witnessing all of this with me*
I had to dodge carts of persimmons so ripe that their skins threatened
to burst like slimy orange pupae from fleshy eggs on my way to the
flower market that balmy October afternoon. The time was a ripe as those
persimmons for the purchase of my poinsettia. Truly a more auspicious
moment than mid October could never have been to usher in the Christmas
season with such foliage.
It was as if the deep reds and dark greens of the poinsettia adorning my
trailer-park-at-Christmas cabinet (hailed from another story) gave the
universe some covert signal, a wink of the celestial eye, to unleash all
the fury of hilarity into my life. Maybe that or the randomly, though
appropriately, muttered word "asinine" floating through the room to
reach my ears already trembling with giggles.
Whatever the cause, the universe had indeed aligned itself in such a way
that the sticky sweet of the pineapple popsicle poignantly highlighted
the glimmer of mischief in the ancient Tibetan eye of the nearby
grandmother as she hobbled closer to the unsuspecting posterior of my
friend. Eyes clouded with age sparkling beneath a braided mass of gray
she rested her time wrinkled hands on the shoulders of my friend who's
shock registered pricelessly on her American face as she turned slightly
to peer into the brown lines of the visage of the personal space
invader. From her lips escaped a two syllable "oh...kay...." less a
remark of assent than confusion. The grandmother, with no intention of
finding a new resting place for her hands, mimicked the okay and
breathed a sigh heavy enough to be her last, as though there were
nothing more to be uttered on that subject or any. The rest of the
universe, and every fiber of my being, was overtaken by waves of
laughter like a flock of birds suddenly alighting from a power line and
even the popsicle chanced a smirk.
In these days rifts in the time space continuum appear big enough for
the bus to lurch to a stop and make an allowance for the unsuspecting
student to leap on, into the the presence of both of her foreign
teachers. The majesty, or perhaps horror, of seeing both of us at this
moment, on this bus, on this street, in this city, is enough for her
entire body to register: eyes as big as the moon, mouth wide in a barely
prevented scream, arms in the air and body rigid. A few inches of
difference and this poor girl would surly have been backwards off the
bus and onto the unforgiving pavement. The split second of
quintessential surprise before the girl regained control of her bodily
functions was enough to make me double over with laughter and tremble
with amusement I could no longer distinguish from the shudders of the bus.
The profound conclusion to be reached is this: Life is funny people and
as long as we're living, with or without persimmons and poinsettias,
somebody is laughing.
