Spam, scam, decisions
Poems about coffee and hawks
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Dear readers,
Spring is full upon us. The camellias are fading and the dogwoods glorious. Forsythia is past and most trees in Portland are fully leaved already. Azaleas bask in the evening alpenglow.
The air is still fresh, but it hasn’t rained much. One neighbor was out with a hose, watering his garden already
Decisions
Someone sent me a long email. I don’t know how to respond. The thing is, I don’t have to. That is a decision.
Degrees of decision:
I will
I can
I don’t want to
I won’t
Even simple choices aren’t easy. Which pastry at the coffee shop. Which college. Where to live.
We decide to get married. We decide to get divorced. Sometime decisions are taken away from us. When we get the diagnosis and the hard decisions are made, then we face a fork: fight or accept. American tradition says to fight. Spiritual tradition: accept.
Thought tree
How do we decide? Some of us consider the pros and cons. We write lists. We talk to our friends. We consult our gurus and the astrology column in the paper.
Others of us wing it. I fall into this category more often than I should. Or would like. Or whatever. I just want the dilemma resolved. A lifetime of experience has shown me that whatever I decide will work out. Somehow.
Small decisions
I recently chose some frames for reading glasses. I tried some stylish ones, with a hefty price tag. Okay, not those. Shown a display of cheapo frames, I was able to choose one almost instantly. I knew from experience that trying on a dozen samples would just make the decision harder, so I didn’t bother.
The glasses came in the mail a few days later. I love them.
Decide
Choose, choose and move on. The Universe awaits your next breath. Exhale and pick, it will be right. You’ll make it work. All our regrets, choices we made, Trampled dreams and broken hopes. What would we do differently, what would it matter? The die is cast, the lock turned, now take the next step.
What were they thinking?
You may have figured from my writing that I love color. Sometimes I devote a post to a color, like Yellow or Pink, Red, Vermilion.
I usually keep track of the Pantone color of the year, too, because it’s a fun pursuit. This year I was late in looking it up, which turns out to be okay because I don’t see myself decorating with this year’s color,“mocha mousse.”
Mocha mousse is a brown that’s supposed to be warm and comforting. I think it’s less the color of coffee and chocolate and more like pinkish mud. Pantone’s site features models wearing clothing in that color. It doesn’t go well with anyone’s skin tone. But if you really like it, you can buy a Motorola cell phone in that color. Also Post-Its.
My initial reaction to mocha mousse was negative. I was expecting more style and verve. There’s too much blue and too much gray in the mix. But once I noticed its cinnamon tones, I felt better about it. By chance, the image I captured of the color ended up in my photo app next to a lovely breve latte from Coava coffee. A happy coincidence, though I like the tones of the coffee way more.
Espresso
Sharp, bitter, elemental, Small puddle in a big cup. Gone too soon, but the leaving Was a wanton world on my tongue. It tasted of a farm far away Somewhere else in the Americas. Where folks tend those beans so carefully. The acidity, the acridity, the smoothness, The clarity, the comfort, the awe. I want more but cannot have it, Caffeine is strict that way. But isn’t that how we live life? We want more We take it We take too much We regret the taking Or we move on, uncaring. It’s only coffee, after all.
Odd colors
I met a man, Roland, on a Trimet train. He had a nice walker, in a color you might call deep maroon. Hey, I told him, your walker is puce!
Puce is one of those funny colors that don’t look like it sounds. When I first heard the word, I thought puce was some sort of grayish pink. But no, it’s much more exciting than that. Named after the Latin word for flea, it’s deep red with a lot of blue—like the back of a flea.
Other colors I (or others) have gotten wrong:
Livid is both a color and the lack of it. Someone who is “livid with anger” might be pale and bloodless, or boiling red.
When I wrote about vermilion recently, someone told me they had thought it was a shade of green. Could be. Verde. Vegetation. Green V words.
Verdigris is a shade of green. It’s the color you get when copper oxidizes or reacts with acid, turning it green. The result is a patina. Copper domes turn green with age.
Oil slick
Here’s something you don’t see often anymore, the sheen of gasoline or oil in a rain puddle. Cars are better engineered now, so they don’t leak fluids onto the street.
Hawks
I was riding the Max train alongside the I-205 freeway in east Multnomah County when I realized the birds sailing the air currents above me weren’t the crows common to the neighborhood. They were hawks. I see hawks less often now that I live close in. There used to be a pair of them at my assisted living. I was often alerted to their presence by their screeches. Now, from the sealed train, I couldn’t hear any outside noises, not the freeway traffic, not the hawks.
So often, we are sealed off from nature.
Freeway hawks
Crows out my window remind me I saw swooping hawks from the train, Riding the air above a freeway. The cars never notice the birds. My heart saw them, though, such free creatures Sailing in the polluted air, Whatever comes forth from those tailpipes, Of the thousands of cars down below. Ignore the cars, watch the birds. But you really can’t do that, you know. The traffic is the noose that is strangling us We care more for cars than for hawks.
From spam to scam
You may or may not know why flurries of junk email are known as spam. The term came out of a 1970s Monty Python skit about a bunch of Vikings having breakfast in a restaurant where every dish comes with that goofy canned pork product, Spam. The delighted Vikings chant “spam, spam, spam, spam” over and over.
Vikings are inherently funny, when they aren’t raiding, that is. Many years ago I invented an imaginary quaff called Vik-o-Mead, and I find it useful from time to time when I need to refer to a drink of the gods. It does come up in my fiction.
One final aside. Did you know that all you need for brewing mead is honey? You mix it with water, add yeast, let it ferment, and you have something sweet and alcoholic. You can even forgo the yeast by adding a couple of organic raisins.
But enough about mead. Enough about spam. I want to talk “scam.”
Early morning phone call
I was lying in bed at 5:46 a.m on a weekend day, fixing to get up but not quite there yet, when the phone rang. I picked it up and was awake enough to speak in a normal voice.
“And who is calling me at 5:46 in the morning, Pacific Time?” I inquired sweetly. This is the new, sparkle me. (See that earlier posting about sparkle.)
The pleasant-voiced man on the other side introduced himself as Peter Mason. He chided me gently about not having gotten back to Reader’s Digest (they may have sent me a letter I tossed unopened) to claim the prize he said I’d won: $950,000 and three gifts packs that he didn’t describe.
He didn’t apologize for calling so early; I was awake, after all. We had a nice, wide-ranging conversation that ended when he told me I needed to open a bank account before receiving my winnings.
Peter sounded quite the gentleman. He asked about my day without prying. He said the call was being recorded for or by Homeland Security and The Better Business Bureau. He assured me several times that the award was “100 percent legit.”
We talked for half an hour. Why did I let the conversation go on so long? He was fun to talk to.
Why this crummy job?
I don’t understand why Peter Mason, on his end, let the conversation continue. He had noted my skepticism. Maybe he hoped, up to the end, that I really would open that account.
Before I signed off, I offered Peter the condolences I usually extend to the junk callers I bother to interact with. (Don’t worry, this number is few.) I told him I was sorry he had to make his living scamming other people—he denied this, of course. He has such a nice phone voice and seems genuinely interested in people. There are a lot of legitimate jobs he could do. I hope he finds one of them soon, before Homeland Security or the BBB gets too nosy.
Checkout
Guest writer
Tomorrow, April 27, the first of seven daily prompts I was asked to write for the 100DayProject will be published. Lindsay Jean Thomson is the force behind 100 Days.
How many of you, dear readers, are involved with this project? The idea is to create something in a particular theme or media for 100 days running.
As I have for several previous years, I started out strong on the first day of the project, which was February 23 this year. I was going to create just one special thing a day, whether it was a poem, a photo, a quilt block or a meal. I do make something specific, different, and/or special on a consistent daily basis, but I don’t usually think of my creation as part of the 100 day project. I keep a separate notebook titled “Today I Made” that I write in infrequently.
For the seven daily essays/prompts for The100DayProject, I chose to write about noticing, or paying attention. Readers of this Substack know I’m always inviting them to look at objects, nature, life more closely—not just with our eyes but also our hearts.
In this evocative photo, for example, there’s a lot to unlock. Study the colors, the patterns, angles and lines. Is there a story here? Does it spark memories? Did you notice the smudge at the bottom, where my finger was covering the lens?
As always
Dear readers, I appreciate your presence and good wishes. I hope you will take the time to hit the like button (what’s not to like?) or even leave a comment. For encouragement, I’ve written this poem.
Comments
You can say you like what I write, Or raise issues about the facts. Though sometimes I get something wrong And nobody seems to notice. Who has time to notice? Our days are too crowded for that. Sometimes even breathing Seems like too much extra work. How did we get to this high point, Our work laid out at our feet, Moving too fast for satisfaction, Hoping for an easy commute. Stop now and pick a few daisies, The world won’t cease if you do. Send me a comment; it only Takes a few seconds, I promise.
—Fran
Fran, I so enjoy reading your posts. What you write is exactly what an author is expected to do: noticing all your surroundings in any instant and describing them, briefly or in detail.
My being so pulled in by the ruins of America has prevented me from writing the the book I've tried to write since High School in the 1960s.
Just last week I finally decided that almost all that I was reading about was complaints without solutions. So I went into lines of solutions that would absolutely patch the holes in our existence. I get more Likes than I used to but only a couple of comments if any. Still, the distraction still prevents my serious writing.
This latest post of yours has awakened me to my own preoccupation with BS. I've always been reminded by someone saying, "You can't change the world." I set out to prove differently. Good or bad, one's nature is prone to imitate the speech and/or behavior of one who is bold enough to go public.
Thank you, Fran, for calming me down simply by sharing what you are seeing or witnessing. Now I hope I can live long enough to go ahead and write my book
Richard La France
I have to laugh. I worked in the PR dept for Reader’s Digest from 1982-1992. Over time one of my jobs was contacting by overnight mail winners of the annual (back then) $5 million prize. I put the letter in a packet with other information so the person would know it was legit. I gave them my phone number to call and discuss plans for me to escort them to Pleasantville, N.Y.—the company’s headquarters—on our jet so they could receive their prize. I did that for three winners and it was great fun each time.