A Surreal Normality

It is a surreal sense of normality that infuses the air.  I took a walk yesterday morning up to the Boulevard.  The street was blocked off to traffic for the Autumn Crap Festival.  They call it an art festival, but it is not.  Just crap.  

Make sure you look at the price.  You could have this large piece on the wall in your living room for just $1,600.  

Or this.  

There was other stuff.  String and fabric, painted rocks on wooden boards, handmade jewelry, and lots of pastel paintings of horses and skies and flowers.  Oh. . . two of Travis' friends who are fairly well-known artists were showing there, but they were not the norm.  

Just as I was about to leave the house, the woman who. . . I should call her something else.  Doc?  She has a Ph.D.  Doc texted.  

"Are you going to the art festival?"

Oh, shit.  What would I say?  I could have said, "Sure, if you are," or something suggestive.  But I froze.  I don't know what I imagined, but I felt unprepared, fat, diseased. . . scared?  

I told her I was almost there, but that it wasn't really an art festival.  I added, "Are you going?"

"Considering it." 

When I got there, I sent her the photos above.  

"This is what you will be missing if you don't come."

Radio silence.  That night, I texted, "Did you go?"

"Nope."

Just that.  Oh, well. . . sounded a little curt.  Sure.  I wanted to write,  "Give me a little more head's up sometime," but I didn't.  Once I lose twenty pounds, though. . . .

It was early morning, but the streets were full of locals trying to beat the crowd.  I live .5 miles from the Boulevard, and the neighborhood sidewalks were full of fellow travelers, so to speak.  When I got there, I looked for the booth of the Israeli woman I met at the party for the German filmmaker some months back.  She had intrigued me then.  Standing in her tent booth with her pastels, though, she barely looked the same.  I said hello, but there was no there there.  I looked at her small but expensive pieces from which she makes a fair living now having left her job as an interior designer some years ago.  Landscapes.  Huh.  

I walked on.  I decided that the best thing you could be is a young female in your late teens or early twenties.  Everyone likes them.  They are like Christmas decorations.  The worst thing to be, surely, was an old man.  They are like old vegetables left in the crisper far too long.  Nobody wants that.  

I ran into a friend who is head of the "art" festival.  He was with a woman I had seen him with before.  She, too, is on the festival committee.  We said hello, and then the head of the Chamber of Commerce came up.  There was a lot of something in the air.  

"Oh, yes. . . I think you were on the email I sent to the group."

"Yes. . . I think I was."

"We should make a decision soon."

My friend was having a difficult time explaining me, so I said, "I used to date the daughter of the head of the Chamber many years ago."  

She was a Country Club College student then.  She used to walk by my house every day, and one day she decided to ask me out.  She was a pretty little socialite who eventually went on to work for a fashion magazine in NYC as did some other of her friends.  They had "connections."  

The current Chamber head seemed unimpressed or worse.  

Later I ran into another old friend.  I shouldn't say "friend."  He was a friend of a friend, a real character well-known around town.  He had married a very wealthy woman who was later institutionalized.  He got the kids and the money, then married an even wealthier woman.  He was a party boy, a real heavy drinker with an acerbic wit.  His wife was incensed when they were blackballed at The Country Club, so she sent him away to the Betty Ford Clinic.  Three times.  And eventually, it worked.  Sort of.  He later divorced his wife to marry a young girl who took him for everything he had.  Now, in poor health, he was sweating heavily in the early morning air.  

"Hey, remember when we used to come to the art festival and take the girls into he outdoor store and screw them in the changing room?"

"Uh-uh.  I never did that."

He looked at me as if I had just spoken a foreign language.

"You screwed a lot more women than I did, pal."

He shook his head looking to the ground.

"A lot of fucking good that did me," he laughed pathetically.  

In the distance, I saw a matron of the town standing with a group of her social friends.  I moved off in the other direction.  

As I was walking home, a group of people were approaching on the sidewalk ahead of me.  In the lead was a very pretty young blonde in a typically short skirt.  I think I might have been looking at her when I heard, "C.S.!"  It was a woman who had once been in my class, as had her father and brother.  She became friends with my wife and roommate with another buddy.  Holy cow. . . that was her daughter.  We stood on the sidewalk and chatted for a bit, then she pointed to a woman and said, "You remember Ramona."

And sure enough, I did.  After I got divorced, I saw her at a party.  I'd always liked her, and when I left, she followed me to my car and kissed me.  We dated a few times, but the chemistry I'd hoped for wasn't there.  We were never going to be in love.  But we continued to write one another for a long while.  She, being younger, had weathered the past couple of decades well enough.  I, of course. . . well. . . whatever.  

I was introduced to her husband who was something of her own age and a fairly good-looking guy, and we all chatted for a moment and then went on our separate ways.  It had been a morning's walk down memory lane for sure.  

Back home, I wanted a mimosa but I had no "mimosa juice," so I headed to the grocery store to get the things I needed.  I still had a big piece of ham left and decided to make a split pea soup.  When I got home, I made the mimosa straight off, then started chopping onion, celery, and carrots.  I put it all in the InstaPot to sauté, then added the split peas, chicken broth, water, wine, garlic, spices, and ham.  I poured another mimosa and called my mother.  

"Do you want to come over for some split pea soup later?"

I was bushed, so I lay down to take a nap.  When I got up to shower, my mother, always early, was knocking on my door.  In a few minutes, we were sitting on the deck with drinks.  

"The tenant is going to join us," I said.  The late afternoon was pleasant but for the mosquitoes.  We all sprayed and prayed not to get some horrible tropical disease.  I was uncertain how the soup would turn out as I had never made a split pea before.  

It was magnificent.  

"You are a good cook," they said.  I've taught them to say "cook" instead of "chef."  I'm no chef, indeed, but I can make you some tremendous and wholesome meals.  I've been cooking since college.  I'm a real catch, I am.  

Dinner finished, though, guests gone. . . I did the dishes alone having not been caught.  That is when I replied to "Doc."  

Yea. . . I'm a real cool cat, a real good catch.  

"A lot of fucking good that did me."

Ha!