And Baby Makes Four

I, Tiresias, had what I can only call a visual feast, in spite of recent difficulties. I broke one of the arms on my glasses last week. Mornings at the park, people straggle up the hill still in their pajamas, some women bra-less, most everyone frowzy-haired, shirts stained with coffee or toothpaste, faces encrusted with spittle or eye cheese. Sure, they're wearing last night's fetes all over their shirtsleeves, but they have nice accessories. That includes glasses. I come panting up the hill with my dog, leashed because of her tendency to wander the quiet places that provide the chance for a decent tete-a-tete, which also serve as what one of the dog owners baldly calls "the bathroom of the homeless." My dog seeks these places out. So no matter the state of my glasses, I need them when I'm with the dog. With help from a friend I visited last weekend in Philadelphia, the arm has been reattached with super glue (which has stopped being so super and is now a clearish dull glop covering both broken ends) reinforced with black electrical tape, then doubly reinforced with invisible tape after the electrical tape had its run.

It's times like these when you notice how much and how torridly you've fallen by the wayside. But now I know for sure that no one, at least in my neighborhood (and at least all the dog owners) wears discount reading glasses from the drugstore. My favorites were the wide-armed tortoise-shell Fendi sunglasses. No CVS in sight.

Ah, CVS. This reminds me to get more tape and glue. And mouse traps.

Yes, mouse traps. The topic at hand. I have another new roommate. I'll call her Chita. I don't know why I'm coming up with all these Hispanic names, except a friend named my water bug Paco (whom I hope is well and dead at this point, as I've set out eight roach traps), and I'm just going with it. But I'll give the next guest a Russian name.

All I know is, as I sat down last night to chicken and vegetables stewed in pepper sauce and sliced vegetables (cucumbers, tomatoes, and yellow pickled dikon that I wanted to display just for the colors) while watching a movie, I was interrupted by a sound that could only be of something scuttling across a wooden board. I looked up. A mouse! Gone in a flash, into my closet (I don't want to think about it). My dog looked up and stared hard at the closet. She looked at me, then looked back at the closet, so I know I wasn't imagining things.

I lost my appetite, but not just because of Chita. I watched the rest of this Korean movie called Welcome to Dongmakgol, which was described to me as a feel-good war/comedy, and then of course realized that there is no such thing as a feel-good war/comedy, especially once the Koreans get ahold of it. At one point, I said (out loud, to my dog and Paco and Chita), "I thought it was supposed to be a comedy!" The dog sniffed and went back to her corner post. Who knows what the hell Paco and Chita were doing. Frolicking together in my closet? Eating linens, shitting on silks?

A visual feast, indeed.