Letters from the Moon: karma quest -- day 3, redux

December 04, 2005

karma quest -- day 3, redux

Sparky dialed my cell phone a couple of days ago, the night the moon hid from the sun.

"Daffodil, we have a problem."

I could hear him blow smoke in my ear. He took his time. I wondered how he lit his cigar, how the embers existed without air. Sparky. Must be something about his name, I thought. When he spoke again, his words were careful, deliberate, slow, colored with black tar and administrative capability.

"Daffodil, your travel buddy is filing abbreviated reports. Let me quote: Daffodil and i stopped at the Saleem Restaurant (where Garlic is King) and happily paid homage to his majesty. v. good karma there, we took a couple of pounds back to the truck in a doggy bag.

"What the hell is that? I need cold, hard facts. A couple of pounds? Karma is measured by the milligram. It's an expensive drug. How can I determine the street value of a 'couple pounds?'"

I looked at my feet. Moon dust covered my toes, and I tried to suck in air to answer. The moon wouldn't let me, I stood breathless in the shadows, phone at my ear, could only expel, exhale.

"Sorry," I whispered. "Sorry."

I sent Sparky a detailed report of our time at Saleem's - charts of the karmic value of each menu choice, full of arrows and boxes and underlined totals, all done to three decimal places. I even signed my name in aurora moon shine, the special phosphorescent glittery kind you can only find at Mare Cognitum, the sector where all the inhabitants drink absinthe and spit out your future.

"Good work, Daffodil. Carry on." Sparky coughed in the distance, and I could hear him rustle my papers into a neat pile, heard him spit, as he hung up the phone.

Ha! I thought. I only passed along the industrial notes, the parts that added to some quantitative bottom line. I didn't tell him the secrets, the ways we stole karma from the mist. It doesn't rain here, on this rolling hill of rock and scar. Maybe Sparky doesn't understand the virtue of weather.

I closed my eyes, brought back the Third Day, the day we separated the waters from the land, remembered the drops from the sky, the way they hit our car, bounced off the new blacktop running through a quiet city.

I summoned the Parking Genie, and a space opened along a side street. Matt laughed at my genie prayer, but I shook my head and gave him a warning glance with my right eye. Don't diss the genie, man. My left eye remained hidden, my own dark side of crater and mystery.

We walked in the rain, under rows of neon gods beckoning us to try, to enter. The city moved slowly, a concrete snake, small groups of travelers snuck from striped canopy to beer-stained foyer, tried to zigzag the rain. We walked through it, let it fall on our shoulders. Sparky didn't tell us how to be, how to be together, a man, a woman, on some quest for a tasteless substance. The tap of my cowboy boots match his gait, and we laughed in surprise. I didn't have to rush. He didn't have to linger. His hand swallowed mine, my right side to his left, half his face hidden like the moon. I watched him watch the space between the drops around us, the left side of his mouth turned up in smile.

Saleem Restaurant almost looked closed, the windows tinted and calm. A young woman in black gave us a square table with a candle, a center table, the middle of the room, a place where karma swirled and gathered from the corners, but she didn't know that. We ordered wine. We ordered food. We ate and drank and told stories, the same story, shared it back and forth, an old story we forgot we held in common. We didn't see King Garlic. He waited behind the red brocade drapes hiding the kitchen.

A caustic woman in maroon and wrinkles grabbed my arm as I pushed the door open to the Ladies Room. I stared into her eyes, smiled, breathed garlic, accepted the garlic she exhaled on me.

"You look so happy," she said. "This must be a special occasion."

I tried to crane my neck around the wooden separator hiding the bathroom door. I wanted to see the table, the food, the man with the raccoon eyes and restful expression, the man who talked about moon politics.

"It's our first meal together."

She let me go, nodded her head, and I felt her karma drain into mine, into my purse, my boots, rain into my aqua dress, seep into my body, fill old spaces.

"It's what between us that generates the karma." He said this as we let the rain meet our ground, drove into midnight.

posted by at 01:36 PM

Now THAT's more like it! My kinda report, yessir. You've got your feelings; you've got your aromas; you've got your intuitions and your nuances. I can overlook one of those tempreal anemonie whatchamacallit thingies now and then if I know there's a good fill-in-the-gaps update like this one coming along to make up for it. Nice job, Daffodil! Sparky's gonna set you up with a hefty little bonus if this keeps up :)

posted by: Carroll on December 4, 2005 09:41 PM

Unmistakable.

posted by: Meg on December 5, 2005 02:48 PM

I think I figured this out. Daffodil is Beauty Dish Birdie. She writes like that, or you simulated her style of writing.

posted by: Corinne on December 6, 2005 12:29 AM

You don't need to search for more karma. Looks to me like you guys generate enough karma for everyone.

I feel my tanks running over....beautiful, delicious.

posted by: Kurt on December 6, 2005 01:26 PM

Matt,
that place you saw the Scotsman gathering dust...down the road, where you took a right, instead of a left like you were supposed to..I figured it out.Its where I usually go.The Scotsman was still there, on the wall, on guard duty.

posted by: Jim on December 6, 2005 04:09 PM

Daffodil is really an anagram for Lifdafod, which is the maiden name of my cousin's neighbor's best friend....I thought everyone knew that! :)

posted by: Kurt on December 7, 2005 11:02 AM