LIVE From the Firmament

Now, ladies and gentlemen, we are proud to present, live from the
firmament.... She was late for dinner, as usual. But she is beautiful.
She knows it, which makes her a force to be reckoned with, I reckon. It
takes time to
fabricate the face she takes from place to place. Finally she showed up
holding a small hood-ornament she claimed was a forgery. "I would have
been here sooner but my
karma ran over my dogma," she said. "Sorry to hear that," I replied
pulling up my pants just in time. "How old was he?" "Forty-five," she
said and shed a tear from her glass eye. "But that's just a minute or
so in dogma
years. "Well, it's a dogma's life. Sit down at least," I cried, "And
have some pi." I knew it was an equation she could calculate. "Don't
mind if I do, buster," she said. "And
could you please pass the Buddha." "I like your hat," she said, trying
desperately to enlist me in some grandiose scheme to steal the show.
"It reminds me of my brother's monkey." Aha, I wrongly surmised, she's
in my clutches now. After we ate she asked if I had a copy of the
Invisible Manifesto. I told her I couldn't put my finger on it just now
but instead sang her a rendition of "We Vishnu A Merry Christmas." "You
are a clever lad, now
do a trick for me," she said. So I pulled out a length of rope and
choked her half to death. There you go, baby, now you know how the
other half lives, my friend. "Oh, I feel just like a Socratic invalid.
Do I again," she begged.
"Look, I cooked," I said. "It's your turn to wash the Platos." I told
her I had two tickets to the firmament if she wanted to go. "I don't
know," she replied. "I can't decide, besides it's raining cats and
doggerel outside. "Looks like we'll have to reincarnate the future,"
I
opined. "Okay," she said. "But if you break it, you om it." She went to
change and left me a note written in lipstick on the back end of a pig.
"Dear Frank," was all it said. "Frankly, I don't give a Ramadan," I
said. "My, but you are prolific," she falsely claimed. "And I have
a
pretty good sense of irony too, which reminds me, this shirt needs
irony." When she finally shut off the lights and climbed into bed
beside me the faucet in thebathroom began playing Shubert. "Somebody's
got toconduct that thing," she sighed, without a clue. I put a
quarter in the bed and let the detective fingers of the moon gently
caress us. Outside the wind began to yowl. "Does this sort of thing
happen often?" she asked. "Now and Zen," I assured her. "Then tell me a
story. One with a moral," she pleaded in a voice so sweet and low. So I
told her how in Japan if a businessman goes bankrupt, he must take his
family to the roof of the highest building and throw them off. First
them and then himself.
To save face. One businessman threw his family off and then jumped but
without any pants on. No one could understand the significance of this
since everything Japanese is so symbolic. Everyone was baffled. The
media went crazy. The government closed down. It caused widespread
panic throughout the land. The moral of the story is you can lose your
shirt and still save your honor,
but you can't save face by losing your pants." "What kind of treachery
is this," she cried, and pulled a gun on me. "That gun's not loaded," I
said. "Why it hasn't even been
drinking." "Can it, pal," she said. "That was quite a performance. You
deserve an award." She handed a trophy to me. "I'd like to thank the
academy," I said, but by then she had already fled and took all the
plums with
her, even the cold ones which I desired most of all, saying she was
taking them to her friend, William, who would appreciate them more than
me. What could I do? I was
plum out of excuses. Moving heaven and earth is hard work, I thought
and went to bed. I'll need my rest. Tomorrow I'll start again. But this
time, she's doing the cooking.