Let's Do Lunch!

When meeting someone for a business lunch, it is important to be on time and prepared for the meeting. There is work involved before the meeting takes place; to find out what my lunch companion prefers to eat and if they have any dietary restrictions. I want to choose a place to eat where they will be comfortable and feel relaxed.

I need to show up prepared with what I want to present to them, and have all my information organized so it will be easy and enjoyable to hear what I have to say while they eat their delicious meal.

I need to be prepared to pick up the tab if I am the one who initiated the meeting with them.

If I am in the mood for a cocktail, I will order a non-alcoholic beverage if my companion is drinking tea or juice. I will let them place their order first, and if they don’t know what they want, yet, I will order something inoffensive, like lemonade. It’s possible my companion may have had a traumatic experience with lemons in their past and I just don’t know it, so the best choice may be to just order water. It may be a very boring lunch.

I will do my best to be at my best, and show up well-rested and well-groomed. It may be best not to wear strong perfume, as my companion may be allergic to it. I should also make sure that I don’t have cat hair on my clothing (I have three cats at home) so that doesn’t cause an allergic reaction, either. I should refrain from smoking cigars or joints after lunch, unless my companion offers me one.

I will listen patiently and feign interest if my companion runs off at the mouth, tells long, boring stories, or answers a million cell phone calls during our meeting. I will smile and be gracious and polite. I will do my best not to stare off into space, drum my fingers on the tabletop, play with the silverware or pick my nose at the table. If I have to burp, I will do it quietly, and say, “Pardon me!”

I need to be engaging and charming, without overdoing it and being obnoxious, irritating, or pushy. I need to make small talk in a casual and natural manner, and ask my companion lots of questions to keep them engaged, without getting too personal. Unless my companion makes a pass at me first, I will refrain from making a pass at them. I will look at their wedding ring finger and if there is a ring on it I will refrain from going to a hotel room with them after the business meeting, unless they specify that they are in an ‘open relationship’ and this information can be verified by their spouse.

I will make a follow-up call after the business meeting to check in and let them know that I really enjoyed our meeting, and hope that we can do lots of business together in the future.

Hippie Canyon Vintage Voicings: Striptease

Halloween is our busiest time of year. Things get crazy. People run rampant, like animals released at a zoo. Boundaries dissolve. Things get more personal. Personal space gets smaller, more compact and precious.

I wear a witch's hat to work to ward off evil spirits disguised in flesh and blood. I banish them with my pointed cone. I take the initiative, the offensive position, like a ram scraping its hooves in the dirt before charging. I anticipate disaster before it happens, thus averting it. Little children (and their parents) wonder if I really am a witch, and this comes in handy for retail arguments about returns and exchanges. I armor myself against the general public, because I have grown to know them, and know this is a necessary element of dealing with them during the Halloween season. My co-worker, Mitch, calls it 'Battling the Front Lines'. An exaggeration? Not if you've ever worked retail.

Granted, our store is no ordinary store; it is full of magic, as anyone will tell you as soon as they set foot in the door. But it is also filled with danger, like a pirate's ship.

The ceiling is caving in, in secret places, tucked away from the public's prying eyes. Mice come out at night (I've heard them and seen them after hours when they think they are finally alone). Snakes wriggle through, sometimes, silently slithering by. Black Widows like to surprise us every now and then to keep us on our toes. Potato bugs frequent the dress rack, spooking the customers. A lizard has jumped into my lap while I straightened the linens, sitting cross-legged on the floor where millions of shoes have walked before. The roof leaks when it rains, in more than a dozen places. Buckets are always on hand. It's too hot in the summer, and freezing like a witch's tit in the winter, when we have to lug wood (filled with spiders) to build fires to stay warm. There is endless bounty, booty, beauty being poured in, processed, and purchased. We lift and we eat and work harder behind the scenes than you might imagine. The illusion is elegance, grace, and an unspecific divine mirage that mesmerizes everyone who crosses the threshold, from every walk of life, from every country in the world. It is interesting to observe. The magic is real, expressed, and felt.

Today I was lugging clothes back out into their proper places. Always walking, carrying, placing, rearranging, dusting, straightening, organizing, decorating, dragging, lifting, lugging, rolling, throwing and/or catching something. Always moving. My eyes are trained to scan a room. See who's walking in the door, greet them. Someone needs a fitting room. Okay. Someone else needs a fitting room. Okay. Where is the bathroom? It's just past the counter on the left, through the red door. What kind of incense are you burning? Nag Champa. How much is this? It's $12.00. Do you live in the canyon? No. Will you get that wall piece down for me to try on? Yes, but it won't fit you. How does this look on me? Like shit. Next. I mean, it looks great! How can I help you? How can I be of service to you? Do you need psychoanalysis? Let me try to help. Are you a shopaholic? That's great! Welcome!

So, as I was putting away these garments into their proper places, I walk by a woman who is trying on clothes in the 'Fireplace Room'. She is probably in her early thirties or late twenties...hard to tell because she is a little beat up looking. She is with a man who is probably in his early fifties...again, hard to tell because he is a little 'worn'. They both have bleached blond hair, which I find intriguing. Bleached blond like Vince Neil from Motley Crue. The woman is somewhat attractive, and she is trying on clothes over her own clothes, peeling them off and on like layers of an onion, from what I can gather, passing by. Her skirt has crept up over her waist in the back, exposing her ass in all its glory. She has on black opaque stockings, but no underwear my brain registers. Sometimes enforcing clothes-changing behavior is difficult, especially when monkeys are swinging from the ceilings such as at Halloween time and people are buzzing every which way, stumbling through the store with gorilla masks on. Some people prefer to dress or undress out in the open for their own personal reasons and it can be difficult to restrain them.

There is a group of four or five men (counting as I walk by), seeming to be of middle-eastern descent, standing a few feet from her and watching her ass intently, as if it were a bright-red baboon's ass. Their tongues were rolling out of their mouths like cartoon staircases unfolding. They were like dogs in heat making no bones about it. Were they friends? Brothers? In-laws? Father and sons? Hard to tell. Hard to calculate four or five separate ages and relationships to each other in seconds (give me a full minute and I could probably tell you). Were they all popping boners together, and were they okay with that? Apparently so.

I observed this in a flash of a moment, and by the time I realized what was happening, the woman was tugging her skirt back down, struggling it over the bulbous orbs of her butt-cheek flesh. Did she know that she was putting on a show? Did she enjoy it? Did she find power in it? Her blond companion browsed through the men's shirt rack, seemingly oblivious to his friend's presentation. Did he know? Did he encourage her? Was he really oblivious?

So many questions to ask the customers; almost as many as their seemingly endless questions for me.

The Little Man

The little man was willing to travel any distance for the perfect slice of pizza. He was so little that he could literally build a home on top of a pizza. If only he could find the perfect one, he would settle down and stop his endless searching.

He had spent several years in Italy, moving from city to city, and after many airplane rides had narrowed it down to Sicily. Although he started reminiscing about Florence.

He was afraid to pick a final pizza, in a finite location; this he equated with death.

If he kept moving, like a shark, he wouldn't die.

This is what he told himself, anyway, and he chose to believe it.

(From Writer's Emporium Club, September 22, 2011)

Goodbye, Summer!

Today is the last day of Summer. I am not sad to see it go. I bid it a fond adieu. I don't hold much against it except the unbearable heat it exuded for long periods of time, and the migraines it inflicted upon me.

The Summer asks me: "How do you know it is because of me that you suffered so? And do you even know what true suffering is? Maybe you create your own suffering and ailments and look for scapegoats in the innocent. Some people thrive in Summer, and manifest beauty all around themselves in any season because of their strong character and light-hearted spirit. Maybe you are heavy and dark like the Abominable Snowman, freezing in your own ice-hot Hell?"

"No, I don't think so," I told Summer. "I tend to get migraines when it's too hot, and you can't deny that it was too hot."

"Hmmpf!" Summer retorted, and faded silently away into the cooling night.

(From Writer's Emporium Club, Spetember 22, 2011)

Hippie Canyon Vintage Voicings: Full Moon/Dark Star

A full moon in Topanga is exquisite. I can't imagine the moon being more beautiful anywhere else.

Last night it was round, and full, and yellow; a midnight sun, bobbing in the air like a pat of butter.

April. The air is still crisp at night. The sky is midnight blue, full of stars. The ocean breeze carries a slight fog in. The frogs croak everywhere, and crickets chirp. The bushes rustle...the hills are alive.

I drink tequila with Melinda at the Mexican restaurant. The place is packed on a Monday night, which is kind of weird. Loud men at the bar. They appear to be lumberjacks. There's a lot of flannel and mustaches, and not in an ironic kind of way; they mean it. They smell like cigarettes and gasoline, and swig beers like men; proudly. They cluster, man-like, around the bar as a brigade.

Melinda and I make little small talk. We drink tequila, and cut to the chase. We tell it like it is. We see the big picture, or at least, we try to.

Melinda tells me about the Dark Stars, which apparently can swallow you whole, or your entire planet or galaxy. It could have already happened. I could be sitting here, but not really.

I scrape my leftovers (and Melinda's) into a to-go container, and use my straw to suck the last remnants from my salty-sweet glass.

We walk outside into the night. Bright, bright moon, jasmine-scented air, the night abuzz and fertile, swathing us in moon-glow, wrapping us in a protective white blanket of light.

The beautiful moon is here right now, in this moment, as I am here perceiving it.

Unless it and I have been destroyed by a Dark Star, and we just don't know it yet.

Hippie Canyon Vintage Voicings: En Francais

I was straightening the dress rack; what a mess! People can be sloppy. They 'ooh' and 'ahh' over the amazing, magical store filled with beauty and wonder, and the next minute they pull clothes out of the racks and leave them half-cocked on their hangers, or sling the clothes over the racks while leaving their respective hangers swinging in mid-air, supporting nothing. People rave about the vintage pieces from the Victorian era, or dresses from the 1930's, and then try them on and leave them discarded, lying on the dressing room floor. People can be very sloppy. Grown, adult people.

Part of my job is to clean up other people's messes, while maintaining a positive attitude. We want customers in the store, so a positive attitude is a necessary part of the job.

People say some interesting things, also, sometimes simultaneously as they are creating messes, sometimes just in passing.

While I was straightening the dress rack, a man approached me intently. The front door was open, and I was standing behind it, in the corner of the front room. The man came over and leaned on the edge of the door, blocking me between the back of the door and the rack of messy dresses. He was wearing a track suit (seriously) and aviator sunglasses (indoors). He was eating what looked like a coconut Popsicle. He spoke with a French accent.

"Do you have an Indian costume? I need to be an Indian."

"No," I replied. "We only have them at Halloween."

"I need to impress a woman by being an Indian; she sent me on the mission, which I must fulfill in order to..." he trailed off.

"I might be able to refer you somewhere...I've got a business card at the front counter; I'll grab it for you." He stepped aside and let me pass.

I went behind the front counter and squatted on the floor, looking on the shelf underneath for the costume shop business card. The French man came to the side of the counter and waited, leaning on the counter and staring down at me.

"Is it inappropriate to tell a woman she has nice cleavage?" he asked me, while staring at my cleavage from above. I looked down at my own cleavage, and noticed he was getting a pretty good view. I looked back up at him, as I stood up.

"It depends."

"On what?"

"On who the person is, and how well you know them."

"You mean, that it would be appropriate if I knew a woman, and inappropriate if I didn't know her," he said with a thick French twang.

"It might be considered a little 'forward' if you didn't know her." Was he feigning cultural ignorance? I thought about trying to explain that it was a little different to tell a woman she looked good, or pretty, or that vintage 1950's sundress fit her form really well, than to isolate her cleavage specifically, or the space between her breasts, while staring down at her and sucking on a coconut Popsicle, while wearing a track suit and too much cologne.

"You women are so complicated," he snorted.

"Not really, " I responded. "Here's the card for the costume shop. Good luck being an Indian!"

He sauntered out the door, dripping Popsicle juice and cologne behind him.

A few minutes later, a woman came up to the front counter and asked me, "Have you seen a French man in here? I came with him, and I'm not sure where he went."

"Does he want to be an Indian?" I ashed her.

"Yes!"

"I think he's outside, eating a Popsicle,"

She looked relieved, and scurried off to find her suave companion.

Hippie Canyon Vintage Voicings: I Have a Job...But Do I Have a Future?

My friend Chris dropped by the store in the later afternoon, yesterday. He sailed through the doorway, with sunlight and dappled leaf shadows streaming in behind him and all around him. "Linda!" he called out. I walked towards the warmth of his voice, not knowing for sure who he was at first because he was submerged in golden afternoon light pools and reflections. I approached him cautiously, as I approach everyone, and when I saw his face clearly, ran into his arms. Sweet man.

He arrived with a message (after brief small talk): "Follow your passion, and everything else will fall into place." I believe him. It seems like the wisest, soundest advice.

A salty old woman came in the store yesterday, too. She told me she was studying Excel, because "everyone wants it". Yuck. Why does everyone want it? I don't. I told her that I was taking a class in Excel, also, but I'm bored out of my mind. My ass starts to get numb in my chair just thinking about it.

My friend Chris stood in the afternoon light, and held my hands inside his hands. "Linda," he said to me, "If you got a job in a small, or large office somewhere, with no windows and no doors and did Excel all day every day inside a tiny cubicle you would end up putting a bullet through your head." I'm afraid he's right. What a relief. Absolution from an angel.

Is Excel the key to my future? But my future as what? A drone-y clone? I'm sure there are lots of exciting things to be done with it, but I can't think of any off the top of my head. I will contemplate it further, to see if I come up with any.

Chris floated out the door on a wafting afternoon cloud with his friend. "Goodbye, my love...I'm off to take a nap!"

The day, and my future, blossomed around me in the hazy, dancing light, with no computers, and especially no Excel in sight.

Hippie Canyon Vintage Voicings: Monkey Head

Harold brought in a monkey head; not an actual monkey's head, but an animatronic one. My first reaction was, "Oh, my God! A monkey head!" I could barely contain my enthusiasm, but I'm not sure why. I was fascinated. It was just a head. Harold set it on its own special little table, underneath a pink fringed Victorian floor lamp. It had its own spotlight. We plugged it into the wall, and it sprang to life immediately, chatting chimpanzee speak, moving its head from side to side, wiggling its eyebrows, and cooing.

The monkey head is very random. It will sit quietly for some time, and then start going through its bag of tricks sporadically. It follows me with its eyes when I walk past it. I stare back. I also talk to it like it was a real monkey. "Hello, monkey!" Usually when I address it, it ignores me, but not always. I want it to respond, I want to strike up a genuine rapport, but it's just an animatronic head, so I also know that this is not possible. But my mind has conjured up several scenarios involving true connection.

I think maybe I will be at work one night, after the store closes, and the monkey head will strike up a conversation, because in addition to knowing a few movements, gestures, and sounds it would also know how to speak English. Maybe it could advise me in personal matters? Maybe it would be a psychoanalytical monkey? Maybe it would know some Freudian theories? Maybe it would be able to see inside my soul and guide me through some kind of mystical journey? The possibilities are endless.

Maybe it would be a monkey head from outer space? Or a God Head? Maybe it would have all the answers to all the questions in the Universe?

In the meantime, I enjoy it for various reasons, most of which are somewhat vague.

Customers are immediately drawn to it, also. As soon as they walk through the door, they see it sitting on its special little table, underneath the Victorian lamp, and they call out to their companions, "Monkey head! Look! Look at the talking monkey head!" They walk quickly towards it, to examine it closer, to have an intimate moment with this strange contraption; they react as if it was a real monkey.

It appears to be motion-sensitive (but not always), and when someone approaches, it moves its head, or lets out a little cry, or wiggles its eyebrows at them. Now I'm watching the monkey head, and other people's reaction to it, and its reaction to them. It's almost like a real monkey. Without a body.

A little boy came in the store with his family, and picked up the monkey's remote control unit and had that monkey head jumping through hoops. He ran down the entire list of available monkey tricks and commands, and I have to say that I was more impressed than ever. The monkey head was far more versatile than I had originally suspected.

An older man came in (maybe in his sixties or seventies) with coke-bottle glasses, and high-waisted brown polyester pants, and kept muttering to himself while he tried on roller skates. We had just put about eight pairs in the front window, and he tried on every pair to see if they would fit; none of them did. Each time he would put on a new pair, he would talk to himself about whether the skates fit him or not, and he came to the same conclusion every time: no, they did not fit. He would stand up and attempt to skate across the floor, anyway, just to make sure.

The little boy's family continued to browse for a while in the other rooms, and he spent all his time with the monkey head; while it made guttural noises, and shrieked out, shaking its head from side to side. I think it would have beat on its chest, if it had had one.

The older man continued to skate wobbly back and forth on the freshly tiled and slippery floor, muttering to himself about shoe size.

I hoped for the best, and went into the kitchen to make a sandwich.

Red Felt Heart "Liar" featuring Linda Benskin

Strange Creatures that go 'Screech!' in the Night

A woman was very tired. Sleepy, but strangely wired too. She had fantasized about sleep for days, catching bits and pieces here and there, moving about in a slightly unexplainable trance-like state, and she was greatly looking forward to her bed and private dreamtime lollygagging.

All the elements were in line; dark, quiet, clean, rain on the way. And purring cats. All of them ready for sleep. Solitude.

But a wild screeching creature was outside the open window, cackling madly. "Screeeeeech! Screeeech!" it cawed loudly, rude and spiteful. "Screeeeeech! Screeeeech!"

"What the fuck is that?!" her gold tomcat asked, disgruntled.

"I don't know..." she replied, exhausted.

"Screeeeech! Screeeeech!" the creature in the dark called out.

"You have got to be kidding me!" her black cat said, and jumped off the bed to get a closer look.

The other two followed to the window, and looked out, searching in the blackness for the screecher.

"I don't see anything..." the woman said, half asleep.

"Look, there!" gold tom said. "In the tree!"

They all looked, and saw a flapping winged creature, flying aimlessly and awkwardly in an uneven circle, and screeching wildly.

"It's a bat!" little black cat said.

"You're right, it is a bat," said the woman.

They stood and watched it for a long time, flapping its wings and flying around in a circle, yelping out sporadically.

They finally tired of this, and shut the window, and went to bed.

They had fitful, screeching dreams, but woke up to a peaceful day, full of sparrows and songbirds, and little yellow roses.

The Race

"You will win the race!" Sheila affirmed.

"But I have a broken leg from the last race..." Stan 'The Man' Johnson replied.

"No matter! You've been putting too much weight on this broken bone! All in your head! Fly like the wind!"

"But..."

"No 'butts'; just do! You do like you doo-doo: because you have to! No more questions; off you go!"

Stan 'The Man' Johnson hobbled over to his race car and hesitantly got inside.

"Are you sure?!" he asked.

"Yes! Yes! Don't be such a pansy! Go! Go!"

Stan 'The Man' Johnson sped away as fast as he could go. At the first curve, his car overturned and burst into flames.

"Well," Sheila said to herself. "You win some, and you lose some; that's life."

Stan 'The Man' Johnson's spirit swirled around her for a moment in a fog-like mist, and then was gone.

Most Reprehensible Instrument

When Lila made the appointment for her MRI, the scheduler asked her if she was claustrophobic.
"No," Lila replied. "I'm not." In her mind's eye, she was a brave person.

Lila believed herself to be a stoic individual, someone who remained calm in a crisis, and did what she had to do in order to keep things running the way they should.

Two of her family members offered to drive her to the appointment, but she declined them both, saying that she would be fine, and that it was not a big deal.

She arrived at her appointment an hour early, anticipating paperwork. She ended up waiting for an hour and a half in the lobby, watching the clock tick the minutes off. Finally she stood up impatiently and waited by the front desk. A technician eventually came up to the window and apologized for the delay; there was apparently some kind of 'emergency' case ahead of her. Her mind raced with sudden violent thoughts not easily subdued. She was polite and said she understood, and sat back down.

A few minutes later, she was called into the back rooms, where she was instructed to strip and wear a white paper robe, and remove all of her jewelry and store it in a provided locker. The technician gave her a key, which she held onto tightly; in a moment it would be taken away from her. She started to become more concerned. There were no women here, only men with accents, and they were taking things very seriously, like something could actually be wrong. She attempted humor, but her jokes fell flat to her own ears, and the technicians smiled wanly like they had heard them all before.

They took her into an all-white room, with a photo of a clear blue sky with little white puffy clouds on the ceiling. She stared at this sky intermittently for over an hour (she knows it was over an hour because she kept her eye on the clock, going and coming), but afterward she couldn't remember exactly what it looked like, all its details being washed away by the tides inside mind.

The technician asked her if she had any questions before they started, and she couldn't think of any, off the top of her head, so he shoved earplugs in both her ears (which she hadn't expected), and started to move her into the machine, feet first.

She soon discovered the reason for the earplugs: there were noises like exploding weapons and space alien ray gun fights and earthquakes and bombs dropping all around her. Why so noisy to snap a few pictures of her insides? She didn't understand. Why the vibrations and transmutations all around her body, making her mind ache? The technicians were staying far outside the room, which was apparently toxic. She wondered how safe it was to be inside this mechanism. If she didn't have some kind of disease, surely this machine would give her one by the time she was through, or it was through with her. How many other people had been slid through this thing? How much pain and suffering had this monstrosity absorbed over the years? What if the person who was in here before her had lice? Or some kind of rare skin disease that she could catch by lying in the same spot?

Where was the technician? He hadn't checked in with her for quite some time. Had it been ten minutes? Twenty minutes? What if they had gone on a lunch break and left her here alone? What if there was some kind of emergency outside the building, like a fire or something? There had been protesters along the sidewalk when she arrived, but she blindly looked past their signs. What if this giant dome fell on her and crushed her alive? Her face was only inches away from the lid, or the top of it. She felt like she couldn't breathe, and started to hyperventilate. The technicians didn't seem to notice, even though she was supposedly wearing some kind of strap that monitored her breathing.

"Can I ask a question?" she asked, her voice sounding high-pitched and tense even to herself.

No one replied.

"Can I ask a question?" she repeated again, loudly and insistent, and this time the technician responded.

"Is there a problem?" he asked, in a blase tone.

"I need to come out of this thing for a minute!"

The technician came into the room, and pressed a button on the front of the machine, and she rolled out slowly, like something very hot being pulled out of an oven.

"My arms are falling asleep from having them over my head for so long," Lila said. "How much longer?"

"About forty-five minutes."

A ridiculously unbearable amount of time.

Lila bit her nails, and asked for a glass of water. Stalling tactics. She was strapped in. The technician brought her a Styrofoam cup with ice cold water in it, and a straw. He said he couldn't unstrap her, she needed to go back in; her doctor had wanted films of her abdomen and her pelvis, with and without contrast dye, so it was going to take a while longer. It was two days before Christmas, and she could tell he wanted to get out of there.

She resigned herself to going back inside, with a sudden heavy inescapable dread that outweighed even her fear of being crushed alive by this machine.

Lucid Dreaming (Part Deux)

The light switch wouldn't turn on (always my first clue). It usually takes me a few seconds to realize it, and sometimes I have to check more than one light to make sure. Then comes that rush of feeling, like sailing down a rollercoaster ramp at top speed; I know I'm dreaming, and am aware of it. With this comes total freedom, but I usually restrain myself out of fear of the unknown.

I decide to throw caution to the wind tonight, and walk through the sliding glass door onto my balcony. I watch myself walk through it like a knife through butter, see my hands and feet appear on the other side. I walked through with a little too much force, however, and immediately launch myself off the edge of the balcony, to focus on my flying skills before I have time to contemplate it. I have the thought, and it happens; mind-bocy coordination.

I fly thrillingly over the backyard for a few seconds, before thinking too much (always my downfall). When I start to freak out about flying, I fall splat on the ground and wake up.

Next time I need to focus on flying with confidence, and eradicate the fear somehow in order to go further.