Shards Of Glass And Whatnot

photo: " broken mirror"

My nephews had circled from afar; I saw them come to earth upon my driveway this Sunday morning. It was snowing, so they came in to be "de-iced", as they put it. It was a bald-faced maneuver to read my paper, eat my food, and drink my tea, along with whatever other mischief they could hatch.

I sensed this called for strong measures on my part, so I scurried like a vole into the kitchen, chivvied some Earl Grey (courtesy Grace Tea Company, NY, NY) from its canister, and made a mighty pot of tea...so mighty, in fact, that I began to sing in German and hum "Ein fester Berg ist unser Gott".

"Have you..."

"...something a bit..."

"...stronger than tea?"
"...something noch fester, bitte?"

I heard a mighty chorus mutter.

"You don't want tea?" I asked, incredulously.

I looked at them, snow covered little ragamuffins. My heart melted.

"I picked up some Cointreau at the Duty Free coming back from T.O. (Toronto to all you unfortunate enough to live far, far away from the fairest border in the world!) in January." I pointed to the cabinet where I kept the real stuff. The cabinet was filled with a series of bottles of booze in various stages of deconstruction.

"And there 's some beer..."

As an aside:

 I have finally found the proper usage for the word "deconstruction". I came across this usage in Foucault's seminal work "The Real As LCBO", where  the LCBO is the Liquour Control Board of Ontario. Bryan, my wife's cousin, gave me a cherished copy of the work from the vaults of the LCBO in Kingston.

Now continuing in this vein, let me observe that maintaining a wine cellar and a liquor cabinet - I use the expression Licker Locker...actually Licka Locka!- is a iffy proposition when one does not drink.

She-who-must-be-obeyed has a friend in Cleveland who thinks I am quite a pestilence. She - the pestilence thinking female - drinks beer. Her tastes seem to be various and untutored.

Every time she comes to town, I have to check and see whether we have a stock of her brew of choice. Since she only drinks 1 or two cans of the six pack- without benefit of glass or tumbler, I might add-this leaves a balance of 4 to 5 cans with nowhere to go.

Recently when she blew in like the Swine Flu, I was sent to the cheap fermented products cellar to see what was up. I distinctly remember some major-domo-ish character telling me that we had better started laying in the '07 malt liquors soon, and that things were not at all like back in the old days when His Lordship was still alive.

In the fridge, there were 4 cans of beer, all the same brand, all of the same provenance, buried way in the back, hiding under an overturned wicker tumbrel of mottled lettuce leaves and various salad greens that had gone through Falluja - both battles.

There was no light beer...and I hadn't laid in the '08 "lites"! And this was indeed a problem, and I should be taken to ask for not being on top of it. I had been quite recently informed - as recent as at least 20 minutes ago -  that her nibs drank light beer nowadays, it being the style. Not only did she do so now, but it seems that she always had done so, at least in the recollection of the intelligentsia standing around in the kitchen. Of course, since I buy the suds, and do so once a year, I knew better.

"If she always drank "lite" beer, where did these four cans of regular beer come from, then?" I asked when I returned to the upstairs, bringing beer to be drunk and beer to be forensic evidence with me. "She drank regular beer last time." I said. "Q.E.D." I added, with Euclidean finality.

I have often found that imbibers of the grain and the grape do not really have any notion of what they are drinking. I suggested that we serve the regular stuff, and she would never know the difference, only to be rewarded for what I considered my brainy little economy with an icy glare of the Wisconsin Glaciation type.

Back to the story:

"And there's some beer...in the ice box."

My three nephews glanced at each other and guffawed. Ice box! I had a sudden lonely feeling, as if I were to be the object of cartoon justice: utter an archaic word, and then get an anvil dropped on one's head! Ice box, victrola, Polaroid; the list goes on.

They bypassed the Kelvinator ( ??!! an ice box named after Lord Kelvin- rather cold indeed!) passing by the Food-A-Rama, et allaient directement a la bouteille de Cointreau.

A small crystalline Steuben holding the Cointreau, a dish of shavings of Trapper Joe's dark chocolate, a Villeroy and Bosch Botanica tea cup filled with the delightful odor of black tea and bergamot, and in the cup a stick of cinnamon from my Pakistani epicerie.

Outside, the snow was blowing and settled upon their three SUVs.

"Eco-observation number 20." I said.

They looked up from my copy of The Times and smiled vaguely. Number 20 on the list of "Eco-Observations" is something like why drive 3 separate cars when 1 will suffice?

"Number 3." I added, this being a slur without benefit of the Reverend Bowdler. It was like saying they were Nero, and they had a certain relationship with Agrippina. I really can't be more specific than that. Have a go at Google, if you actually care.

They looked up, smiled, and hoisted their tea cups in unison as if to drink to my health, pinkie fingers up, and, although unsaid, indicated that I should be hoist upon a triple pinkie petard.

I had to admit that they had a nice touch to their riposture.

"You know,..."

"...sometimes...not often, but sometimes..."

"...you do come up with something rather good."

I smiled. "Glad you like the tea."

They shook their heads.

"...the chocolate?" I wondered.

"No, no."

"This is all great, of course."

"We meant the Blog."

I gave me comfort that someone other than the Gestapo, KGB,  and Thought Police read the bloody thing. However, these three in front of me were not known for various and sundy kindnesses.

I hedged. "Anything...in par-tic-u-lar?" I gave the room a quick once around, looking for the quickest exit. It appeared that a quick leap to the left, over the side table, then a down and roll to the pantry door just might be in the cards.

"That old posting 'In The Nightlands' ."

"We liked it."

I waited.

"We were shocked."

O.K. An insult in a velvet glove, or a compliment in a furze-laden glove. I'll take whatever is remotely related to a compliment. My mother is an expert in this field of the ontology of compliments: the velvet glove, the velveteen glove, the crack in the wise of the universe, the give with the left and take with the right...it runs in the family.

Austin said, "The power of God is shattered like a mirror. God is broken up into shards, sharp pieces that reflect His power, but no longer unified. That's what was interesting.

We see it in the world. People always moan why the news always dwells on the negative..."
Aiden continued, "Well, there's so much of it, and it presents a unified face to the world, and it is so very captivating.

But God, God is scattered around. You look and look for pieces of that mirror that once was God, then you find a piece, but you can only see so much..."

I sat wordlessly.
Aloysius added, "Yes, you see that there are so many views of God, for example, an endless list of religions and such, but there's only one Genocide, isn't there? I mean, there may be many occurences, but it is still pretty much the same slash and shoot."

I did not know. These cute little metaphors that pop out of my writing are just my way of getting through another tedious session at the old keyboard.

They actually have meaning???

The sky was greyer than the tea. The snow was making a determined effort to white-out the world.

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http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2007/02/in-night-lands.html

reprinted and actually edited and re-drafted and so on...hopefully better, but one never knows.