Playing Fair and Being Kind

I’m happy to announce that I’ve been reading a lot lately. Reading authors whose work I admire and which I have found to mimic my own writing. I like ambiguity, metaphor, and a bit of fantasy or magical realism. My preferences also tend toward the short story or essay format. I am finding more and more that what I know and remember best are the short experiences of my life that lend themselves to story telling. Today was a day like that.

I have been reading authors whose style is like mine and who are successful short story writers. Etgar Keret, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Jorge Luis Borges are three excellent examples. Some of my writing that I presented to the local writers’ group has been criticized for being too ambiguous and too loose in some ways. I began to try changing my style to please the group members but after a few days of rewriting a piece about roadside crosses that included a fantasy I finally stopped and realized the my writing is for me and that I like what I put on paper. I will listen to people but they will have to get used to ambiguity and metaphor and fantasy with no easy explanation of the thread or topic.

I have been dealing with a bronchial infection so my exercise at the Y has been curtailed for two weeks. Today I felt better enough to restart my exercise walking program. I chose to walk at the Y because I needed to only walk for thirty minutes and I also wanted to be indoors. I let my mind wander as I walked and the experience is told in my story below. I hope you like the story and I hope your day was a pretty and comfortable as mine. Peace, g.

RUBBER, FELT, AND GLUE

Harry was walking on the one eighth mile track at the Y. The track had instructions on which direction to walk depending upon the day of the week. Harry thought it was Wednesday. In fact it was Tuesday but Harry hardly knew the day of the week. He was in the second half of his seventh decade. He could never think of the name “septuagenarian” either. Harry was clear minded but some things he just didn’t give a goddam about. What day it was wasn’t important. He didn’t work or have many close friends so time and schedules were secondary if not tertiary or quaternary. Walking the track in the wrong direction was not Harry’s intent. His intentions were pure however the track walking direction on Tuesday is the reverse for Wednesday so Harry was walking in the wrong direction.

There was no one else walking. In fact Harry had the whole of the Marylouise Tandy Cowan field house to himself. There were no other walkers nor any tennis players on the courts below the elevated track that circled the inside of the field house. Harry was alone and had been walking for about fifteen minutes when he heard the access door to the track close with a metallic click. Harry didn’t turn to look. He couldn’t bother. He made the turn at the far end of the track from the access door and saw another person, a tall gent about his age, heading toward him from the opposite direction. “What the fuck!”, thought Harry. “I wonder if I should tell that guy he’s going in the wrong direction.” Harry was moving slowly, slower than the guy who was now just a short distance away from him. The two men passed each other with a curt hello and that was all. Harry thought to himself, “Dammit! It’s only Tuesday. I’m going the wrong direction. Well, isn’t that just like me. So the fuck what.” Harry grinned internally and kept walking to the other end and looked at the direction sign. Yup, he was going in the wrong direction. By now the other man had made his circuit and they both exchanged greetings again and shared a little chuckle about Harry’s mistake. Harry turned and began walking the same direction as the other gentleman but slower in order to give himself a chance to walk alone for his own comfort. The other man walked on and Harry dropped back bit by bit as he examined the back of him.

Harry was happy to be going this direction. He didn’t care for the other direction. This way was better he thought. He was still examining the other guy. He noticed the man was wearing a sweatshirt and shorts. Harry also saw that the other guy was wearing compression shorts under his regular shorts. They were red. The next thing Harry noticed was the other guy’s compression shorts were not really compressing anything. In fact they were loose and were slapping against the other guys skinny legs like they were short sweatpants. Harry thought that was odd. He had compression shorts at home and they compressed his legs but this guy must have really skinny legs if the shorts were swinging around like sweatpants. “Huh”, Harry thought. “His legs don’t look that skinny. Huh!”

Harry’s intention was to walk for thirty minutes and he was only about fifteen minutes into his plan. He had fifteen to go. After a few more minutes Harry saw that now the other guy was almost a half lap ahead of Harry. They passed each other going in opposite directions on opposite sides of the eighth mile track. A few more minutes passed and Harry heard the access door again. He turned his head slightly and observed no one on the track. The other guy had left. Harry had the field house to himself again.

Harry walked on. There were posters and pieces of art hanging from the walls next to the track. Some were supplied by the Y and some were donations from patrons. There were also paintings donated by some artists of activities relating to life in the small town. A few paintings were pleasant to look at but some others were bizarre. Harry would try not to look at them as he trudged along. When he drew near them he would give them a glance but then avert his gaze down onto the tennis courts to maintain his sanity. “Whoever painted these couldn’t draw”, Harry groused. Harry was happy to be critical every chance he had. Harry loved finding fault with people and these paintings did something for him as well as to him. Harry was on top of his game when he walked the track at the Y. He was an art critic as well as a walker. It couldn’t get much better than this for Harry.

Harry was also observant of some of the product placement signs on the wire fence that formed a railing for the track. One in particular had captured his imagination. “PENN The only tennis ball made in the U.S.” Harry liked the fluorescent green of the ball on the sign. He liked the fluorescent green balls flying through the air when he walked while players were taking lessons or competing on the courts below the track level. Harry had a bird’s eye view of everything that happened on the tennis courts. On occasion a ball would be hit up onto the track while he was walking. He liked that the best because then Harry would get a chance to capture the ball as he passed by. Harry would pick up the ball and feel the felt cover and the liveliness of the object. As he passed the end of the tennis court Harry would drop the ball over the railing onto the court below. He would drop the ball carefully to not draw any attention to himself. “Penn! The only tennis ball made in the U.S.” Harry felt neighborly by sending the ball back down to the courts.

Once, Harry had looked up the process of tennis ball manufacture. The Penn sign had stimulated his interest. Harry watched a four minute video on the manufacture of tennis balls. In fact the video was produced by Penn. That made the whole thing genuine and accurate as far as Harry was concerned. It also made Harry an expert on tennis balls by association. Harry tried to make conversation with people in the lobby of the Y sometimes but not often. There was a table with chairs surrounding the table in the lobby of the Y where people could stop and drink a free cup of coffee and read the Portland Press Herald. Harry would make himself available for about ten or fifteen minutes if anyone wanted to chat or learn a few things. Try as he may Harry could never quite find an opening for his knowledge on tennis ball manufacture. People just weren’t relaxed enough to sit and listen to anything. Or they were not sitting there to chat. More like they were there waiting for their ride home or waiting for some kids to finish events but not to listen to an art critic and expert on tennis ball manufacture. Harry felt overlooked but as Harry likes to say, “So what!”

G. M. Goodwin

27 October 2015