A PENSIVE MOMENT FOR THE LIKES OF CRISPY, noted in a pensive period

If I were the sort of man who would give up my job and family in order to travel the world and say “God Bless You” to everything (“God Bless You Jerusalem Artichoke”, “God Bless You Adriatic Sea”, “God Bless You Funny Indonesian Man with Big Straw Hat”) then I would start my God Bless Yous with my Stainless Steel Soap Dish On The Top Floor Bathroom Sink.

“This is something I could really bless,” God would probably say, gazing at its gleeming steel soapy surface (bright, but not like you would go blind) and gazing with great affection, and probably thinking to himself, “Why couldn’t I think up something like that?”

And who wouldn’t say that it is truly a sight to behold and not because it is stainless steel, or because it in an attractive, bosomy-oval like shape, or that it is so light that sometimes you wonder if it is equipped secretly with angel wings that will assist it into a state of aerial locomotion at first like a helicopter going straight up without moving forward and then like an aeroplane going forward very fast like an angel that might do that if provoked, no

It really is none of those things: it is not the gleeming surface or the structure or the possible locomotion someday of the vessel so much as it is the accessories. They are very simple: one scuba diver who attaches himself to the left outside railing of the dish (he is wearing blue* goggles), and kitty cornered to the blue goggled scuba diver are the sharks: one is pink, like the color of a kind lady’s parosol, and the other is a flinty grey, the color of an authentic shark, in the water. Now by water I mean the ocean, not the sink, or not a lake, where sharks fear to tread.

These sharks are traveling in a clockwise direction all, with the diver banking on the upper left side (close to the moisturizing soap) while the pink shark, who I believe is a lady shark closing in on him, is practically nipping at his heels. Where, you might, exactly, or where exactly might you ask, is the grey shark?

The grey shark is parallel to the driver, on the other side. There is no joy in the grey shark, only flintiness, which is often grey in color, and it is that lack of joy and abundance of flintiness that fills me with awe and wonder. What is he saying? Why, it sounds like:”But I am a shark! A shark! A shark!” or perhaps “Let’s go to the park! The park! The park!”–perhaps even: “I believe it was a meadowlark! After dark! After dark!”

I think he probably was saying But I Am A Shark.

Why would he say such a thing? The pink shark is mute (but ambitious) and the diver merely indifferent, in spite of the fact that he is about to lose his left foot *plastique* to an ambitious pink shark. I think that that have a routine and that they like it and it goes in circles and is comfortable like an old shoe, one that could be improved upon by replacing it with a new shoe, but one you don’t replace because, well, it is comfortable, and yet, somehow, frighteningly so.

All I I can imagine about the verbose grey shark is that he is saying But I Am A Shark because he really IS a shark. Who knows how he got into that cockamamie soap dish. And Lord knows he wouldn’t mind chewing on a foot as long as it was a little more, well, fleshy? Still,

distressing as his plight might be, it is nice to know that this shark has found life after death, and that he did not have to relinquish his being: he is still a shark. That is, if he was one before. You notice that he say But I Am A Shark and not But I Was A Shark And Still Am One. After all, he might have been almost anything else. For example, in an earlier passage, I alluded to a Funny Indonesian Man In A Straw Hat. Or perhaps less materially, he could have been a Question Mark. Or perhaps even the air that transpires from the mouth of An Indonesian Man as he asks a question. I like cowboys, too. And the theme from The Untouchables. He could be anyone or anything. Even you or me, if that’s alright with you. It’s OK with me.

Which brings me back to my original point: if you are going to offer blessings, quit your job so that you can cover more territory. It can and often does entail significant acreage. And as endless as it may appear, you should be glad that it is only as endless as it appears now, for after a while, it gets even endlesslier. And even after you have blessed the increasingly endless cosmos of stuff, everything changes and should be blessed again.

You notice that I said “should” and not “must.” I do not wish to prostelitize: after all, it might not even matter, in case the cosmos end up being not particularly Judeo-Christian. But when I look at the flinty grey shark and his divine mortal form on my soapdish, I cannot help but think, well, maybe there is something to it after all. Although I doubt it. But you can never tell.

Best of all, it might.

I mean, if you can tell.




*by 'blue' I mean, of course, yellow.


all artwork, except likenesses of Lyndon B. Johnson, by Crispy Flotilla ® 2006