LIVE FROM THE FIRMAMENT

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 the
bathroom began playing Shubert. "Somebody's got to
conduct 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
that when a Japanses 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.