Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful ..."
John Donne, "Holy Sonnets"
Yep, left it in the oven too long, I guess. Some would say two and a half hours is too long, though in the end -- especially when measured against the Hindu concept of time -- it's just the blink of an eye. Jeannine thinks maybe she forgot to puncture it with the fork, but whatever the reason -- this isn't about blame -- this innocent, unspoiled potato, she'll never see another sunrise. And we'll have to live with that through all the hollow years to come.
Fire professionals with hoses, ladders, flashing lights, the Red Cross, the mob shouting burn mother burn, and of course, the carrion birds of the paparazzi from the Noe Valley Voice. One toothless, wizened old man, every joint creaking, played to the festive crowd, performing what appeared to be the Soupy Sales Shuffle. Maybe it was Soupy -- I don't know or care anymore. Or Sammy Davis Jr. Then Soupy-Sammy broke into "Mr. Bojangles," an all-time favorite. I can't watch -- can't stop thinking how much our sweet potato would have enjoyed the general party atmosphere; "sweet" being an endearment, for this was no common yam, my friend, but a premium Idaho baking russet, Queen of the non-green vegetable world. Descended from the royal Incan potatoes of the Andean altiplano.
I throw a few blackened coins towards the hopping, scuffling ancient, and turn back to the flames, to lap and guzzle at my own private darkness.
We stand, gripping potholders in white-knuckled fists, clasping kittens and rubber plant to our heaving breasts, staring blankly. The thousand mile stare. So this is how it feels. One moment a living, breathing tater gently browning; the next, its fluffy, white flesh splayed like a blown up mattress across the toaster oven. No time to prepare; no time for hospice; no time to whisper "I love you, vaya con Dios, goodbye, my dear friend." Just Splut!
Count your blessings it hasn't happened to you, my friend. But it will. Count on it. The mill grinds slow, but it's nipping at your heels, hungry for your bones and your marrow. You can take that to the bank.
And I'll dance outside your house, Oggy Doggy.
We gaze mutely upon the blasted cadaver, comparing it, with incomprehension, to the blithe survivor which sailed through the whole hubbub unscathed, unfazed, serene. Skin golden crisp, just the way Great Aunt Bodine loved it. You would swear it hadn't even noticed bunkie's stuffing spattered upon its face. "Better her than me!" it yodels. Jeannine is positive now she punctured at least one of the tatos (and "oiled" both, she insists to the hardness in my wounded eyeholes. I'll find a way to forgive her, a way to go on together -- but not right this moment). One would have to ask, as if wearing the "shoes" of the dead, "Why me and not my thick-skinned compadre?" It is up to us to speak for her now, to dream her spud-drawer dreams and sing her tuberous songs.
There are no answers to why questions. I was told this as a teenager to shut me up, and that answer feels good in my mouth today. The facile consolations of "Her time was up, and she's crossed that wide, slow river," or "She's on the plate of sweet Baby Jesus now" would have made me snap and bite. My anguish would brook no solace. I don't care if she was hero; I don't want to hear about Camelot; I just want her back - and that's not going to happen. She was like a candle in the wind and we shall not see her like again.
Tomorrow, perhaps, I'll be ready for the comfort and consolations of friends and family.
In the end, Jeannine and I fell, unhinged, upon the starchy tatters, and brutally, in our zombie grief-struck hunger, gouged its split, crusty, vitamin-rich jacket, and mashed the smug survivor too -- yes, I could see the steam-releasing tine marks on the elephant hide of this one -- laughing wildly, hysterically, like the debauched cowpokes in "The Wild Ones," our forks going up and down, machine-like, again and again. The margarine ran in rivulets and a rainfall of salt, as if from our unshed tears, hahahaha, salty salty, gobbley gobbley, donner party, stranger in a strange land, a potatoey Eleusis of exhaustion, abnegation, redemption, transmutation and rebirth.. With lips tasting yet of sour cream and Smart Balance Buttery Spread, we made savage, howling, Dionysian love for hours -- according to trauma counselors, a not uncommon reaction to loss of this magnitude.
The kittens crouched and trembled beneath the sofa bed and wouldn't come out -- not even for Friskies crab and whitefish treats proffered in wheedling, mincing baby talk.
I understand better now the things that men do -- oh yes, you can see it in my piggy eyes if I'm not wearing sunglasses. I'm not the same; I walk the Valley, shouting "WAKE UP!" into the startled faces of the innocent and the not-so-innocent alike. And their dogs.
It really scares the shit out of people. Got the idea from a Spike Lee movie.
Henry E. Panky
"An attachment à la Plato for a bashful young potato"
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