Last night, although in this case the last night in question was over ten years ago, since I quit teaching ten years ago (I should throw a party to celebrate ten teaching-free years) after my English class got out I walked to the subway as usual but stopped by the produce stand on the corner; no, wait, the class got out at like nine-thirty at night, so this must have been in the evening before class started, say five-ish or six-ish; it was getting dark, so say sixish – I went into the produce shop on the corner and the bell over the door tinkled and the Kurdish man who ran the place greeted me as he greets all of his customers and I marveled at all the artfully-arranged fruit and the peace and calm the owner radiated calmed me down and I didn’t want to leave. He asked me whether he could help me select something and I asked for him to recommend an apple. Jonagold, he said. They are a big, sweet, juicy greenish apple with a lot of red and yellow. They are a recent sort, a cross between the Jonathan and the Golden delicious. He didn’t mention that last fact, I stumbled across that years later on the Internet, which didn’t even exist, for me, at that time. At that time I was still typing stories on an electric typewriter while staring out the window at the fog covering the hills outside my in-laws’ house.
I bought two. They were crisp, juicy and sweet, with a strong, delicious apple aroma. Excellent for eating fresh, although you would want something sourer for baking a pie. We chatted for a while longer, agreeing on many things, such as the importance of children.
A kid rolled past the office just now on one of those little scooter things. My youngest daughter has one. She likes it a lot. She insists on riding it to the local store when we go shopping. It complicates shopping immensely. Well, not immensely. Slightly. It is a small joy to watch a kid scoot, with a smile on their face, like a dog with its head out the window of a car speeding down the road.
Isn’t the sunrise fine, any time of year?
Last night I was trying to decide whether life on this Earth is heaven or hell. I originally decided heaven, since everything works so well, natural-law-wise. There is nothing one could alter without fucking everything up totally. Like, you need gravity and friction. Even death, since without that, who cares about life?
But then I thought, if it were really heaven, there would be booze trucks. Little white vans with tiny wheels that would drive slowly through your neighborhood with a simple little tune playing on some bell-type instrument. Tinkle-tinkle-tinkle. It wouldn’t be loud, but it would carry and even sitting in your house, waiting for dinner say, you’d be able to hear it. “Uh-oh, dad: Booze Truck!” your children would shout with a smile. And you’d run and jump into your garden clogs and your wife would stick a few bills into the pocket of the jacket you were pulling on as you dashed out the door. You’d catch the booze truck at the corner and the driver would have a friendly greeting on his lips and he’d open the back of the van and you’d stand there, trying to decide, gin or whiskey? Macallan or Oban? Lagavullin or Jamesons?