Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Devastated
My old black sport coat has a hole in the right elbow. I discovered it yesterday. I don’t know how long it’s been there, but it’s about the size of a walnut, and the area around the hole is quite worn. I could go on using the coat, but that would only hasten its demise. And yet I need the coat, for the warmth and friendship it provides. I also don’t want to abandon it. I refuse to treat it like an old coat.
An idea: a photographic portrait of the coat not wearing me.
Another idea: a lengthy interview with the coat.
A third: record the coat’s reminiscences, beginning with its earliest memories as a child in Hungary.
Idea Four: an award-winning black-and-white documentary.
Five: hang the coat near my desk and keep it supplied with cigarettes.
6: commit suicide and be buried in the coat, but only if it’s willing.
: starve to death in the coat while insisting that I am Yuri Andreievich Zhivago.
ask the coat what it wants :
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Recently Linked: My thanks to N. God Savage, a writer and philosopher in Belfast, for signing on as a follower of Recently Banned Literature.
Updates:
“Devastated” added to Notebook. (Old notes archived here.)
“Boyle’s Law Goes to Hell” added to Useless Information.
In the Forum: the feathers and cockroaches of a musing, philosophical organism.
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8 comments:
Wonderful entry. I vote for #3.
Thanks. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow. The coat was out very late last night, and refused to say where it had been.
I think of Gogol's wonderful story The Overcoat and like Awyn I vote for 3.
As it turns out, I wore the coat to a coffeehouse this morning, where I met two writer-friends of mine. It made fun of me the whole time we were there, and embarrassed me in front of a pretty young barista by asking her out.
Gogol is great. I’ve had similar trouble with my nose.
: appeals to my dramatic sense. Still trying to decide.
May I suggest a seventh?
The coat, of course needs help... a careful patching or stitching or darning, worn like a scar; a battle wound from thoughtful elbows.
That way, you get to keep each other.
You’re right. Its behavior lately could be interpreted as a cry for help. But the help it needs is in the psychological realm. Exhausted from chasing it around town, I fell asleep at my desk, only to awaken and find myself on a hanger in the closet.
your coat sounds like the rebel without a cause type... perhaps the addition of some leather elboy patches would do it good...
Perhaps, but I’m afraid it will start submitting stories to Harper’s.
Imagined word verification: “qwerty”
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