Tuesday, March 21, 2017

A grand day out

To begin your day with your nice tax lady, who in twenty minutes calculates that you owe the feds $36, and that the state of Illinois, I repeat actually the state of Illinois, owes you $84, is to begin a grand day out.

(Her office is a sight. It never changes from one year to the next. Carpet unspeakable -- not necessarily dirty, just unspeakable -- then see the ancient, leather, tufted, nail-studded couch in the "marsala" shade so popular a few years ago, the same shade I daresay we all once called maroon, when the couch was made. [Maroon: from the Fr. marron, chestnut; It. marrone, the same.] Two ancient wood-veneer bureaus stand directly beside each other to your right, of what use God knows. The lady's own desk is purely office-functional, carrying a huge flatscreen computer on top. Her chair is office-functional too, some kind of black mesh or black cushion or something; there is a fancier tufted sort of red leather nail-studded armchair for the client to sit in across from her, while he peers over at the computer screen at an awkward angle. Another bureau or two, or a filing cabinet, sit cramped to one's left on the other side of the tiny room. After that the eye is drawn to a waste of decorations. We see unused photo holders, their empty twirly prongs sticking up out of odd corners next to monkey sock puppets, children's artworks and children's portraits, and piles of envelopes and papers, and the crooked matched framed photos of nice nature scenes, the beach, the woods, a meadow, slung about on the wood paneled walls. Of course we are seated in a sort of inner sanctum, beyond the foyer, beyond the secretary's desk, carpet still unspeakable, past the ancient confusing double doors that seem not to open either out or in without a struggle, and the half-dead trailing pothos yearning at basement-style glass block windows. There are no windows at all here, in the lady's office. A diploma or certificate hangs on the wall. And lost in the mess is a photo of Mother (I have no doubt), smiling out from more dark paneling on some Occasion. Little do any of us realize what will be the picture of us that gets immortalized into a frame with a faux misty cloud accompanying, and a poem about our worth printed in some meditative font. I don't sneer, I simply take note. Meanwhile my tax lady herself is sharp as a tack, a pretty forty-five perhaps, with a complexion just going velvety with a bit of middle age, and bright brown eyes and bright brown hair a little differently styled each year. She has lovely small differently pointed teeth, which show when she smiles -- "wow, they've sold your mortgage already haven't they." I know, I answer, I thought that wasn't done anymore? -- wasn't that the big problem, in 2008? She shrugs, her pink lipstick softly gleaming. She wears soft purple or mint-green blouses, and this time a parure of greenish-moonstone earrings and necklace. Her right hand works the number keyboard at lightning speed.)    

Thirty-six dollars, plus eighty. I could have hugged her.

That done, let's go buy a Monstera deliciosa, a plant wrongly once called, it seems, a "split-leaf" philodendron. I have wanted one for a while, but never more so than since seeing, for the first time on the big screen at a real theater, All About Eve. Margo Channing has a huge Monstera in her home. I bought a tiny $5 specimen a week ago, labelled hopefully monstera but with its leaves uncut. Then today I turned a corner in my neighborhood big-box home improvement store and spotted three of the real thing. I picked the biggest. I now think of it as "Bette Davis plant."




Gardening books won't tell you why it is called deliciosa, except that it bears a fruit which is poisonous when young but sweet when mature. That takes a year. Perhaps the people who compile the books don't actually grow plants. I think the real reason it is M. deliciosa is because the roots, actually the roots, are sweetly fragrant. Fragrant enough, on the first day at least, to perfume a room.

Next, we'll go to the local woods carrying a friend's borrowed binoculars. I now live five minutes away from scenes that were a great treat to visit in childhood. When you look through binoculars, the grasses and water seem like a painting up close. I saw an American coot -- a duck, not a person -- and I may even have spotted a green-headed teal, another duck. The great heron, who quit flying when I arrived in my obvious white parka, stood still among the grasses, just a slim wash of blue-gray and a watching black eye in low beige thickets.





To return home is to see snowdrops -- surely? -- for the first time in a garden. This is the garden I was telling you about last summer, the one tended for twenty years by one woman who didn't ask permission of the condo association or the village or anybody, but simply started planting and kept on. Last fall I added tulip bulbs, which are sprouting also. If all goes well they should turn out orange. But these are snowdrops.



Last project of all was to carry on making my retro '50s art corner in my living room. At Allposters.com I found the art of Donna Mibus, who I assumed on account of her output must be some legend whom I, in my ignorance, was only just discovering. Not exactly, although to have one's art for sale at Allposters, and art.com, and Etsy, and featured in the magazine Atomic Ranch, is something of a feat. She explains at Etsy that she is a grandmother and only began painting when she turned fifty. I -- and many other people -- love her "MCM" (mid-century modern, i.e., retro '50s, and isn't it great that in Roman numerals MCM means 1900?) love Donna Mibus' retro '50s art. It's all full of flat bright pastel colors, egg-chairs, and elongated cats and dogs gazing at elongated '50s-worthy visiting aliens. Pairing it with a garish Debra Paget movie poster for Princess of the Nile, and a pastel cocktail-shaker-with-martini print, seemed just right. I must tell her.


   


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