Sunday, August 20, 2017

EAT STUFFED CABBAGE. . .IN A MATTER OF SPEAKING

It seems the Summer of 17 has been quite the sizzler.  Gods of War have held the headlines.  National, ethical and economic issues/conflicts have preoccupied bylines.  (Albeit the shores of the Chesapeake Bay and its environs remain blissfully 'Southern' quiescent.). Tragic and conquering heroes now escalate, now ebb ere moving from center stage to sidelines.  A season of bombast, the natives a-twitter, twitcin' like the fingers on a trigger of a gun.
And that's just TV fare.  Rumor has it that from the local scene to the international stage, reality has surpassed network headlines.  (looks like I'm to go with aubergine for 'reality'. Editors!). In fact, my sources often touch base in the middle of the night-disturbing a perfectly perfect bay at the moon- using Morse Code, such is this global imager/'screwdriver-in-the-shoephone' obsession.
Thankfully, my ruse was outed, find me they did-hiding, 'Garboesque' at our North Carolina cottage, back to the fray, nose as distant from any grindstone that may lurk about as possible.
Forty-five years of summering with children embedded crowds of memories in these walls.  Now they wrap me in their Zeitgeist and I am a willing captive .  Standing proudly on its piles, cottage and I are a coning tower, gleaning and reporting life activity, a safe harbor, unedited, unplugged (perhaps unread) and awash with candor.
Locally, tis a fact that the renters have been testy.  Communal energy levels have been notably, if not alarmingly low as one might expect, what with the dismally damp weather pattern.  They soldier on, our mostly 'Yankee ' brothers.  Each morning finds our lock-stepping band of hopefuls marching along the unforgiving planks of the main beach walkway, passing our East front porch.  The path was cleverly constructed so as to obliterate any view of sand or surf save by periscope from the road.  This structural malfeasance results in our campers having to bear, push, drag, forgo (most  common) their 'fun-in-the-sun' trappings toward an uncertainty.
THEN, their paternal leader faces the grim task of deciding whether it will in fact be a 'beach day'.  There will be a collective peering out at the horizen in the hope they'll soon have to squint or seek cover under a gaily striped umbrella.  Not.  The gaze from our porch reports another 'rainy, mostly rainy, rain with t-storms' kind of day.  By day three, I was seeing fewer parades and earlier starts of the crestfallen  trek back to the cottages which in the brochures, had such an abundance of healthy, tanned fun and now seem to mock the very notion.  Several 'tourons' have taken to glancing my way with narrowed eyes of suspicion, accusation even.  Relax, pal.  Not MY raindance.
In fact for me, this daytime fare alternates with evenings of news viewing .  That said, I must qualify that scene by mentioning the occasional disruption.  Yes, dear readers, Camelot is subject  to being pierced by random sneakerfalls of rude, tresspassing night revelers, shouting obscene words, tearing off bits of bits of clothing, while generally rumbling along in some nocturnal, ritualistic 'dash-to-the-dunes'.  Of course these are  the same dunes re  which  they have been asked to "keep off". And given this species of motley humanity, it's no oddity that also by day three, much of the signage has been altered/embellished in the infantile scrawl common to New York City Subway wall writers with... . the old familiar suggestion, in some cases graphically, if in a puerile fashion.  (Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to apologize for this shocking breach of taste.  This, because my editor, who usually functions as the Morgan Freeman of my conscience, is now out.)    (BLACKOUT, PU-LEASE!)
During most welcome hushes, I can see that back home the quest for 'altered argot' is still in full force.  Responses/statements are wearing a freshly washed and starched 'so' as their lead-in.  (You'll recall our time worn 'so'- a letter couplet used to indicate degree or amount, less frequently, demonstrative of style or manner.)
Location queries insist on terminating with 'at'.(And one cannot imagine where the solution to this problem is at.).  People, rather than attending, accepting, declining, or missing meetings, are 'taking' them.  And our most recent outing of the 'Batta Book, Batta Boom' sit com is pointing with his horned rim glasses to achieve impressive levels of authority and take-charge-ability.  A brief preview has our hero foregoing verbal response completely.  Rather, he's planted downstage right, facing the audience, a vision of smug satisfaction.  He stands in silence ( a condition which, we may see by the end of this post, is not without powerful message potential.)  He is silent as well as stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox.
In the ever-shrinking big tent of significant action, we find paralysis.  This because seated, nay sutured within the seamed borders leading to 'action', are words, words, words.  Flung, delivered, sung, twittered, their insufficiency and ineptitude as harbingers of their brethren, 'deeds' puts one in mind of 'Liza Doolittle's plea, "Show me!".  (And wasn't her monicker a misnomer).  Their recipients are alternatively frightened, confused, insulted, at a loss, having revved down from slo to no motion. And this is because action without forwarned, amplified drivel was playing at the top of the charts this week.
In an impressive, lothario performance, life taking action cut quite a rocket swath to the top following 'words' clumsy stumble to its nadir.  Good guys' work sun to sun; terrorists' job, never done.   Finally, their work is never desultory.  Indeed, in their absence, they are pointedly life-threatening. (See Spain, Finland, Germany)
Why just today, during the somewhat conclusory commentary of a current events panel, the participants shared the 'special place' or custom -  from their respective pasts - to which folks were drawn in the event of a community crisis.  (This is daytime, happening now fare, guys.  It's how we roll at high noon.). Each panel member in turn proffered a place  -  town barbershop, church, city hall and the 'casual' like.  The last panel member, known for her savy and no nonsense candor, offered a deadpan, "In Rumania, we just ran somewhere and ate stuffed cabbage.".  Conclusions are -  and should remain -  in our inbox.  This observer's takeaway, nonetheless (utile little word, no?) is in the company of 'imprimatur' and "me too". 
Crisis Centers punctuate crisis; barber shops allay it.  But.  Modern medical science seems without conclusory evidence of harm, short or long-term, from eating stuffed cabbage.  Of course studies are mostly limited to Rumanians and carnivores but in the words of a wise old Buddhist monk, 'who's to say if this is good or bad?'. 
And Simon says:
"Fools said I you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you.
But the words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed in the well of
Silence.
Simon said, "do".

So, I say, "now hiring: do men"and in signing off, happy birthday, Mom and Kathy, and y'all, eat stuffed cabbage.  Sounds safe, tho awaiting FDA approval in the overcrowded bin labeled, 'later',
Lorane