My saint didn't know about that, so I got my face in my review mirror. Big mistake; I couldn't see heaven for the crows feet.
Feeling old, I thought I'd best do what elders do; give their bottles a lecture. On and on I went, touching on all the sage I'd accumulated over my countless lifetimes. I ended my lecture with, "No, Saint, that's about the size of it: Man seeks completion in woman. Woman seeks completion in offspring. Children seek only the moment. Only children got it right. For in the moment is creation and in creation is completion, because creation is the only gig in town."
Say, I'd better get that down.
I looked left, looked right. Damn! I was on that narrow stretch of viaduct over the rail yards; no turnoffs, no emergency lanes. This was always happening to me; profound words-to-live-by coming to me when life had my hands tied.
My first words-to-live-by came to me at 18. I was drinking and driving my way to college. Crossing into Iowa I looked at Minnesota in my review mirror, saw my life there as the stringer of crappies I'd caught fishing for sunfish. It came to me then; the answer to life. Driving, I reached for my new college notebook. I'd been drinking and driving the entire summer, and had met with a measure of success, so I deemed writing and driving a piece of cake, right?
Coming to my senses in my wrecked pickup, I looked at my face in my review mirror. It was busted up pretty good, but no more than after a Friday night out on the gridiron. So, before climbing out of my smoking pickup, I got my words-to-live-by down: "Tacked to the shell wall of the universe is the one score card given each of us--the life each of us creates from birth to death."
Coming off Grand Avenue's narrow viaduct, I was struck by how well those first words-to-live-by had held up over the years. Getting off Grand, looking for a place to park, I took to thinking how a guy might expand upon said words-to-live-by.
Parking in the warehouse district, I hurried up, wrote my expansion down: "In creating our lives, each of us has a hand in the positioning of the planet. For it is in the tally of the collective that the nether earth plane rises or falls."
And now to get down that answer-to-life that had come to me mid-viaduct. Let's see; something about the human condition. But, no, said answer-to-life had escaped me. I looked at my saint riding shotgun. Not wanting to appear absent minded to he who I'd just impressed with my lecture on the human condition, I pulled an answer-to-life out of thin air.
"Sometimes when the artist as a young man is out in the field--or in these modern times, down on a knee in a bean aisle, the answer to life comes to him. And the bean-counter in him wants to quick-draw his pad and pen, get the answer to life down. But, oddly, he keeps his pad and pen in his pants, for it has dawned on him, the only thing greater than the answer to life, is getting so much life coming at him, he can't get said answer to life down."
I put my hand in my pocket, made as if I were fondling my Gem there. Fondling, I gazed out my passenger window. My eye lit on a weed growing up against a warehouse wall. Odd, the weed looked a lot like that weed in my dream. It even had a small yellow bloom.
Omen.
Yes, time to toast the seeds of Eden. I stuck my hand in my glove box, pulled out my corkscrew. "To life," I said, attacking my saint.
After toasting, in rapid succession, everything within eyeshot, I toasted Saint Emilion himself. "No, Emil, weeds and women will come and go, but you--buddies till death." Which gave me the bright idea of having Emil toast me back. "To you, Anton. May you catch only sunfish from now on."
Yes, I was feeling sunny. So sunny I grabbed my saint, got out of my pickup, sat down next to my weed. Always the writer, I thought something might come from having my dark saint, here, strike up a conversation with my sunny bloom, there. Turned out my bloom was quite the flirt. Which, in turn, got my uptight saint all tongue-tied in his attempts to recite his vows of chastity. I, thoroughly entertained, drank liberally, and in no time had killed my saint. So I got up, went in search of proper place to bury a saint.
Coming round the back of the warehouse I spied what I was looking for; the dumpsters up against a fence. But on my way across the asphalt, some color caught my eye. I stopped, stared down the back door to the warehouse. Funny thing about pink; it always gave me the blues. No question about it; this pink door was the most depressing door in the universe.
But then I saw it: The door had a number on it--door number seven.
Omen.
Let's see, pink signifies woman. Who's the woman behind door number seven?
Hand in my pocket, I headed for the dumpsters all sunny again. No question about it; Gem was it--my girl number seven.
****
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