What I do…

Now playing: Gamma Ray – “Land of the Free Pt. II”

I was out walking. I met a girl, like I do. We chatted for a bit. At one point she asked, “What is it you do, anyway?”

Heh, what is it I do? It’s a funny question to me for many reasons. I do a lot of things. I do a few things well and usually like people to also think I do them well. Then there is the one thing I do, that I pretty much don’t care if any thinks I do well, cause, well, I do.

After this chat with the lady, I started thinking, that some folks know what I do. Some folks don’t.

So, for the next few days, I shall show you what it is that I do.

* * *

It’s Poetry, Innit?

By

~Me

I don’t know how I found that little store. It was tucked away into a forgotten corner of the city. In fact, truth to tell, I’ve not been able to find it since that day; the day I needed a birthday present for my wife.

It’s been a couple of years, but I still remember the curiosity I felt when I looked up at the sign hanging above the door. Its bold and clumsy lettering read:

All I am: A Collection of a Lifetime

There was no display window but a small board hung on the door. With a heavy black ink  it welcomed me in with a simple declarative “OPEN”. I twisted the knob and pushed myself inside.

If claustrophobia were one of my issues, I most likely would have fled for the outdoors without a moment’s hesitation. The shop, if one could really call it that, was a shrine to clutter with piles of nick-knacks, junk, and various other do-dads pushing against the ceiling. A very narrow passage way made a valley between the mountains of miscellany running through the center of the place and I also noticed that there were two even narrower paths cutting off to my left and to my right. I reached over a grabbed a book off one of the piles and examine the spine. In a dull gold it read “Don Quixote Part II”. It wasn’t something my wife would be at all interested in, so I put it back and started to move deeper into the valley.

From somewhere in front of me, I heard voices. There were actually two voices, in fact, with one sounding like a small child and another belonging to an old man.

“Hello?” I called out and received an immediate response.

“Take the first left past the pile of Bat-mobiles. You’ll find me,” the old man replied. “If you get to the boxes of stuffed penguins, you’ve gone too far.”

I stumbled through, past the piles of newspapers and bags of what looked like old marbles until I find what was perhaps the largest pile of Bat-mobiles I had ever seen. Well, of course, it really was the only pile of Bat-mobiles I had ever seen, but it was very large. Regardless of the pile, just as the old man had explained, there was a path heading off too the left between two slopes of old and broken bicycles. It was a tight squeeze but finally I emerged into a relatively open area. There, behind an ancient wood counter was the old man. He grinned at me as he leaned on a cash register that must have been 150 years old.

“Welcome, welcome.” He said. “We welcome him, don’t we Flavius?”

An animalistic grunt grabbed my attention and I looked up to see, inside an overly large brass birdcage, a small monkey wearing what appeared to be a mini Roman centurion outfit.

“Is that a…” I started to ask but the old man cut me off.

“He’s just a silly creature. Thinks I’m his nephew, he does. Never mind him though, I think. It’s you the one what needs looking after, I think.”

I couldn’t get an exact read on how old the shopkeeper was, but if he was under 80 I would be shocked. His hair, which flowed well past his shoulders what shock white and while his beard was clean and short, it also lacked any sort of color. It was the exact opposite with his eyes. At first they seemed brown, but they seemed to shift right in front of me to a soft shade grey. He was odd-looking sort of fellow; he was just an odd fellow.

“I’m looking for a gift for my wife. It’s her birthday today and I completely forgot.”

A few teeth were missing from the smile he flashed me. “It’s a common mistake, it is. Made it a few hundred times myself, I did. Course, she’s gone and dead now and isn’t asking for much these days.” He let out a long wheezing laugh and since it seemed the polite thing to do, I joined him.

When he finally caught his breath, he wiped his eyes and asked, “What do you think she’s looking for, this wife of yours?”

I hadn’t really given it any thought. I often didn’t. What with work and the pressures of just getting through the day, I wasn’t really certain what she wanted for her birthday.

“She likes to read.” I said.

“Bah, for her birthday you get her a book? For her birthday it should shine. It should sparkle, is what it should do. Grand gestures are for birthdays, I would say.”

“Well, she doesn’t really wear that much jewelry.”

The old man reached up to the top of his head and gave his scalp a good scratch. “Does she have a spot? A place she puts what she likes?”

I thought about. The shelves and the cabinets and the top of the entertainment center had little things on them.

“She likes these little glass balls,” I threw out to him, not really sure of the statement and it probably sounded like a question.

The shopkeeper looked up towards Flavius and said, “Little. Glass. Balls.” He closed his eyes and nodded. Flavius just grunted. His eyes snapped open and he darted out from behind the counter.

“I think I have exactly what you are looking for, I think,” he said as he grabbed my arm and started pulling me down one of the narrow paths that led from the counter.

We passed piles of thumbtacks and a heap of cassette tapes as we threaded our way through the store. His grip on my arm never faltered as he pointed out the highlights of his stock.

“Fine hats there. Took a fine lady to the Derby in one of them hats, I did.” We twisted around a grouping of colored glass vases to face a wall of stuffed bears, Teddy and otherwise. “Bears,” he said simply and nodded.

Finally, after I couldn’t tell how many switchbacks and turnarounds we had made, the two of us were standing in front of a fine old wooden display case. The glass had long been removed but the shopkeeper didn’t seem to be bothered by it, so I wasn’t.

He let go of my arm and reached up and removed a small round object. Placing it close to his ear his smiled.  “I remember this day. It was before she died. She sang a soft song from home.”

It slipped from his hand into mine. I raised it up to listen and was stunned at the sound that filled my ear. It was both beautiful and sad, this voice singing in a language I couldn’t understand. I was filled with a longing for better days.

“Thirty dollars and it’s yours,” he said.

I frowned and handed it back to him. “It’s a lovely sound, but I was thinking of something a bit more, uh, a bit more.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed spinning and setting the singing orb back in its spot. He started poking into holes and checking shelves. “What you need is something elegant and simple, is what you need,” he said. “What you need is one of these.”

Another glass orb was placed into my hand and I felt it vibrate slightly. It felt warm and as I brought it up to my ear the shopkeeper shook his head.

“No, no, no. It’s a looker that one is.”

I held the glass up to the light that was seemingly coming in from nowhere and saw what looked like a small child playing with his mother. The two of them looked so happy and content that I actually thought I could almost feel the love between them. Something I had never known.

“That’s a nice one, innit? Not for selling though, no. That one would be requiring a bit of a trade. Something of you and your mother, perhaps, I think.”

“My mom?” I replied, not grasping why he wanted to bring her up. “My mom died when I was two. Never really knew her.”

The old man snatched the ball from my hand with youthful speed. “Shame that, but then you’ll be needing something else.” He returned the mother and son ball to the shelf and started searching again.

“I did rather like that.”

“Yes, yes. Of course you did, but it’s not for you, is it? We’ll find something here, we will.”

I reached up and grabbed a blue tinted ball that was sitting just off the left of me. The color was both soothing and troubling at the same time. It was warmer than the last one, but it also didn’t vibrate. Looking deep into the swirling hues I could just make out two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting on a small red brick platform of sorts. They were smiling and holding hands, unaware that there was anything else going on around them. It was innocence and passion conflicting with each other in the way only young love is capable of doing.

“What’s this one?” I asked.

The old man looked over his shoulder and then slowly stood straight and turned towards me.

He grinned soft, showing little teeth. “It’s poetry, innit?”

“How’s that?” I replied, still drawn into the scene of those two kids sitting there enjoying their youth.

“They don’t know. They don’t care. It’s all before them and yet all they can see is themselves and each other.” He walked over to me. “Those two are everything that life offers and nothing that life actually gives, yet, there,” he pointed to the orb that sat in my hand, “there, in that moment, in that short brief intersection of time and space, there, they are poetry.”

I watched as the boy kissed the girl and they embraced like adults shortly before exploding into the laughter of children. He was right. It was poetry.

“How much for it?” I asked.

The old man shook his head and said, “That one, that one is not for sale, its not. That’s one of my treasures. That one…” he paused and looked off into nothing. His grey eyes lost focus for a brief happy moment and then he looked back to me. “That one I wouldn’t trade for the world, I wouldn’t.”

I nodded and placed it back on the shelf reluctantly.

“You don’t have the world to trade, do you?” the old man asked me and I shook me head no.

“A shame,” he replied. “I could offer you such a deal for it, I could. But, how about this? This one is nice, it is.”

I  spent another hour in that shop before I found myself standing out in front with a beautiful glass ball with two lovers walking in the snow. I traded something for it, but I don’t really recall what it was. My wife loved it and it sits on the entertainment center in my front room.

It really was a very nice gift. One of her favorites, but, you know, it really wasn’t poetry.