April

by Littlebit on This and That

Last night I peeled a green mango and got some mango dip, sat down in front of the television screen and watched "Contact." It's this intelligent, aliens-oriented film based on the book by Carl Sagan.
It must be intelligent, I mean, Jodie Foster is in it and she went to Yale and knows French. I can't for the life of me even begin to know French. The last time I was in Paris, the airport person in charge of opening your suitcase and exposing your underwear to the rest of humankind asked me something that sounded like, "Parlez vous Francais? Ca va?" and I was at a loss, so I answered, "34B. I like black," because I thought she was asking about my underwear size and color preference. It turned out later, I remembered, that the French word for underwear is lingerie, or some mutant of the word anyway, and that 34B is English for the French word brassiere, so if you are female and need a titsling I advise you, the next time you are buying a brassiere in Los Angeles, and the counter person is a native English speaker, say "34B, please."

And Carl Sagan, woah waitaminit, isn't he the guy on M*A*S*H*, that TV series that's supposedly about the Korean War but is actually a poorly disguised series about Vietnam? Oh. That was Alan Alda? Okay, Carl Sagan is this guy who…oh, he's dead? I'm sorry. I didn't know. That must be why at the end of the movie they put "For Carl" before the credits rolled. I wondered last night why the screenwriter would write and dedicate a movie to himself. Unless he's one of those really positive people who write notes to themselves in a daily affirmation of their existence. I suppose if your whole life is devoted to watching the skies for ET to phone home and ride bicycles over a backdrop of the moon, you would need to be a pretty positive person.

Watching "Contact" made me think about a whole lot of things. Aside from wondering if Carl was a Daily Affirmation-oriented guy, I also pondered, long after my mango dip and mango slices had run out and I started on kiwifruit and peanut butter, The Meaning of It All. Where did it all come from? Why are we here? How come my shoe size in the UK is always one inch longer than my shoe size in Japan? What does Nike mean when they say Just Do It? etc. All these questions streamed into my consciousness, and I was conscious until about two a.m. when all the kiwifruit ran out and I went downstairs to check the fridge if there were any bananas, and I discovered much to my dismay that all I had in the fridge were frozen kimchee and a couple Extra Strength Midol.

In a contemplative mood I decided to simply sit at my desk and think. I happened to glance up above the desk light at my Poem of the Week, which is a poem I post above my desk every week so I can read it and feel affirmed of my existence as an Aspiring Poet. The first lines of the poem read, "April is the cruelest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots…." It's The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot. After reading these lines, it all began to make sense. Of course! I believe you are supposed to yell out "Eureka!" which is a Greek word meaning "Hot diggity-dawg!" So I yelled "Eureka!" It was one of those insights like the bald guy and Jodie in "Contact" got all of a sudden about a problem they were pondering.

I fell asleep promptly after making the wondrous discovery. When I woke up this morning, I cracked my journal, and wrote, Last night made awesome discovery. No food in fridge. And then I stopped because nothing else came to mind about last night. I paced. I took a Midol. I did my hair. But no matter what I did, the thoughts of last night were lost, somewhere between the cracks in time. I felt deflated, which is how Jodie must have felt when the other guy got to go in the space capsule because he knew how to suck up to the selection panel and she didn't.

I made coffee and sipped it. Then it happened. Sweat trickled down my armpits. It does in Bangkok: it's seven-oh-five a.m. and you've just showered and put talc in places I'd rather not mention but we all know have to be dry lest nasty bacteria thrive in them. You haven't even dressed yet. And then the rivulets of perspiration trickle down your armpits. It's OK if you're wearing long sleeves; at least you can always pass off the sweat stains as stylish stripes. But if you're wearing short sleeves, you are going to look like a liquid-instead-of-lava version of Mt. Vesuvius. Imagine if you are in a meeting proposing we send a space capsule to deep space…and this happens.

Just as well that Jodie et alia didn't film "Contact" in Bangkok. Think of how many takes they would have had for each scene.
JODIE: Stop! My armpits are distracting me!

DIRECTOR: Cut!

And what if you were in the Vega system somewhere, where coconut trees grow, so it must be in the tropics somewhere. (Have you ever wondered if those of us who live here are aliens? I think the mystery of being able to live in a place where thinking makes us sweat has been answered. We are aliens, and this place we live in is called the Vega* System).
How would you explain sweat to an alien? I can tell you. This is what I wanted to say all along. All you would have to do is borrow Eliot's first line; say to the alien, "April is the cruelest month." And I guarantee, the alien will laugh with amusement and say, "these people from Vega are so funny. Wait until I tell my wife."*

*Various Emissions from Gross Armpits?

*Bangkok residents will appreciate the referrences to sweat; other readers, Sorry. adl