of this neighborhood was, then people abruptly stopped coming in.

There are stories where gentrification is the evil, then there are stories of areas that can’t be gentrified or improved, where “the evil is deeply buried.” Areas that are totally accursed, built on gravemounds. In which the developers aren’t the bad guys but run out of town by “the evil that lies beneath.” (An evil which may be zoning laws or may be of a historical and racial character or may be simply geographical or what was once an idea of Good that won’t, however, change, and so has not remained Good. Maybe it is the Will of The People and not evil at all, but their simple inclination. Or it really is something like Satan, or grave mounds, or Satan in grave mounds.) Or the developers are kept in town to do something nobody wants or likes but which yet no one is entirely responsible or blameable for. Even when the doomed area is “gentrified” no one really wants to be there. All of it unfolds very slowly. Then it may turn out that that Evil that prevents change is of the same stamp as that Evil which creates it, and so public policy isn’t the answer but “looking inward” is. Build a big temple in the center of the busiest street devoted to — what is wrong with us? Devoted to why we are not smart and do not do those things that will be to our advantage. The Temple of Self-defeat or what have you. Let us build a big temple in the least pragmatic place so as to compel ourselves to “look inward” (and once we’ve robbed from the temple the invaluable golden Idol of the idea that makes us defeat ourselves, we’ll remove the temple to a more sensible spot. Make housing of the old temple, or mixed-use. But it will be highly maneuverable, this building, a mobile temple, so that in times of derangement, we can roll it back.)

Mom is by the one car with the child in her arms and a child is beside her standing and a bentover grandmother-mother-in-law stands beside that child, and mom has told the husband and father that the keys are in her bag and the father-husband has replied to her that he for some reason put her bag in the other car, which car he opens and retrieves the bag from

and now as the woman receives the bag, her face flushed from the heat and from the family event she’s trying to manage, she says something which I can’t recall, and the man is laughing (and I realize something has happened to the man) and he says “there is a hole there” — his foot has landed in an unseen hole of the grassy median by the car they now have the keys to. He has already taken his foot from the hole and there was no injury or anything else, that was it. That was the story..

By age Fifty, Summs would come to say, he had grown sick of the mere magic tricks and parlor games associated with his mystic practice. He had made himself grow three inches, but had lost them again within the week. He had written two different personal letters in two separate corners of the world, and posted them to his guru in Russia, using only his mind, but the syntax had been childish and the handwriting sloppy (as his guru later informed him, first through an email then through a dream). Games! Summs thought, who expected far more. For what other goal could there be in attaining enlightenment than immortality itself or at least an unnaturally long life span? Or at the very least, a sense that life was not just — this.

Then he had heard through a friend of what was known as The Exercise, which was also known as The Position. Once you got into The Position, your pain increased and Time decreased until at a certain point Time actually stopped. Then, if you continued to hold it, Time actually became detached from you, you became “unlatched from its locomotive,” and you could move forward or back in it just like you could in space. You were no longer moving in the two directions the track allowed, but 360 — and who knew? maybe even up and down!

Summs had never gotten that far with it (though he knew people who had) but one time while practicing he found himself levitating, which was one of its better known side effects and indicated you were getting close. Button by button Time’s “straightjacket” was becoming unlatched. However, the downside was that The Position really was quite painful and Time could really seem quite excruciatingly slow before it became completely stopped.

Now there was a sudden knocking at the door. “I’m in The Position!” he cried back. The knocking became more pronounced, “please GO AWAY!” he said still more forcefully. Then he found himself levitating toward the door and unlatching it with a quick back and forth motion of his head, though he was so annoyed by his visitor he didn’t even realize his feet weren’t touching the ground. Opening the door, a package lay at his feet — what! It was his latest round of dietary supplements! His anger completely melted away in the presence of his latest delivery. Well that was quick! What amazing times we lived in, after all! Summs was indeed so awestruck with the conveniences of modern life that it sometimes seemed that, through the miracle of technology, Society itself was attaining the enlightenment that had so far escaped so many of its individuals. Maybe all we had to do, in the end, thought Summs, is lean back, relax and responsibly enjoy human progress. Enough of these games, indeed!

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