A GESTURE.............

To be polite to most of the ass holes in this city......

One day I was in Balthazar and a woman I casually know

walked in, came to me and said,"We work and you are always sitting at Balthazar."

I aM ETERNALLY POLITE. I DID NOT, I COULD NOT SAY TO HER,

"FUCK OFF"

BUT I REMEMBER, I WAS READING BAUDELAIR AND HE WAS

TALKING ABOUT BEAUTY AND ITS AESTHETICS WHICH HE SAID,"SOON WILL VANISH."

AND WITH THAT,"ALL GRACE, ALL MANNERS, ALL AESTHETICS."

I just ignored her. I have heard thats a better approach because

then you don't get into the real ugliness of people.

They really have an agenda though they seem and behave that they

are eternally busy, they still have time to make a nasty remark to

any one they slightly familiar with.

I decided to not indulge or engage her further but my God..............

Is she paying my bills? and I am just sitting and enjo

ying myself?

Is she sweating her life away for my coffee money?

Is she one of my relatives who because of my lack of employment

has to foot my bills?

Is she allergic to me sitting and reading a book?

What would she do to the lady who sits on the Park bench

and read a book a day for her deceased sister?

I read about a woman whos sister who was very fond of reading books

passed away and her living sister was so drowned with the loss and sorrow

that she decided to read one book a day for one year for her late sister................

Now thats a touching, beautiful, tender, moving story......................

Would this nasty lady go to her and knowing nothing what's going on in

the other person's life say to her,"Hey lady, you are always sitting on

this bench and reading and we are all working....how come you are not

working?

How come you are always reading?

I have been seeing you for the last one year sitting on your ass

and reading a book while we are rushing to the damn subway

back and forth, back and forth huddled in the heat on subway

platforms unable to breath while you are sitting in a nice park

with a nice breeze and beautiful flowers, reading always reading

a book. What's the matter with you? Why are you sitting while we are

always working? We work, you sit, we work."

Wouldn't that be awful?

People should hesitate before they make remarks to others...........

They don't have a clue about other people's lives and intentions.

I now stay away from people.

I am into poets. Dead poets. I love dead poets. They tell me to

be quiet and calm and sit and learn.

Before I started to read the dead poets I was very much into people.

You know, to have relationships, to have friendships, to have conversations

over a glass of wine or a coffee.

Well, thats what I always wanted, to have conversations....

Conversations about all kinds of things, movies, theater, music, fashion,

violence in the world, riots, lotting, killings, fear, terrorism, politics,

politicians................

Well one can always converse about politicians............

They are always going to be there............

They are never going away....................

But the conversations about politicians now bore me.

All conversations bore me but the conversations about politicians really

bore me.

First of all I don't have any one to converse with

and secondly even if I have someone my dead poets won't allow me to

waste my time and energy and strength on politicians and their hollow

promises and speeches.

I think politicians all over the world have the same speech writer.

The same speech is being delivered in London and Germany and Holland and Washington.........

They are all afraid of one thing and one thing only.....................

"Islamic terrorism."

As if muslims have nothing else to do.............

The politicians have found the best excuse of their life time, "Muslim terrorism."

So they weon't have to do nothing for their marginal people.

They all say its not their fault, its not the fault of their systems that

they have put all poor people either in projects, slums, or in the streets

un-employed, un-educated who have nothing else to do but commit crimes and then they put them in jails..................thats wonderful politicians for you............

Its just not their fault, the crimInals are just crimInals. PERIOD.

'THERY WERE BORN CRIMINALS AND THEY WILL DIE AS CRIMINALS

AND SYSTEMS AND GOVTS CAN'T DO SHIT ABOUT IT AND NOW LETS GO TO TUSCANY

AND HAVE OUR LOBSTERS. WE DID ENOUGH FOR THE CRIMINALS. WE PUT THEM

IN JAIL. YOU KNOW HOW MUCH WORK WAS INVOLVED? AND HOW MUCH MONEY? AND HOW MUCH RESOURCES? AND HOW MUCH MANPOWER?

WE ARE NOW EXHAUSTED AND FAMISHED. WHERE IS THE 10,000 DOLLAR WINE BOTTLE, THE WHITE WINE OF COURSE TO GO WITH THE LOBSTER?

AND I STILL HAVE TO FUCK THE FIRST LADY.......OH JESUS SHE IS ALWAYS COMPLAINING.............WHY WAS I FLIRTING WITH MUCH YOUNGER CABINET MINISTER?

WHY WAS I FLIRTING WITH THE YOUNGER LADY?

BECAUSE YOU ARE OLD BITCH, OLD AND COMPLAINING..........

HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF A WORST COMBINATION THAN THIS?

WHO WANTS TO FUCK THE FIRST LADY WHEN ONE HAS ALL THE

LADIES OR EVEN HOOKERS AND PROSTITUTES AND MAIDS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD AVAILABLE TO THE SEXY AND POWERFUL POLITICIAN?

OH! I AM SO EXHAUSTED BY OUR POOR HOMELESS CRIMINALS AND OUR

SCREAMING WIVES. WHY CAN'T WE EVER TAKE A BREAK WITH A MAID IN TUSCANY

INSTEAD OF OUR FIRST LADIES? JESUS! WE ARE SO OLD FASHIONED."

So I decided to have no conversations at all of any kinds what soever..............

Its me and my dead writers who teach me about fantasies instead of facts....................

Sometimes the facts take over and some times the fantasies. But mostly the fantasy............

What a great word, "FANTASY" I wonder who invented the word, "FANTASY" ?

I am sure it was a dead French poet or maybe it was Dr. Johnson?

I love Dr Johnson. Well there was a conversationalist for you.

The lords and kings reserved rooms in their palaces for him to have conversations

with him. He was not very handsome or rich or anything but he was witty

and smart and he could talk about a billion things........................

Here when one wants to have a conversation people have nothing more to say then this,

"Oh! I have to go." Oh! I have a meeting." "Oh! I have an appointment."

"Oh! I didn't realize it, I have to go."

Go, go, go, go, go away. Please go away fast. Who needs you. Go to your

appointment, I hope it lasts till the dooms day.........go to your meeting and never come back.

Life was becoming extremely boring and lonely before I encountered my dead poets and writers and now I have no time for the living at all.

They are so many dead poets to read..............Who the hell would have time to listen

to some one talking to their other so called friends on the smart phone while they were

dying to have coffee with you?

There is a woman I knew, just an acquaintance, not a dear friend, By now you must know that

I don't have any friends, no friends, the ones who are alive, No friends, period. I some times say hello to some one in the streets,"HI, nice weather,"

"Hi, horrible weather,"

"Hi, so hot,"

Hi, so cold,"

"Hi, see you soon." "Bye"

There was one particular lady who always insisted that we should have coffee together

in a real cafe instead of just running into each other in the streets.

So finally I made a date with her.

She wanted me to have coffee with her on such a nd such day and on such and such time...

I am not so good with long term appointments, who knows we might be dead in a month from now just the day before the coffee appointment...........I mean why can't we just have coffee now?

What's the big deal? Its just a coffee and the fucking cafe is just around the corner staring at us

Why do we have to make an appointment for a coffee with some one might not be very exciting anyway about a month from now and wouldn't I forget to meet her any way?

Since I don't work, I don't have many appointments and when once in a while I do, I tend to forget......

But well to be polite, (see, the politeness issue is coming back. Actually it has never left me,

its been always there) So out of politeness and her keen insistence I made the appointment

with her for coffee in the cafe where I go at least two times a day...................

I was in the cafe earlier than her....Just a bad habit to be always on time..................

She was fifteen minutes late while she walked in talking to some one on her cell phone.

She sat down and kept talking on the phone.

Then she stopped, said, "Hi, I am sorry," And her phone rang again

She was on the phone again for a while and then got off and said,"I am sorry, how are you?"

Well we started to have some kind of small talk and her phone rang again and she talked again for a while and said,"Oh! I am sorry, what were you saying?" I started the same talk all over again and her phone rang again and took the call and said to me at the same time,"I am listening, I am listening, I am listening" I waited for a few seconds and when she got off the phone I got up from my seat and said to her,"Listen, sweetheart, you should be having coffee with the person you are talking to on the phone. I am the wrong kind of person for you to have coffee with after your keen insistence" And I left.

After that I never made a date for a coffee.

No, thats not exactly true.

I do make a date with my other friends every day. My dead poets.

I take them with me to the cafe and we converse.

I converse with so many fabulous dead poets, Boudelair, Proust, Ronald Barthes,

Flaubert, Gogol, Pushkin, Dostovesky, Turgeneieve, Shakespeare, Dr Johnson, Boswell,

Edgar Allen Poe, Calderon, Lope De Vega, Oscar Wilde, Garcia Lorca, Balzac, Victor Hugo,

Cervantes, and many many more.

Who needs the living?

My fantasy flies with theirs. They help my fantasy fly.

My imagination fly away leaving the ugly facts of this ugly world, getting uglier everyday

behind at least for a few hours in a cafe where I don't have to worry about other people's

phones ringing and their floating anxieties about their appointments and careers..........

Every ones ambitions are different.

Mine has become solitude with the poets who were here and are not here any more

but I take them with me to the cafe and try to understand their expressions of beauty,their

gestures of fantasy instead of the gestures of the ignorant and unhappy passerbys..............