A Promise Fulfilled by Constantine Gochis

 In fact, my father had not titled this short short story. I am guessing that his writing class had been instructed to begin a story, any story, with the well known, somewhat hackneyed sentence, "It was a dark and stormy night" and see where it took each senior writer. Dad was for some time part of an elder writing class sponsored by West Hollywood, California and facilitated by a lovely lady named Bea Mitz. He actually had a few of his works published in small venues. 

I decided to give it a title, "A Promise Fulfilled".  Here goes.

It was a dark and stormy night. The little girl pressed her face against the inner panes of her bedroom window, her eyes straining to penetrate the clouding moisture. She had heard the door slam as he stormed out of the house.  The raging force of nature outside, the lightning and the claps of thunder did not hide from her anxious heart the hate-filled words they had hurled at each other in the other room.  There was movement, she was sure, as her eyes strained into the teeming vastness of the raging turmoil outside.  A figure was walking toward the house. He was coming back! Then, desolation and tears.  It was nothing more than the protesting branches of a tree casting shadows in the intermittent flashes of lightning.

She was chilled.  The fireplace was unlit. Earlier, the maid had come into her room and made those bodily movements and sounds that denote one is cold.

"Lara," she said, 'it's freezing in here. Shall I light the fireplace?"

"No, no," Lara protested, "please leave it!"  It was Christmas Eve, she said. How would Santa come down a fireplace into blazing logs. And Papa had promised her a special gift. They would open it together tomorrow. Then he would take her away with him and they would be together forever and ever. . . "

The woman entered the room.  "Come away from the window, Lara," she said sternly.  "You can be hit with lightning."  There was no concern in her eyes. She was as composed as she always was, and beautifully dressed, untouched in any way by the conflict whose din had penetrated the wrath of the storm, the sturdy oak door to her room and had pierced her heart. 

"Come away," she repeated. "I've had enough nonsense for one night, and Louise," she said addressing the maid, "get her into bed before she catches her death. Get some heat into this room!" With that final admonition, she strode away.

"Come, Lara," whispered Louise, "Your mother is angry."

"She's not my mother. She's never been my mother!" Lara burst into tears. "I hate her--I hate her!"

Louise set about lighting the logs in the fireplace. "Sweetheart," she soothed. "Don't talk like that. Kris Kringle can hear long distance. And Santa doesn't have to worry about fire in the chimney. You just won't see him when he comes, and he always does. But he won't come if little girls try to stay awake to catch him."

Lara relaxed as Louise dried her eyes.  Papa never lied to her and Santa had never failed her before. Her eyelids were heavy from the cares of this fateful day.

Sleep came quickly, and dreams in which there was no rain, no lightning and thunder, where the ground was pearly white with thick snow, especially on the rooftops. How else could Santa drive except with snow?  

Then the storm was back and she was somehow outside in the pelting rain. Papa had her by one hand and the woman the other.  They were pulling in different directions and their voices were shrill. Suddenly, she wasn't dreaming. She was awake and there was another din through her sturdy oak door.

Then suddenly, there was silence.

Lara ran to the door and opened it. 

"Papa," she cried, "You came back!"

Her father was standing face to face with the woman. Two men stood stoically behind him. One of the men was in a police uniform and wore a gun around his waist.

"Well," said the woman coldly, "take her, take her now."

Lara jumped into her father's arms.  He carried her briefly back inside her room.  

"Look," he said, pointing to the floor in front of the fireplace. 

"Look, your gift from Santa." 

Eureka Springs, Arkansas 2011

I have been fortunate in many ways, but among them, is becoming friends with colleagues I had at the State Bar of California. In my last entry, I posted pics from my trip, in 2006, to Victoria, British Columbia, with a friend and colleague from the Bar (Dede), to visit a retired member of our little group (Kay). Today's entry revisits my trip to see my friend and then former colleague Maridee in Jefferson City, Missouri, where she moved back in 2001 (the time that has passed boggles the mind every time), and from whence we took a car trip to Eureka Springs, Arkansas and a little cabin on a creek at a Retreat Vacation locale called "Sky Ridge". I'd say it had a little of the isolation of say a Walden Pond and Maridee and I surely communed about life and philosophy and friendship. And we did some sightseeing too in the town built on the mountain in the Ozarks. I am fortunate that some of my friends moved to locales that I would not have otherwise visited. I would have missed some splendid topography and people.

With my current bout of arthritis, I doubt I could manage this town any longer. It is entirely hills and steps. 

But it is also a combination of history, old west type and new age. Comfortable. Welcoming.

It is said that the Crescent Hotel is haunted. Some years after my passing through it as a tourist, I saw a program about the ghostly residents. 

But as for me, when I went inside I found a cat, and that was all I needed to feel at home. The cat was also a resident. 

Above, our little cabin. And a bit of the landscape around us. See below as well. 

Below, if memory serves, the location of the spring? I forget. 

Maridee and me. 

Below, a little house from 1890 that I could happily have lived in. And look at that bargain basement price!

I may hate to fly, but the view is sometimes so spectacular thirty thousand feet up. 

Victoria, British Columbia, 2006

Our next destination is as above. If I did not have such a profound fear of flying (though I guess it isn't quite a phobia as I will do it after much mental gyration, and the thoughts in my head while I'm flying--you don't want to know!), I imagine there are many more places I would have gone in my life. But I am pleased that I did at least manage some, and every one was spectacular. When I worked at the State Bar, one of the secretaries was a woman named Kay Kidwell. In some ways, she reminded me of the character in the Beverly Hillbillies, Jane Hathaway (the late Nancy Culp). I did not ever learn much about her, except that she had had some interesting jobs, and the State Bar was a rather staid one in the scheme of things. She was articulate, quietly cynical but always kind, and for me our real bonding came because she loved animals as I do. Truth be told, when things at my old job got me into a tizzy, but I couldn't really share with many, I was able to share with her, and she somehow always helped me land back in calm. She had a little do dad machine on her desk that ticked away the days until her retirement and retire she did, somewhere in the area of 2004, I'm thinking. She bought a little house in Victoria. In 2006, my colleague and friend Dede went on a visit there and shared a lovely several days with her menagerie of pets.  I kept in touch for a while after I came back to Los Angeles; I think Dede did better than I did on that score. But I suppose the distance attenuated both our connections. Last year, we found out that Kay had passed away. It's at moments like these that I regret my reluctance to travel to friends and places. 

So, first, I flew to Seattle. I almost forgot I had done that. Forgot I saw the Needle.  It was really a pass through. Got a cab and to the departure of the boat that takes you to Victoria Harbor. 

                                                    

Quite the boat ride. I forget how long it is. Long enough to appreciate the water and the sky. I loved being in the back near the wake. 

Below, one of our first adventures was a stop at a nice pub, where in Canada we sang "Bye Bye Miss American Pie".  I checked. The Irish Times is still there! 

Lots of going around with the dog. Oh, dear, I cannot remember his name any longer, but I do believe he was part wolf. And what a sweetie.

Butchart Gardens, created out of a quarry. 

Below some of the menagerie. 

The Empress was built beginning in 1904 and opened in 1908, It was named after Queen Victoria. Happily it is considered an historic site. Magnificent inside and out. We did not have high tea though which is apparently quite the event there these days.

On the beach with Kay, Dede and the dog.

They had dog parks in Victoria before we had them here, where the pets could go into the water with you.

Good memories, of a place and of a person who touched my life. Rest in Peace Kay. 

Pluribus Non Est Ponenda Sine Neccesitate by Constantine Gochis

Imagine my surprise when I heard these strange words uttered by my street bum friend on the occasion of our most recent encounter.  Some of you here are familiar with Diogenes, a peripatetic beggar, who for years has accosted me for his stipend of spare change, to the point that I am considering declaring him a dependent on my tax returns.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the person so named, let me offer herewith a brief biography.

Diogenes was not always a bum.  In fact, he had, at one time, achieved the apogee of financial success and popular acclamation.  His material demise, as he once explained to me, came when his wife left him in the midst of a cruise of the Greek Islands, for a poetess with whom she became enamored.  It was all downhill for him from there.

He is no ordinary bum.  He is learned and multilingual, as you can divine from the recondite title above, which he translated forthwith--after I had deposited my stipend in his grimy hand.

"Very simple," he explained, 'it means that 'plurality should not be posited without necessity.'"

"Indeed, it is not simple," I objected.  "What has that got to do with anything?" I began to feel a little resentment. Diogenes had assumed a patronizing attitude, a characteristic not consonant with his social status.  This affectation is rare for him, and, to add insult to injury, is only displayed AFTER he has already received his spare change. 

"Don't be so sensitive," he said.  "I am only quoting a medieval theological principle, 'Occam's Razor.' I will expound if you consider adding a few more coins to that miserable offering you have made."

He continued without waiting for a response, another example, it seemed, of arrogance.

"William of Occam was a 14th Century philosopher and controversial theologian, a minimalist like me, in that he also chose a life of poverty.  Less or fewer is the more perfect state--to elucidate-is better--to simplify.  The concept has perfect application to secular monk status and current politics."

"Elucidate!" I challenged, echoing his proposition.

"Take the brouhaha about the last presidential election.  The general clamorous tocsin centers about the greater number of votes received by Al Gore.  There is no greater illustration of excess and meaningless plurality.  The 'plaints of the hysterical hoi polloi have no Constitutional veracity. Less is better--The Electoral College, for example, is an example of the 'razor', the means by which the superfluity of the headless mob is constrained--Madison's Tyranny of the Majority.  Need I say more?"

"You are saying that the privileged minority is imbued with the Greater Good?"

"Let me," continued Diogenes, "answer with a theological application of Occam's Razor from the Middle Ages, an argument by Peter Abelard. You remember him, no doubt played on stage or in movie by someone like Peter O'Toole.  The question? 'Whether a higher angel kows through fewer species than a Lower?' This was answer in the affirmative.

I did not really understand the quote.  "Diogenes," I asked.  "Does that mean that there is more room on the head of a pin for the higher angels?" He ignored the question.

"What's more," he continued, "Peter Abelard added the conclusion of Aristotle that 'the more perfect a nature is the fewer means it requires for its operation.'"

"Who is Abelard?" I asked.

"You do not know the saga of Abelard and Heloise?  A sure fired movie potential--it was done on stage you know, showing how God's business is inimical to hormonal manifestations in the population of Holy Orders.  But I digress.  Occam's razor has been used to suggest that 'material substance is an unnecessary plurality," and you know what the Democrats would do with that? Let me say, in closing, that I object occasionally to minimalism, but given my status, could you spare a little more change?"

I am always awed by Diogenes' displays of intellectual prowess.  I felt the least I could do was to augment my donation to him. I fingered a fifty-cent piece in my pocket.  Had it been a shade less weighty, I should have give it to him, in appreciation.  I settled for an additional quarter. I am also on occasion a believer that less is better. 

Encounter on a Bus by Constantine Gochis

 She was not a guy, as I had originally assumed when she passed me at the bus stop. It was the shaven head that misled me, though to be frank, I thought the legs were too creamily tanned and shapely for a guy.

The bus was very long in coming. We mounted together and dismounted again at Fairfax and Third Street. Both of us took the northbound 217 to Oakwood Avenue, where she was behind me when I got off.

"We meet again," I said. "Like ships that pass in the night." She laughed.

"We've talked before," she said, though the phase was more like a question than a statement.

"I should have remembered if we had," I said, looking at her intently.

She was gray-eyed and small fatured, and pretty.  Web-like creases at the corners of her eyes testified that she was approaching forty, or had passed it. She wore no make-up. She was trim and casually dressed.

"What do you do?" I asked.

"Do?" she queried.

"I mean, work."

"Right now, I'm not working."

"When you do?"

"Counter-work in department stores, when I have hair."

It seemed to me that work was not a major concern of her life style.  I probed. Though she was articulate, she had not had college. My impression practically screamed, "Berkeley!" Later conversation verified she was leading an unencumbered lifestyle, which would not be foreign in that environ.

"I don't have a TV, or a VCR, or even a radio," she told me. I was not surprised.

"Or a dress suit?" I offered. "Surely not an evening gown, or a family?"

"A sister in Florida, where I come from." Her accent was not Californian.

"My guess is that it takes only a slight wind to fill your sails," I ventured.

"I go when the urge comes."

"Where are you going now?" I asked.

"I'm going into this shop to look at some books," she answered.

We were standing in front of the Out of the Closet Thrift Shop, on Fairfax Avenue.

She offered her hand and I took it.  It was warm and friendly.

"I hope we meet again," she said.

"I hope so too. I feel we might," I responded. I thought she might make a fine addition to my collection of Fairfax Avenue notables who give the area its flavor. I did mention to her in passing that she was interesting enough for me to write an immediate five pages.

She laughed.

I watched her walk away. She wasn't a guy, but it was not a feminine walk.

Then a Thrift Shop isn't a place to look through books. 

Hawaii 2006

Although I worked for the State Bar of California for some 25 years, and though I was a manager for about 10 of those years, I only rarely was able to attend the NOBC, National Organization of Bar Counsel, events that mostly took place in locales in the mainland United States, but on occasion in such as Hawaii. I went to Chicago and Philadelphia in my time, and once when it was held in San Francisco. But in 2006 I got lucky, because I was to be a presenter and I would get to make the first of two visits to Hawaii, specifically Oahu, and Waikiki. My presentation was less than spectacular, alas, though my boss at the time, the late Scott Drexel, was very kind when I felt the need to confess my poor performance. I didn't know him well, but I miss him, and his very real commitment to the legal profession's ethics--a rarity in these wild west days--especially among our national, state, and local leaderships. We attended a whole bunch of seminars, but we did get a chance to venture forth and see the sights. I engaged in my first, and thus far, only effort at Kayaking, a 50 something bringing up the rear of kayaks, in a field of 20 something beautiful bodies. As I looked at some of the photos (among those not posted here) I was probably at my fattest. Still, I managed the activity in Kailua, a pristine part of Oahu. And a residence of the very rich. And I got to spend time with colleagues and friends, as well as to visit one of my now late aunts, who had taken up residence there, in Oahu, though not in the most view worthy area. Truth is, most of the interior is rather like any city. Her life had become somewhat difficult by then, and I was able to bring her to share my room for a day or so, and took her to the Outrigger for dinner. 

We really did work hard--those seminars are incredibly. . . .shall we say, boring?! But we didn't miss one of them. Rewards, below. 

The view from my room.  

Hawaiian palm trees are different from those in Los Angeles. Slimmer, better fronds. And they blow beautifully in the wind. 

A group shot at dinner somewhere, Murray, Anita, Kristin, Jeff, Tom Mills, Itzel among them. A couple of folks, alas, not sure who they are. Kim and Jeff.

Another group shot.

There is no trip to Oahu, without a visit to the Arizona and the brave men who died at the beginning of the battle to save the world. 

In 2006, the oil from the destroyed Arizona still rose from the surface. A reminder of the extremity of the sacrifice that in my view, Americans HAVE forgotten. (Sorry)

Yes, I was in one of those kayaks. Forgot to use suntan protection on my legs. I was lobster red.

The Duke's Statue on the strand, and another picture of the ocean, can't get enough of that.

My room and a daytime view from the terrace.

And below, my Aunt Kathleen, now passed away (2014), and her friend Leaujay (who lived to a great age up to 2016). 

The Celestials Among Us by Constantine Gochis

I actually had to look up the "history" of this event of which my father wrote in this short short story.

He refers to a "Denise" in it, and I could not for the life of me remember who that could have been. So I looked up the times that then former President Clinton played the sax publicly, along with the names of "Denise" and "Hillary", you know, the one who designated so many American voters (about half) as "deplorable" in more recent years and really won the 2016 election to what she designated an "illegitimate President" (when she said it challenging elections was ok; not ok in 2020 when Mr. Biden won--ain't that magic?). And I found it. The "Denise" was/is Denise Rich, former wife of Marc Rich, a commodities trader who was controversially pardoned (no matter who does it, either side of the aisle, I have to admit it is always controversial) by the former President on his last day in office.

The occasion of which my father wrote, in 2000, whew, 23 years ago now, was a gift of a saxophone to Mr. Clinton at a fundraising event hosted by Ms. Rich.

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-bill-clinton-receives-a-saxphone-as-a-gift-from-news-photo/51570532

I also leave you, before I add my father's observations about life and politics, with an article from the Washington Post which interpretes Ms. Rich's interactions and donations to the Clinton(s). You forget things after nearly a quarter of a century. That's just the way they like it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/02/18/friends-defend-denise-rich-as-naive-soul/be60bff9-4ab2-4bc4-9b98-ec453842b8b9/

THE CELESTIALS AMONG US

There are divinities among us.  Each night, we press the remote and they appear magically for our admiration and then, adoration. They provide us with the illusions we require as we do bread for sustenance.  Sometimes they disappoint us and we quibble about a minor lapse. I beseech you. Why cavil about a little sin? We have made them in our image, with the imperfections of our fallible natures.  Given the chance to romp among them on Olympus, who would not play as they do and look down with disdain at that clamorous human with his everlasting lamentation?

Listen! You too! There was an eternity of nothingness before you arrived on this orb, and another to come when you leave. Live and let live. You're burning daylight.

Let us rather cavort with them insofar as our limitations allow, and revel in and retell the tales of their mingling with us, playfully, so their deeds become the mythology of our generations and the rites and liturgies we employ to give them meaning.

These were some of my thoughts as I viewed a fleeting television snippet depicting the peccadilloes of one of the deities. Well, "peccadillo" is a little excessive. Still, if you look long at his persona, he casts too definitive an after-image, as do some of his heretofore playmates--two, at least in this clip.

They are on a dais--Bill, Hillary and Denise. He is resplendent in black tie as is Denise. Her gown is partially obscured by the podium over which she holds the instrument of the presentation--a saxophone. The bare shouldered dress is clearly Cote D'Azur, or Biarritz.  The moments are fleeting so it is difficult to assess her beauty.

The profile is straight and aquiline and accented by heavy pendant earrings, in my impressionable mind in the face of this majesty, clearly diamonds. My guess is beauty carefully ministered against the encroachment of time, palliated by the emoluments of wealth. 

Hillary is demure in a simple suit, with bright buttons that begin in the center of the jacket, at the neck, and extend to her waist. Her hands are clasped at the fourth button until Denise presents the ex-President with the saxophone, causing her to clap her hands appreciatively.  After all, this modern day Hera shares much of the overlapping spotlight that seeks out her husband's image. 

Bill receives the gift, seeming to brush Denise's proffering hand in the process. He looks lovingly at the saxophone, his eyelids lowered sufficiently to enhance the expression of humility and gratitude.

The clip ends here. It is the one being offered universally by the media. I recall having seen the end of the aborted one, which I feel is more interesting.  Forget the baal talk of the exchange of millions, the quid pro quo. It is within the province of immortals to maneuver battalions of us in their Olympian chess games, acting like profligate generals in costly battles, weighing the anticipated casualties of Titanic proportions implicit in grandiose operations.

Like all of you, I dare not look at the full glare of greatness.  I prefer catching their unguarded moments. They resemble us more in their simpler acts of humanity, the inevitable vulnerable spot of all, the heel in the armor of proposed invulnerability.

The ex-President bends down and embraces his wife, turns and places his cheek against that of Denise.

The gesture is fleeting, but I sense warmth and appreciation for the gift and the friendship. Even for the great, money isn't always everything.