Talking with my nieces and nephews whose ages range from 18 to mid-thirties, I asked, “Do you know the expression, drop a dime?”
No. None of them knew it. They asked about it, and I explained it.
Drop me a dime and I’ll tell you what I said.
All That’s Left
Inflammation surged in her right shoulder through several days, demoralizing her. Pain afflicted her with the smallest motion, dressing, cleaning, even brushing her teeth and combing her hair. Trying to think through options, she put bread in the toaster and considered conversation with her rheumatologist. He disliked giving cortisone shots. What else was there for the agony?
The toast popped up. Flinching her shoulder at the sound, she cried out in pain and fell to the floor, where all she could do was laugh and cry. Sometimes, that’s all that’s left.
Dreams and Writing
My dreams and writing seem to be part of my creative and imagination mind system. I figure, as worlds and space has weather, so do our minds. When a high-powered dream system moves in, it always brings a strong imagination ridge, and writing levels rise.
I wish I could track it and forecast it. Imagine us having an app on our phones or computers that can bring up radar imagery of our mind systems, with some prognosticator telling us what it all means.
“You have an emotional front moving in. It’s going to settle on you for a few days beginning Monday, with Tuesday seeing the strongest activity before it begins to move back out of the area on Thursday, so watch out for those swing moods and crankiness. The front will decrease your physical energy, and increase your maudlin memories. This activity will probably call for some comfort food on Wednesday, which will wreck your diet, and a few glasses of wine or beer, but a strong will system will arrive on Friday, enabling you to get back into healthy eating routines. The ten day outlook calls for rising optimism in the following week, with some periods of intense exuberance.”
Re-affirmed
Once again, I’ve been reminded that travel brings out the best and worst in coffee. People have different ideas about what tastes good, but they’re also part of geographic trends. “Isn’t that good coffee?” they ask, handing you some swill.
Which challenges politeness. I always err toward gratefulness. Coffee’s aroma helps ground me and restores my balance, to give nothing away about what the caffeine does to stoke my will to live. “Yes, yes, it’s very good coffee,” I reply. If pressed, I’ll mention, “It’s not quite what I would usually drink, but this is delicious. Thank you.”
Unless, of course, my taste buds are so offended that they’re lobbying my brain to spit it out. Then I swallow the coffee and say, “Mm mmm,” and complain privately later.
Some of that hotel and aero-plane stuff really pissed off my taste buds, though. I was afraid they were going to stop speaking to me. But then, they were given pie, and they were happy.
Shift
You ever hear someone sleeping and think, I wish that motorcycle would shift to a lower gear?
No?
Salazin – Seven
My conversation with Salazin brought creeping memories of conversations with Dad. I played the part of Salazin, then, bearing good news. Dad was the skeptic.
It was about his new truck. I’d made my first million, thanks to Salazin. Dad was retired from the military, paying the mortgage, working two jobs, and driving a Chevy pick-up that leaned to the left when it was going straight. The engine sounded okay, but its interior was squalid. Dings and scratches pockmarked its blue and white body. It seemed like it always needed new tires, too.
So, hey, wouldn’t it be nice of me to buy Dad a new, loaded truck?
Do y’a think?
Proud and excited, I went to his house and was there when the new Dodge truck was delivered. “Come on, Dad,” I said when the truck pulled up. “I bought you something.”
Mom was looking out the window and talking about, who was that? Realization struck her. Her blue eyes went wide.
Dad isn’t dumb. Hearing the noise, he’d probably begun to guess what was going on. He was reading his Sports Illustrated. He didn’t move.
“Dad?” I said.
“In a minute,” he said without looking up.
Mom gave him a look. Then she looked looked at me with a weary head shake of frowns and an eye-roll.
“Your son brought you a gift,” Mom said.
Dad kept reading.
Mom said to me, “Let’s go outside.”
We went out. She asked questions. Her reaction pleased me. “He’ll really like it,” she said as she walked around the truck. She didn’t sound convinced. “He might not show it, but he’s really proud and impressed by what you accomplished.”
Sure. Dad was suspicious about my wealth. He didn’t buy the story of Salazin’s stock picks at all. He was certain I was doing something illegal like selling drugs, I guess.
I’d also bought a vehicle for Mom, a Cadillac. She was still driving this ginormous Olds Tornado. Red with a white Landau roof, I swear the front end was in a different time zone from the rear. It got terrible gas mileage and bounced along the highway in search of new shocks.
Her Cadillac was arriving now. “Here’s your car, Mom,” I said.
Gasping and smiling, she turned and hugged and kissed me, saying, “Thank you, thank you, but you didn’t have to do that,” as Dad finally emerged from the house.
Magazine in hand, he stood on the porch looking at the scene. He looked like he was chewing something. He looked at the Caddy first. Then he looked at the truck.
“It’s American,” I said, to point it out. Because of Grandpa Diehl and World War Two, Dad didn’t like buying anything from the Japanese, Italians, and Germans, especially a “big ticket” item like a truck or car.
“Who’s that for?” he asked, looking at the Caddy.
“It’s for me,” Mom said. “Look what your son bought me. And he bought you a truck. Come and look at it.”
“I’ll look at it later,” Dad said. “Thanks.”
He turned and returned to the house.
I felt crushed. As Mom tried softening the blow wtih soft touches and words, I said, “It’s a good fucking thing I didn’t buy you a new house, like I was going to.”
She said, “I like this house.”
She looked at her blue and brick ranch house. “I wouldn’t mind a new house.”
Smiling at me, she said, “But we’d better talk about it a while, first, okay?”
I didn’t answer. I never did buy them a new house, but I bought Mom a new townhouse after Dad died.
Salazin – Six
Salazin didn’t let me ponder his comment, “And maybe further.”
That was probably good, because I was about to ask him where he thought his ship could go. The Moon? Mars?
Winking again, Salazin said, “I have prepared a model for you. Just a concept.”
He gestured toward the door. As it opened, Salazin said, “Behold the Nautilaus.”
As Salazin said, “I had this prepared to scale to help you visual it,” a young woman led in a cart. What looked like an upside-down ship was on it. Two young men pushed and guided the cart from either side. The upside-down ship’s bottom was glossy black. The top was charcoal gray. A red band divided the top and bottom. Nautilaus was in script in that band.
Salazin said, “I know that you’re a visual person but that you struggle to imagine things. I hope this helps you.”
After parking the cart, the three people left. When the door closed, Salazin said, “What do you think, Dylan? Is it not amazing?”
I’d been wondering what I thought. “It doesn’t look inviting,” I said. “It looks sinister.”
I was thinking that his model looked ten feet long and half a foot wide. Before Salazin could reply, I said, “How tall would this thing be?”
“Twenty-four stories.”
“Twenty-four stories?” I grappled again with his planned vehicle’s size. “Ten miles long, a half mile wide, and twenty-four stories high?”
“No, from the red band,” Salazin said. “Sorry, it’s twenty-four stories from the red band. It would be a total of twenty-seven stories tall, but three of those stories are below the ground level.”
“Jesus,” I said.
Salazin was walking and talking, and pointing what I took to be a remote. Tuning out of my bewilderment to his words, I caught, “The top is dark now so that I can have the pleasure of revealing the interior to you.”
The gray top turned lighter, growing translucent and then transparent. When that happened, it displayed a delicate framework on the upper part. It also displayed rolling green hills, a blue lake or sea, and multiple roadways, paths, forests, fields, and buildings. Some of the buildings were clustered like small villages. I saw a golf course, swimming pools, a needle-like building, like Seattle’s Space Needle, and what looked like vineyards, orchards, a ranch with horses and cows….
There was so much to see and assimilate, I felt like my mind was fusing into numbness. Without realizing it, I’d stood and walked over to the model.
Ten miles long, twenty plus stories high, and half a mile wide.
I didn’t see anything that looked like it could be an engine.
I saw Salazin slip to a stop beside me. I could see his face. A grin split it.
“What do you think?” he said.
“I think you’re crazy,” I said.
Hidden
Watching others cope with diseases and declining health, slowly moving hunched bodies as they struggle to remember simple words and phrases and master common movements, do you ever wonder, what’s secretly going on inside yourself that’s waiting to come out?
It’s like looking for the monster hiding under the bed.
Mr Sigh
He sighs when he wakes up, realizing it’s another day, and sighs when he gets out of bed, stands, and sits, motions stiff with pain. Sighs slip out as he makes his meals and eats them, and as he reflects on his life. Sighs accompany every task, as if his world is filled with strife. Sighing, he works hard to do what he can, trying to get by, contemplating his death, sighing, holding on, and trying to stay alive.
Salazin – Five
“Start again,” I said. “Let’s start again.”
Salazin was posed to listen.
I composed myself to think and speak. “Ten miles is a very long vessel.”
“Yes.”
“Why does it have to be so long?”
“Don’t think of it as just a vessel.”
I waited.
“Think of it as a destination, Dylan,” Salazin said. “Think of it as an exclusive island floating in the sky. Think of it as an exclusive destination. We will grow organic food and raised organic animals. We’ll serve them in our exclusive restaurants.”
“We’ll have more than one restaurant?”
“Yes, yes, why not? We will have an inland sea and luxury villas. And vineyards, wineries, and breweries. We will sell Nautilaus wine. Imagine it.”
“I’m trying to. Why call it Nautilaus?”
“Nautilaus is the perfect name. Nautilaus is associated with adventure and technology.”
“Maybe for you, but I think of exercise equipment.”
“No, no, not exercise equipment. Think of Jules Verne and Robert Fulton.”
“Robert Fulton?”
“Yes, yes, he named his steamboat the Nautilaus, and Jules Verne named his submarine after Fulton’s steamboat.”
“That’s another thing,” I said. “The Nautilaus is a submarine.”
“It is a masterpiece, Dylan. It is a luxury jewel, a vessel to fire imagination, inspire adventure, and embrace luxury. It’s mysterious and unique.”
“Fine.” I’d drop it for now. Salazin was smarter than me, and he’d thought about this more, so I was behind. I knew I’d probably give in soon, but it’s my custom not to be graceful about these things. Actually, it’s not my custom, but my nature. I think I get it from my parents, or maybe the whole damn clan. None of us surrender with grace. We fit to the bitter damn end. Come see us at the holidays, and you’ll understand.
“But ten miles seems extremely long,” I said.
“It needs to be so long for what it will have and be.”
“It won’t be able to land anywhere.”
“Yes, it will. It can land on the ocean. It can land in many other places.”
Salazin leaned in toward me. “Dylan, Dylan. Listen. I know that you must think about things before you say okay. I love that about you. I do.
“But, let me give you more to think about so we can hasten the moment when you say okay. Imagine a floating island that can travel anywhere in the world and be there in a matter of hours. Imagine living in a place isolated from war, disease, and pollution. Imagine being able to dine in a fine restaurant while watching a volcano in Hawaii explode, or floating over Antarctica or the North Pole, watching the glaciers break off and float away. Imagine being able to go to the best place to see meteor showers, eclipses, and the Northern Lights. Imagine the greatness of such a vessel. This is why it’ll be more than a vessel, but will be enshrined as the ultimate destination. As a destination, it can be anywhere.”
“On Earth.”
Salazin winked. “And maybe further.”
Michael Seidel, writer 