making the fun scene / and making the love scene

The World Is a Beautiful Place

--Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The world is a beautiful place

to be born into

if you don't mind happiness

not always being

so very much fun

if you don't mind a touch of hell

now and then

just when everything is fine

because even in heaven

they don't sing

all the time

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you

Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen

and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to

Yes the world is the best place of all

for a lot of such things as

making the fun scene

and making the love scene

and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues

and even thinking

and kissing people and

making babies and wearing pants

and waving hats and

dancing

and going swimming in rivers

on picnics

in the middle of the summer

and just generally

'living it up'

Yes

but then right in the middle of it

comes the smiling

mortician

I first encountered this poem—yes—on my friend Brian Meissner’s Facebook profile. I love telling the story of how Brian and I met three years ago and how, as I put it, I knew we were destined to be friends.

Brian and I were in the same cohort in the School of Education, which meant that we and 10 other (supposed) future-English teachers took all of our classes together and were either going to love or hate each other for it, dammit! Brian and I hardly knew each other when we were assigned to be teaching partners at Huron High School, but before our first visit, he enthusiastically drew me a complete map of Ann Arbor and our route to HHS, and that was all it took. I knew that we were going to be friends...because he drew me a map.

During that winter semester, Brian and I went to HHS at least twice a week to observe and teach and hang out with our kids and our amazing teacher, GJ. Some mornings, I was late to pick up Brian at Markley; sometimes I would sit in the parking lot waiting for him to stagger downstairs; sometimes he would bring me muffins from the cafeteria; and sometimes, the emergency helicopter would land on top of the hospital as we drove past and Brian would get really happy. We almost always listened to Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism on the drive because that was the only CD I had in my car. I can’t listen to it now without thinking of those mornings.

Over the last three years, Brian and I have roadtripped to New Orleans, watched two of our friends get married, explored The Detroit Yacht Club and Belle Isle together, rode his go-kart around his parents’ backyard, and spent New Years in Chicago. But there’s one particular moment I love, that by now he has probably forgotten because we are both perpetually late, hyper, forgetful people (but also charismatic, goofy, adventurous, fun ones!)

It was at 3am after the famed Happy Hour That Lasted Nine Hours. I was always arranging Cohort happy hours back in the day, and that afternoon we all made our way from the SOE across The Diag to The Heidelberg and, much later, ended up at Alexis’s apartment. The remaining few of us decided to walk to Ashley’s and brought along containers of brie and hummus and tahini; I don’t know why. I just remember Brian trying to give away the plastic tubs to people on the street, yelling “please, take my hummus and tahini!”

Hours later, he and I sat on The Diag at 3am, on one of those blissfully cool, perfect fall nights, when Indian summer and autumn are dancing around each other in a circle. I have no idea what we were talking about—senior year things—when, all of a sudden, the Ann Arbor unicycle man rode past us…

Sometimes, there are amazing, real metaphors in this world. And sometimes, there is just delightful nonsense.

Since then, I dropped out of the School of Ed—not destined to be a high school teacher, after all—and Brian had an awful student teaching semester and isn’t in a classroom either. But he is working for an incredible literacy non-profit, pairing professionals with children who need reading partners, in magnificent, downtown Chicago, where he is making the fun scene and making the love scene…walking around looking at everything…and wearing pants and waving hats and dancing…and just generally ‘living it up,’ like he always does.

I can’t read this poem without thinking about my dear friend Mr. Meissner, and how much less silly my life would be without him.

nosilla, mr. meissner, and woman schwartz: we make our own fun.

or not wearing pants, as the case may be...

we thought we were going to Alexis's wedding, but we found ourselves at the NOLA zoo!

the cohort happy hour that lasted nine hours.

of emptiness, of fullness perfectly contained

One week into The Post and I’m already behind. Insert comment on Miriam-lateness here.

Ok, here’s a real-life conversation from last week…

Me: I was supposed to be born in mid-October, so I was a few days early.

Allison: You? Early?! I guess it happened that one time aaaand it’s never happened since! (buh dum chh)

I didn’t post on Monday, as promised, because I was sick and still went to work. Bad move. I’m paying for it now. I dragged myself to a clinic this afternoon to find out what's wrong (I've been sick three times in four weeks; turns out I have a sinus infection and an ear infection) and then I went on a quest for the ultimate medicine: Matzah ball soup.

Whenever I'm sick, all I want is chicken soup. My dad sent me a bunch of Hanukkah presents last month, including a gift card for a delicatessen in Tenleytown, so I managed to get carry-out today. I cashed in big-time--two containers of matzah ball soup, a turkey melt, an everything bagel, blintzes, rugelach, and a Dr. Brown’s cream soda. Now I have enough food to last me through the weekend--and hopefully through this illness.

So my question for you is: What are your favorite comfort foods??! And why? (This seems like the kind of question my roommate would like. She's moving out tomorrow and it’s going to get lonely around here!!)

My comfort foods are:

*Mom’s chicken soup with acini di pepe

*Mom’s polenta with spicy Italian sausage

*Mom’s roast beef and mashed potatoes

*Mom’s cornbread and Irish soda bread

*Mom’s oatmeal (notice a trend here?)

*Chinese food--onion pancakes, rou chuan, guan guan mien from Tai Dong, etc.

*And of course, kreplach or matzah ball soup

Comfort foods remind us of where we're from... So what are your favorites?

This poem has been one of my favorites since Mrs. Greenbaum’s Advanced Writing class senior year. It was a great class--probably my favorite at Groves. We wrote a lot. We read a lot--both poetry and prose--and I knew I loved Mrs. Greenbaum when we read a short story by Charlie Baxter, who was my mom’s professor in college. Emily, Caitlyn, Kate, and I were in the class together, which gives me the warm fuzzies because Caitlyn and I had brunch in Woodley last week, and almost exactly a year ago, Emily and I were in Southeast Asia.

I like the simplicity of this poem and how everyday it is--like a snapshot out of Alan Dugan’s life. It makes me think of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks and of being in New York--one of the places I'm from, in a way.

And most of all, as a perpetually-late Libra, I like the imperfect metaphor of perfect balance.

Closing Time at the Second Avenue Deli
--Alan Dugan
This is the time of night at the delicatessen
when the manager is balancing
a nearly empty ketchup bottle
upside-down on a nearly full ketchup bottle
and spreading his hands slowly away
from the perfect balance like shall I say
a priest blessing the balance, the achievement
of perfect emptiness, of perfect fullness? No,
this is a kosher delicatessen. The manager
is not like. He is not like a priest,
he is not even like a rabbi, he
is not like anyone else except the manager
as he turns to watch the waitress
discussing the lamb stew with my wife,
how most people eat the whole thing,
they don’t take it home in a container,
as she mops up the tables, as the
cashier shall I say balances out? No. The computer does all that. This
is not the time for metaphors. This is the time
to turn out the lights, and yes,
imagine it, those two ketchup bottles
will stand there all night long
as acrobatic metaphors of balance,
of emptiness, of fullness perfectly contained,
of any metaphor you wish unless
the manager snaps his fingers at the door,
goes back, and separates them for the night
from that unnatural balance, and the store goes dark
as my wife says we should take a cab
or walk, the stew is starting to drip already.
Shall I say that the container can not
contain the thing contained anymore? No.
Just that the lamb stew is leaking all across town
in one place: it is leaking on the floor of the taxi-cab,
and that somebody is going to pay for this ride.