Month: May 2024

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Dreamland

Theo wakes from a dream about Louise, a woman he knew fifty years ago. They were never lovers, though in Theo’s dreams he and Louise have children, walk their dogs, cook elaborate meals, make love, pull weeds in the vegetable garden, entertain fascinating guests, and talk of marvelous things while gazing at the stars.

In other dreams, they lose sight of each other while fleeing from some unknown terror, and for the rest of the dream Theo searches frantically for Louise but can’t find her.

In his most recent dream, he and Louise are walking on the beach holding hands. When he lets go of her to take her picture, she disappears.

*

Sitting alone in the only café in the small town where he lives, Theo finishes writing a postcard to an old friend.

Dreamt of Louise again last night. I wonder if she’s still alive. Love Theo  

*

At the post office, Theo mails the postcard and holds the door for a woman carrying a big stack of packages.

He is about to get into his little truck when his friend Jack pulls up in a big truck.

“Theo,” says Jack, who is a few years older than Theo, both of them in their seventies. “Long time no see. How you doing? How’s Carol?”

“We’re fine,” says Theo, nodding. “Carol’s busy as ever and I’m puttering around as always. How are you and Vicky?”

“Good,” says Jack, clearing his throat. “We’re lucky. Half the people we know are sick or dying or dead.”

“Happens,” says Theo, sighing. “We get old and die.”

“Yeah,” says Jack, sighing, too. “How’s the garden?”

“Good,” says Theo, smiling. “Lots of lettuce and chard, of course, and soon we’ll be pulling carrots. Potatoes galore. How’s your garden doing?”

“Terrible. I’ve got gophers galore,” says Jack, shaking his head. “Hopeless. I want to get another cat, but Vicky says she can’t handle another pet dying. They’re like her children.”

“If you want to grow vegetables in the ground around here and not have gophers,” says Theo, stating the obvious, “you must have a cat or two.”

“We’re switching to tub gardening,” says Jack, shrugging in surrender. “No gophers, no redwood roots. Sounds good to me.”

*

From the post office, Theo goes to Good Groceries to buy fixings for supper, and while perusing the mushrooms, he sees a woman who reminds him of Louise.

She is in her forties with shoulder-length brown hair and big brown eyes. She seems unguarded and full of curiosity – welcoming – just like Louise.

She might be Louise’s daughter Theo muses, guessing the woman is from out of town.

Resuming his communion with the mushrooms, Theo recalls the night fifty years ago when he and Louise were about to make love. At the zenith of their passionate kissing, Louise murmured, “I’m still living with Joe, but it’s over between us. I’m moving out end of the month.”

Theo was shocked to hear she was still living with Joe and said he wanted to wait for her to be entirely free before they made love.

“And she never spoke to me again,” says Theo, laughing at his younger self. “The honorable fool.”

The woman standing next to Theo bagging a head of broccoli asks, “Are you talking to me?”

Theo turns to her and gasps, for she is the woman he thought might be Louise’s daughter.

“Sorry,” he says, smiling bashfully. “The past impinged whilst I searched for flawless Creminis. Babbling nonsense. Forgive me.”

The woman laughs in delight at Theo’s way with words, and Theo almost asks her if she is Louise’s daughter, but doesn’t because he wants to go on thinking she is.

fin

Wonderful news! Todd’s new book Pooches and Kiddies: The Further Adventures of Healing Weintraub has just been published. The handsome paperback is now available online from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Bookshop, and orderable from bookstores everywhere around the world. E-books and audio books will be available soon.

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The Young Man From Leipzig

The beach at the mouth of the Mercy River is cloaked in fog as it often is on summer mornings on the far north coast of California, though soon the fog will move offshore and allow the sun to warm the sand.

A little electric car arrives in the empty beach parking lot, and Natalia emerges wearing a puffy down jacket over two shirts, baggy trousers, hiking boots, and a ski cap covering her ears and short auburn hair – her destination a particular place on the sand a half-mile to the north.

She checks the contents of her basket – phone, sunscreen, dark glasses, murder mystery, book of Buddhist aphorisms, apple, muffin, jug of water, beach towel, clipboard with notecards and pen attached, chocolate bar – and is about to sally forth when she hears ravens squawking furiously overhead.

Gazing skyward she sees two ravens in furious pursuit of a small Red-shouldered hawk, the roseate raptor winging away to the north, the ravens circling over the parking lot before returning to the south.

“I wonder what that means,” says Natalia, who believes in omens, though she’s never certain what the omens portend.

Trudging westward along the shore, the air warming quickly in the sudden absence of fog, Natalia longs for her dog Stormy, a gregarious Golden Lab who died seven months ago. Natalia plans to get a pup, another Golden Lab, as soon as she gets back from visiting her parents in Denmark in October, but that won’t be for six months and she’s terribly lonely without a dog.

When she moved to this small town seven years ago, Stormy was four, and his friendliness ignited several lasting friendships for Natalia that otherwise might never have been.

As she nears her favorite sunbathing spot, Natalia’s heart sinks when she sees a young man with a knapsack sitting on the driftwood log where Natalia always sets her basket before unfurling her towel.

“With thousands of places to choose from,” she whispers bitterly, “he would choose this one.”

The young man raises his hand in greeting, and Natalia stiffens in fear. Nevertheless, she makes a slight answering gesture and walks on, hoping he doesn’t follow her.

“Excuse me,” says the young man, getting up from the log, his accent German. “I’m looking for the campground. I was told there is a good campground here. I’m sorry to bother you, but I am lost.”

Realizing the young man is a tourist, Natalia feels less afraid, though still wary of him.

“You go under the bridge,” she says, pointing back the way she came. “Walk through the parking lot and follow the road inland a half-mile to the campground.”

“Oh thank you,” he says, nodding and smiling. “You are Danish. My mother is Danish, my father German. I’m from Leipzig. On holiday. Do you live here or are you on holiday, too?”

“I live here,” she says, walking on. “Enjoy.”

When she’s gone another hundred yards, she looks back and sees the man tiny in the distance heading for the campground.

“Oh good,” she says, sighing with relief and returning to her favorite sunbathing spot.

Lying on her towel in her bikini, deliciously warm in the sun, Natalia falls asleep and dreams she is in the café where she works when the young man from Leipzig comes in wearing a gossamer yellow dress, his lips painted red, a white rose in his hair. A lovely samba begins to play and Natalia and the young man dance together, the music mingling with the sound of waves breaking on the shore.

Natalia wakes with a start fearing the young man has returned, and finding she is alone in the vastness she takes off her bathing suit and lies naked in the sun until she grows hungry.

Between bites of her chocolate bar, she inserts her ear buds, cues up a favorite samba, and thinks about the young man from Leipzig and the ravens chasing the hawk.

Now she smiles out at the shining sea and decides not to wait any longer to get a puppy.

fin

Samba for Mooli from Todd and Marcia’s album So Not Jazz.

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In Cabo

Bertram is on vacation in Cabo San Lucas. Tall and gangly with a mop of graying red hair, Bertram works for a large Internet Technology company in Cupertino and spends eight hours a day writing code to solve problems presented to him on a large computer screen. Most of the code he writes will soon be written by artificial intelligence apps, but for now Bertram makes his living solving problems this way.

“I’m forty-four,” says Bertram, answering a question from the woman he’s having a drink with on the terrace of the luxury hotel where Bertram is spending his five-day vacation. “May I ask how old you are?”

Cecily, a striking brunette wearing short shorts and a bikini top, is staying at a nearby luxury hotel for her seven-day vacation. She works for a media company in Sunnyvale specializing in staging Internet Technology conferences around the world.

“I’m thirty-seven,” she says, wishing she hadn’t tapped YES on the get-together app she sometimes uses when she gets lonely while traveling. “Your first time in Cabo?”

“No,” says Bertram, sipping his margarita. “I’ve come here every year for the last ten years.”

“Wow,” says Cecily, who thinks she is much too beautiful and hip for Bertram. “You must really know your way around.”

“Not really,” he says with a self-effacing shrug. “I mostly play pickleball when I’m here. Cabo is a pickleball hotspot. And I love swimming in the ocean and I love Mexican food. So… never a dull moment.”

“I never knew Cabo was a pickleball hotspot,” says Cecily, feigning interest. “I’m going fishing tomorrow. For marlin.”

“Wow,” says Bertram, thinking Cecily is by far the most beautiful woman he’s ever connected with. “Exciting.”

“I love being out on the water,” she says, sipping her piña colada. “The fishing is just a fun excuse for a boat ride. Even if I do catch a marlin, we’ll let it go. They’re kind of endangered. This will be my third time. I just love it.”

Silence falls.

Bertram remembers his mother telling him before his first date in high school, “If silence falls when you’re talking, don’t feel you have to say something right away. And then say something complimentary. Works wonders. Believe me.”

“I love your earrings,” says Bertram, smiling as he thinks of his mother who lives in Arizona with her third husband and is a pickleball fanatic. In fact, it was Bertram’s mother who got him playing pickleball.

“Oh thanks,” says Cecily, touching one of her earrings. “Turquoise is my favorite color.”

“Mine, too,” says Bertram, who never had a favorite color until now.

“Really?” says Cecily, warming to him. “What’s your favorite kind of music?”

“I listen to classical music, mostly Bach, when I’m writing code,” he says, growing serious. “And Latin jazz for pleasure. How about you?”

Cecily frowns in surprise. “I love Latin jazz. Like who do you like?”

Bertram reels off a dozen names of Latin jazz artists he admires and Cecily seems pleasantly impressed.

They talk for a few more minutes, finish their drinks, and Bertram knows Cecily thinks she is too beautiful and hip for him.

“Another drink?” he asks politely, knowing she’ll say No.

“I’d love one,” she says, sighing as if disappointed, “but I have to be at the boat at seven in the morning.”

“Understood,” says Bertram, beckoning the waitress to bring the bill. “It was wonderful meeting you, Cecily. You’re by far the most beautiful woman who ever met me for a drink. My lucky night. Have a great rest of your time in Cabo.”

“Enjoy your pickleball,” says Cecily, rising to go.

“Oh,” says Bertram before Cecily can walk away. “Could I get the name of the company you use for marlin fishing? I think I’d like to try that.”

Cecily gets out her phone and brings up the web site of the sport fishing company she uses. Bertram holds out his phone to her. She taps his phone with hers and the information is transferred.

“Ask for Roberto,” says Cecily, smiling at Bertram. “He’s great.”

“Thanks I will,” says Bertram, watching her walk away and admiring everything about her.

*

Alone in his room, Bertram puts in his ear-buds, cues up The Girl From Ipanema, closes his eyes, and imagines Cecily is dancing with him.

fin

The Girl From Ipanema

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Seven Thoughts In May

You are unique and you are like everybody else.

Your ship won’t come in if you didn’t send a ship out.

Up and down do not exist independently of each other.

Things fall apart and don’t work and get lost even when Mercury appears to be moving forward in her orbit.

Humor depends on surprise.

Smiles beget smiles.

fin

Ahora Entras Tu a song from Todd and Marcia’s new album Ahora Entras Tu.

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Fox Hollow Critters

A fox family lived on the edge of our property for our first few years in this house a mile inland from the town of Mendocino, so we decided to call our place Fox Hollow. The labels for jars of jam and pesto we made boasted Fox Hollow.

Then the foxes went elsewhere and we didn’t see a fox for a couple years. The name Fox Hollow began to feel erroneous. So we decided to call our place Skunk Hollow because we had lots of skunks and thought their babies especially cute.

We briefly considered calling our place Deer Hollow because deer abound here, but Deer Hollow doesn’t pack much poetic punch, so we stuck with skunk.

Several ravens nest hereabouts, but we were not inclined to call the place Ravenswood or Ravens’ Hollow. Too dark and foreboding. We prefer a more upbeat moniker.

We do have a beautiful feral cat who includes our acres in her hunting grounds, but she’s only rarely here so Cat Hollow would be misleading.

Recently a second feral cat started hunting here. How do we know these cats are feral? Because various neighbors have tried unsuccessfully to trap them, and no one in the neighborhood will admit to feeding them.

Now that we no longer have a domestic cat living with us, the lizard and snake and little bird populations have rebounded, so I suppose we could call our place Lizard Hollow or Snake Hollow or Little Bird Hollow, but those names don’t sing to us.

Then there are the chipmunks. Until recently, we enjoyed the occasional chipmunk scurrying around the place. We were glad not to have a cat or cats slaughtering the little cuties. But now, for the first time in our twelve years here, a new chipmunk has started coming into the house whenever we leave a door ajar. She boldly helps herself to whatever she can find to carry away from the kitchen, and she seems barely phased by our fits of rage when we catch her with a cookie.

Gone are the delicious summer days of leaving the doors open. This little demon is lurking in the ferns and waiting for her chance to get inside and steal our food. How about Chipmunk Hollow? Not a chance.

The foxes have returned, so we are Fox Hollow again and will remain so.

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Ruby & Spear from Todd and Marcia’s new album Ahora Entras Tu.