Choose the Hawaiian Shirt

I stopped at the window where Uma was inspecting the day and saw that it was one of the best and brightest.

"Ms Wonder, you were right about the morning. One of the juiciest," I said.

"Absolutely," she replied.

"Spring and all that," I said.

"Yep," she said.

"I think I'll crawl into the Thai fisherman's pants and go to the Park for some pastoral dancing," I said heading for the clothes closet.

I don't know if you have the same feeling on those days around the beginning of April when the sky's a light blue, the clouds are cotton wool and the breeze blows lightly from the west. It's an uplifting feeling that makes you pause to reflect that life is good.

Well, if you do have that feeling, then take some advice from me. Be very, very careful because Fate is hiding in the bushes with plans to do you dirt. But let's stick to the subject and not be distracted by the skulduggery that is Fate. 

I slipped into the upholstery of a country qigong master and attired for the energetic arts, en plein air, if that's the phrase, I toddled back into the bedroom just in time for the first of those blasted text messages.

"Oh, no," I said when I'd read it. "Wonder, you remember Cousin Gwyn, who lives with Aunt Maggie in Crystal Cove."

"Oh sure," she said.

"You wouldn't speak in that light, carefree tone if you knew what's in the text. The curse has come upon me again, Poopsie. Gwyn tells me that Aunt Maggie wants me to stop by the ancestral home on the way to Chattanooga next week. My mother must have told her I was headed in that direction. I'd hoped to keep it secret."

To people who don't know the CSI version of the story, it is difficult to make clear why I avoid this X-marks-the-spot place in the North Carolina Blue Ridge. Most people know of it, if they know of it at all, as a primo outdoor recreational area. White-water rafting, trout fishing, music festivals, and all of this embowered, if that's the word, in the beautiful, balsam-fir high country. This is the surface-level glamour that most day-trippers encounter.

For the denizens and relatives like me, the Cove has a darker, murkier underbelly. The place is bursting with witches, druids, and shamans--pagans, the lot of them. Not that there's anything wrong with the Pagani, or whatever it was the Romans called them. Paganize until your eyes bubble, if that's what suits you, but I have a medical concern. 

You see the levels of background magic in a place where you can't bung a brick without hitting a magician, is so high that...well, let's just say that I'm allergic. The stuff clings to me like static. It builds to a critical mass and then, pop! there's a loud report in the vicinity of the Genome and bits of reality fill the air like confetti.

Give it a miss, I hear you thinking, but how the devil can I? This Mary Magdalene is my last surviving aunt and an aunt who had a lot of input into the Genome that I've become. When she issues a direct order, I must obey. I am a slave to duty in her regard.

"I wonder what she wants with me," I said.

"I couldn't say but I suggest that you wear your Hawaiian shirts while there," said The Wonder.


"Yes, good idea. I need to have as much joie de vivre as I can muster," I said. Ekaterina, pardon my using her formal name, continued with suggestions intended to fortify me against the ravages of magical tinkerings, such as morning meditation, qigong, walks in the sun, and other such well-intended rot until I couldn't take it any longer and tore myself away to inventory the manly outerwear of Hawaii.

"Excuse me," Ms Wonder said as I was carrying yet another shirt to the window for consideration. "You don't plan to take that shirt do you?"

"Of course, I'm going to wear it."

"I wouldn't advise it," she said.

"Why on earth not?" I said.

"The effect," she said, "it's loud to the extreme."

I turned to face her squarely. No one knows more than I the mastermind, this daughter of the Russian... whatever, never mind that now. It was I who was heading into the valley of the 600 and it was I who needed to gird the loins...what's that phrase, oh just forget it. You know what I mean. I wanted that shirt. Nothing else could buck me up like a red and yellow hibiscus on bold palm fronds.

"I need this shirt, Poopsie, nothing else in the arsenal has the same impact."

"Nevertheless," she said.

"Wonder," I said, "I am feeling low-spirited and I will need all the cheering I can get. My mind is made up." I raised myself to my full height and gazed down from lazy eyelids. I'm sure Napoleon would have done the same.

"Fine," she said but she meant nothing of the kind.

Upsetting, that's what it was. If there's one thing a fellow needs when he's facing the firing squad, it's the support of the family. And I was feeling somewhat adrift, or abandoned, or what is it? Oh, yeah, I was feeling more or less that nobody loved me.

Having nothing to gain from hiding the facts, I put my feelings on the line. I explained that although I understood her views on tunics and other torso coverings, I was in dire straights--though I don't fully understand the meaning of dire straights, I'm sure it applies in the current circs--and what I needed from her now was more of the rally round spirit.

She stood for a while in deep thought and I could see that my words had the desired effect.

"Then on consideration," she said, "I have a suggestion that may enable you to extricate yourself from the embroilment."

"Does that mean you have a solution?" I asked.

"I suggest that you consider packing immediately..."

"That's no help."

"...and leaving for California."

I stared at the woman. Had I heard her correctly? California? Could it be that her superb brain had come unhinged? I could think of no other explanation.

"It sounded to me like you said, California," I said.

"That's right," she said.

"California?"

"California," she said. "Consider that California is 3000 miles from Crystal Cove."

"What!" I said finally getting the gist. "Not that far."

"Somewhat less," she said, "but for all practical purposes..."

"Yes, I see," I said. "For all practical purposes. Yes, this suggestion is not too big and not too small. Poopsie, I've always said there is none like you--none. You stand alone. Are you sure you're not descended from the Romanovs?"

"I'm certain," she said.

"Well, no matter, the Orlovs were the masterminds responsible for bunging Catherine to the top of the Russian imperial rainbow, so no little wonder that you possess the brainpower."

"But I'm not descended from the Orlovs," she said.

I could make no sense of this whatsoever. I myself have read her ancestral family records and I didn't hesitate to remind her of this.

"I distinctly remember that Count Alexei Orlov figured into the story. He being the breeder of the Orlov Trotter, a horse known for outstanding speed and stamina, and also the Russian Wolfhound, a dog known for whatever they're known for. They're big, I know that. And I believe there was a chicken in there somewhere although I seriously doubt that a breeder of horses and wolfhounds would scarcely waste time with chickens."

"The story," she said, with absolutely no story-telling flair, "is that my ancestor was a housemaid in the employment of Count Orlov and negotiated with him to get out of dog walking duties."

"Walking the wolfhounds, you mean?"

"Precisely," she said.

"Oh, I see," I said. "Yes, I think I remember something about that now. Sorry for the mixup."

"Not at all," she said.

"Still, Wonder, you are remarkable. I wonder if your head sticks out in the back just to make room for that brain."

"Thank you, I think," she said.

"Not at all," I said.

Pirates of Penzance

I woke early, at least it had the appearance of early. The light filtering through the curtains was a pinkish hue and this is, I believe, a sign of early morning. I'm no an expert of course. 

Beignet was limbering up with a good long stretch, front legs thrust forward and butt high in the air. It felt really good I'm sure, although I don't practice the move myself. I tend to qigong rather than yoga.

Uma Maya was on duty high atop the cat tree surveying her domain and making sure that everyone was cued and ready for the day. Abbie Hoffman, I suppose, was high atop the kitchen cabinets to make sure he was no where near Uma. 

In short, all was as it should be. How any household can function without at least a dozen or so cats is beyond me. I'll bet Napoleon kept cats.

"Good morning, Ms Wonder," I said, and then after taking a quick glance out the open window, "It's a beautiful day."

"The bluebird?" she said.

"On my shoulder," I said.

"The sun?" she said.

"High in the sky," I said, "or fairly highish, and bright certainly."

"Clouds?" she asked.

"Puffy and cotton white," I said.

"Cumulus humilis," she said or something that sounded like it.

"You're joking," I said. "Do refer to the clouds and a newly discovered variety of early human?"

"The clouds," she said, "They take their name from the latin cumulo meaning heap or pile."

"Now I know you're putting me on. A pile of clouds? This is one of your practical jokes, isn't it? You're going to run me up and down the flagpole a few times this morning."

"I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing," she said, "I learned about clouds in my aviation weather class. Cumuli are part of a larger class of clouds know as cumuliform, which includes stratocumulus, cumulonimbus, cirrocumulus and altocumulus."

"My grandmother's name was Alta," I said.

"I misspoke," she said, "I meant to say alto. Alto-cumulus."

"Oh, sorry," I said.

"Not at all," she said.

A moment of silence passed. A moment not unlike the silence that reigns on stage when one of the actors in a community play forgets the next line.

"Poopsie?"

"Still here," she said.

"Do you know everything?" I said.

"Certainly not," she said.

"Well, then you have a sticky brain, much like the sticky brain that my friend Mumps has. By the way, did you say aviation weather? You actually took a class in aviation weather?"

"Hmmm," she said.

Another moment of silence passed, one much like the first.

"Poopsie, are you, or were you ever, a fighter pilot?"

"Beg your pardon," she said with a laugh, "did you say pirate?"

"I did not say pirate and you know it but that was the funniest part of the play wasn't it?"

I probably don't need to tell you that we had gone off-topic with this reference to the play but we had seen the Durham Savoyard's presentation of the Pirates of Penzance recently and it was still entertaining us two weeks later.

"I really enjoyed the sergeant major," she said.

"You mean the major general," I said.

"Are you sure? Didn't he sing 'I am the very model of a modern sergeant major?'"

I raised a hand. I yield to no one in my enjoyment of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan and I could easily discuss these Pirates all day, but we were on a hot topic and I didn't want it to cool.

"One moment, Poopsie," I said.

"Yes," she said.

"Just one moment."

The third period of silence passed. It was beginning to look like a big morning for moments of silence.

"What were we talking about before we jumped the rails?" I said.

"You were saying that it's a beautiful day," she said.

"So it is," I said. "The snail is on the throne and all's right with the world."

"The snail is on the thorn," she said. "It's God who's sitting on the throne."

"Ah, yes, that's right," I said, "Sorry, honest mistake."

"Not at all," she said.

"Did you say, pilot or pirate?" I said. But she only winked and then another one of those silences filled the empty space.

Once and Future Spring

"In spring, a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove," Ms Wonder said this morning as I struggled into the under armor underwear. I don't know how she comes up with this stuff but she certainly knows how to put things neatly, don't you think? 

I was still wondering how the dickens a dove goes about getting burnished when I entered the ring of ancient oaks on the grounds of Research Commons for morning qigong.

You are probably familiar with this ring of hoary trees if hoary is the word I want. It sits atop the hill that overlooks the post office on Alexander. I don't know how long this oaken ring has been here but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was here when Caesar drove the Nervii out of the Triangle. The trees are probably all that remains of a Druid grove or college. It has that look.

As I walked to the western end of the circle, the better to face the east and greet the rising sun, I noticed the open space was filled with ranunculi, and many of them buttercups, and I immediately time-traveled back to my college days and the spring semester that my old school chum, Mumps, and I were enrolled in BIOL 4120, the Botany of Flowering Plants.

This class was required for a degree in biology and it had been taught by Dr. Fowler for as long as that ring of oak trees had been in the Triangle. Fowler isn't his real name. I've changed his name because that's what people do when they write about other people. Not sure why. 

This doctor was one of those be-speckled and bedraggled birds featured in so many stories of arcadia. He eccentricated himself by wearing the same elbow-patched tweed sport coat every day, and the jacket was accessorized with the same tie. It was no ordinary traditional tie but a knitted species that stopped abruptly above the belt as though cut square with scissors.

One beautiful spring Tuesday this Mumps and I were canvassing the countryside looking for wildflowers to draw in our official sketchbooks, for accurate drawings were part of our final grade.

As I remember the sky was blue, the wind still, the sunshine warm and we had no sooner entered an open meadow when Mumps let out a "Eureka!" Turns out he had almost stepped on a flower that I called a shepherd's purse and he called a capsula bursa pastoris. He was like that--sticky mind. Anything he read or heard simply stuck. My mind--slippery. Still is.

If you were an innocent bystander, you would have marveled because it was the work of an instant for Mumps and I to sprawl on the grass and began sketching stamens and pistles like Billy Oh.

Now on these fine spring days the mind is calm and the spirit peaceful and the whole package is one perfectly suited to seeking enlightenment. And that is just what we were doing. The limbic systems worked overtime instructing the endocrine glands to decant this and that in good measure, heaped up, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. 

The result of all this chemical stimulation was consciousness elevated to that of rats with metal electrodes inserted into the nucleus accumbens and septal nuclei. And it was in this state of enlightenment that the striatum realized that it was time to leg it to lab or risk wearing the dunce cap for late arrival. We got a move on.

Now, this Dr. Folwer had a peculiar method of lecturing to lab students. He turned his back to us while scribbling on the chalkboard and babbling away on everything from dicotyledons to ovaries and just when you least expected it, he would dervish around and point a bony, arthritic finger at the victim and demand an answer to the question of the day.

So here we were, seated on lab stools and doing our best to take notes and not laugh out loud at what seemed to be the most trivial drivel we'd ever heard. You are aware, it goes without saying, that it wasn't really drivel but when one's consciousness has been elevated to a certain level, almost every subject seems not just drivel but absolute rot. It was this way with us.

Then, with the surprising immediacy of Judgement Day, the professor swirled around like a tornado and pointed the gnarled digit directly at Mumps, catching him right between the eyes, at point-blank range too. We never heard the question because the blow knocked James off his stool and onto the floor where he exploded with a guffaw that sounded like a steam boiler coming apart at the seams. It disrupted the class not a little.

I would love to remember how that situation was resolved because a story is never complete without a happy ending, and a happy ending is evident because we somehow got those degrees, but this particular story has no end. Bertie Wooster says that the difficult part about telling a story is knowing where to begin but for me, it's knowing where to end. Maybe that's because I don't really like endings. I like the kind of stories that go on forever.

I never enjoyed a college class as much as that taught by Dr. Fowler and I never enjoyed a college classmate as much as Mumps. Higher education comes in many forms and most of them are unexpected. That's life they say.