Wander around sorabji.com:
September 27, 1999
mark thomas
This was a day of mis-directed communications.

One of those mis-directions I will not talk about, and the other was irrelevant. But the one I encountered this evening while getting home and getting my postal mail made me laugh. It is a post card from the Franklin Mint to a "Mr. Dueno" at this precise street address advising him that his Harley Davidson precision Model Collec will be shipped by November 24.

I can't wait.

Everything about this postcard made me laugh. The wrong address. The space between the last "C" of "Collec" and the forthcoming period. The story about where that space came from. The 1985 computers that the Franklin Mint seem to use. The obviousness of the form-letter and the idea that "Mr Dueno" "commissioned" something.

When I get my Harley Davidson precision porcelain gem I will post pictures right here at this place, from this spot on which I sit. I am not going anywhere between then and now.

I saw ads in Parade Magazine for Franklin Mint statues, and it made me wonder if the Harley Davidson restaurant on 6th Avenue is still in business. I had such a lousy cheeseburger there in 1994.

 

 

 

I have been seeing this perfectly beautiful woman on the subways the past few weeks. She looks upset and bored, and she always wears too much. Too much make-up, too ponderous shoes, wash-off tattoos, obvious bras. Everything about her bulges, but she is not a large person.

The first time I saw her she wore a big-ass Holy Cross around her neck and a skirt so short I didn't think she would actually sit down. I was a creep, obviously turning my head just to gape, but she wore it well, evidently too irritated and bored to slum with a dork like me.

Tonight I paced in trapezoids at the 57th Street Station. I was not thinking of anything, of the fact that I only ever see her starting here at this subway station. But the next thing I knew she was down there pacing, too. There was more obviousness about her this time. The navy blue fingernail polish. The wash-off chain tattoo around her neck. The insanely enormous shoes. The clatter of clip-on earrings and the all-black outfit. I remembered college and 1992. Those times when I wore all kinds of ludicrous 5-cent accoutrements (thirty cents in the Village).

Nothing happened. I am 31 years old, and nothing ever happens. But I think I got her attention this time. Until next year...

 

 

 

 

 

Mark A. Thomas