A Day at Mike’s

A good beard guy is hard to find…

Walk by, pass the red, white and blue striped barber pole and look in through the front window to make sure your guy is working today. Enter and take a ticket. There are three chairs at Mike’s and there is a lot of waiting. Watch a sporting event, ESPN or FOX News or pick up a slightly battered magazine about golf or maybe Sports Illustrated. You can choose your barber with eye contact, a pleasant smile, then sit and wait. There are some old games for the kids under a low table in the back, a single bathroom with a bar of soap, a small refrigerator with canned pop - you throw a buck in a jar if you want a Coke.

Mike works one day a week now. He’ll give you a haircut in ten minutes flat, 6 haircuts an hour, 12 hours a day for fifty years. Not 12 hours a day anymore, but he used to. Six days a week. Built his business from scratch over years. Today the storefront and the furnishings inside are proudly the same as ever. There is a waiting list to get into the barber college downtown but if you have a sponsor from Mike’s you are in. Mike takes care of his friends and customers…

Not in Cleveland

Did we sense fear? That’s not how I remember it…

In Cairo, the air is a different state of matter than most of us are used to. I remember learning about the three states of matter in school but now apparently there are five. So perhaps the Cairo air is more like a Bose-Einstein Condensate than a gas? In a BMC light appears to slow down as it passes through, allowing for the study of the particle/wave paradox. It certainly is a paradox - gas or solid? And don’t get me started on plasma...

But I digress, as I often do, into content beyond my grasp.

The air is sometimes referred to as a “black cloud” over the city, the result of the two million cars on the roads, factories belching smoke, and farmers outside the city who burn leftover rice husks at the end of the growing season.

During sunrise and sunset, those beautiful times of angularity, a remarkable aspect is created that takes your breath away. Or maybe it’s just the air…

Motion City

Emily awoke with a terrible taste in her mouth. She rubbed her sore neck, struggling to rise into a seated position. It smelled like shit in here. Around her the guys were still asleep. Despite her attempt to open the side door to the van as quietly as possible a few beer cans tumbled out onto the parking lot of the Walmart. She stepped outside and noted the two eighteen wheelers over on the other side near a retention pond, but other than that they were alone. She took a deep breath, zipped her pants and patted the pockets of the filthy jeans, producing a battered package of Virginia Slims. Two left. She put a cigarette in her mouth, bending down to strike a wooden kitchen match on the macadam, inhaling deeply. Better she thought, just a little bit better. She hugged her elbows across her chest covering the logo on her worn Ramones t-shirt. It was chilly this morning. A few cars moved slowly on the state route in the distance, stopping at a red light in front of the Speedway. She headed toward the red sign. 

Entering the store she reached into her tight front pockets producing a couple of coins. In her back pocket she found a few wadded bills. She considered the Hostess pies, blackberry or cherry? Doing a quick calculation she picked a package of sweet rolls for the boys, the cherry pie for herself and a pack of Slims….

Me and My Monkey

for Michelle

Langkawi is an archipelago of 99 islands off of the northwestern coast of Malaysia. For some time we had wanted to stay in one of those places with the cottages up on stilts over the turquoise water. When we lived in Turkey, there were a lot of TV ads about Malaysia. They always had those cottages. Beautiful. They also always featured an exotic woman standing in a waterfall. The resort part seemed doable. Michelle and I could stand in a waterfall together. We’d do just fine.

Michelle loved living in Dubai. She always said that the Middle East is in the middle - that is what made traveling to so many places fairly easy, the accessibility. We had been to Thailand several times, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Azerbaijan and many more. Michelle is a genius for finding hotels. Cool, off the beaten path, places with character. In Barcelona we stayed in the El Avenida where the Beatles had stayed. That one was for me. We had not been in a resort with cottages on stilts though. That happened in Langkawi. That’s where I met my monkey.

The Langkawi Wildlife Park & Bird Paradise is known as a so-called ‘sustainable paradise’. There were certain rules, reasonable accommodations that one needed to make. You don’t throw your junk on the ground. You recycle. You do not mess with the wildlife. Stay on the paths. Leave the monkeys alone. No, seriously, leave the monkeys alone…

Open for Improvement

I was riding my bike north on Reynolds road when I noticed an odd building. Passing, I turned around in a driveway and headed back. I couldn’t ascertain what it was. It looked like a warehouse or a shelter, but somehow harder to define. It was a curiosity. It seemed to be asking a question. I had to see inside. I rode into the small empty lot and approached what I assumed was the front of the building. There was no signage, but a large concrete slab slanted away from the glass doors, beckoning? The slab had been poured with a circle opening, a portal? Close to the building I began to see how much larger it was than it appeared. Half underground, like a cave with an aluminum lid resting over it. Inside it was dark, outside the sun shining, the grass of the otherwise empty field a dazzling green meadow. I cupped my hands and peered inside. Light filtered down from a large frosted skylight revealing a polished brick floor with two ficus trees reaching upward. Dust motes danced in streams of sunlight dappled by the leaves…

Joe and Rosanne

Joe and Rosanne had three daughters, quickly, three in a row, in the early 60s. Joe didn’t get his son, but he called the oldest Mike and named the youngest Joanna. So there’s that. Joe and Rosanne were gracious hosts. They created a welcoming home, a place by the fire, a seat on the deck out of the sun. There was laughter in their home, bright, thoughtful conversation. There was careful listening, gentle arguments, points of view. No one was left out. They were a family with synergy. Sure, they were all wonderful people on their own, but together there was a sort of magic, a sense of wholeness…