Forecast

... I have the weather channel on.  I do not care about the weather.  It is like a yellow funnel one uses to pour old molasses into a plastic bottle.  It is like sea salt placed under trees so deer can lick it before the mating season.  But the weather is not to mating; nor is it to licking salt.  Unless it is around the rim of a mixed drink, in the basement of an old building heated by steam radiators.

I have the weather channel on.  I do not watch it.  I know it will snow. Yet, like a child who stubs an ash tree with a knife he found in the woods, I wonder how simple it would be if I just watch the channel.  I would know what is happening in Oklahoma; or I will be jealous of folks in Alberta.  But I do not care about high winds.

... I think about a woman wearing pin-striped suit. Or just about the pants.  I give her a name.  She gives me one back.  I see her in my car, talking about the weather in Topeka.  Then about the joys of canoeing on a misty morning.  I give her a new name. She laughs back at me.

I have the weather channel on.  I am not interested in the Olympics, nor do I care about the sand storms in Nigeria. What I want is a moment of dis-association. A space where space has a time.  A time to remain unaffected by the intestinal bugs of an old dog also watching the weather channel.  Because I am.  A space where there is no wine, no death, no women in pin-striped suits.  Just me, writing about all the things I do not care about while the weather channel is on.

... And I get up to find a bottle of wine.  A friend sends me an email from across the Pond to let me know that most people we know do not care what we are doing tonight.  I write back saying that I am dreaming of a woman in pin-striped pants.  She says she is having dinner with a boring man.  I write back to tell her it is snowing in Topeka.

My mind is like a spinner on the wheels of a zooped up car driven by a teenager.  The type of car you know he could not afford.  Nor can his family if he has one.  I look at my dog-- he is dreaming of ice cream.  Or eternity.  I cannot offer him a bowl of eternity but brush his back.  He likes that.  Like all men do.

... I get up and turn the TV off.  It is time for reading.  I have a book waiting for me.  I have rain over Baltimore in our forecast.  I think about a glass of wine.  And a woman in pin-striped pajamas.

March 3, 2010

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013