The Great Plotnik

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Two Weeks Later, The City is Less Than it Was



Well, as times change so does your point of view. Plotnik realized this morning that Stiletto City has seemed more than tolerable to him, that he even entertained a few fantasies of some day figuring out a way to move back here, and that these dreams have lasted for several years, the years that The Great Punky Dunky, The Great FiveHead and The Greatest Belly have lived down here. Now that the news has become official and The Plotniks South are about to become the Plotniks East, beginning when PD starts his fabulous new job in October in the Big Shmapple, Plottie feels like this morning he is no longer driving around on Mission Road in cool East Stiletto but in some worn out industrial center of East Omaha, or East Phoenix, or East Anywhere Used to Be USA, or that maybe he forgot his cute filter, or left it in the pocket of an old jacket that he used to wear, the jacket with the big pockets where everything fit so perfectly, finger intwined in finger, with plenty of room for all the incongruities of a city far too large for the human condition to have a chance to prosper without working very, very hard.

That’s it. It’s just too big. But it’s weird. Only two weeks ago, Plottie was waxing poetic about Belly running for the moon in Little Tokyo, and the romance of people from every culture coming together to share a magnificent moment, and yet this morning it is as if all these taco shops, these tire repairs, these auto/paint stores, these Chinese-Salvadorean-Cambodian donut/pupusa/chow mein shops, these smog checks, these liquor stores and these passport photo stands, as well as the endless supply of late model suvs stalled at noon on the 101, doing a profound zero in the fast lane with an equally endless amount of pick up trucks with one orange front bumper and one blue rear bumper and sides built up using somebody’s old metal fence, to haul recycling cans to the dump, if they, or the Lexuses, could actually get anywhere, if the fast lane, the slow lane, the middle lane and the next to middle lane were actually moving and not simply merging like badly stirred pancake batter into one big lump, for the purpose of ending the fantasy once and for all and transmitting this one, obvious message: Plotnik isn’t getting anywhere here.

Not that he didn’t realize it already – a city, big or small, great or mediocre, American or French or Japanese, is not worth its weight in concrete if you don’t have people you love living in it. Like BZ said about the Shmapple, to thrive in any city you have to either love the city or the job you’re doing in it. Plotnik loves the Plotzers, and he loves the small part of his family that will be left, and if he thinks a little harder about it he could say he loves the memory of being a child and teenager here, but sit twenty minutes on the freeway and that lump that should be fluid, isn’t; that sentimentality you confused with pleasure, fades; those talk radio shows you had found filled with material for jokes, are really cruel and hateful, and you realize another week in this town and you will be ready to blow your last fuse at the vapidity and smallness of such an enormously self-infatuated flatulent burg.

The move East is great for Punky-D and family, and Plot and Duck are bursting with pride at their courage and achievements. They’ll end up renting a nice place in Brooklyn with three bedrooms and a yard for Mischief, and Plot and Duck will see them often, perhaps not as frequently as when they were an hour away, but after all BZWZ will only be a three hour train ride from the Shmapple, so there will be more bang for the buck. It’s the right move. In fact, in a journalism world where newspapers are laying off reporters right and left, so many people with ten and twenty years experience in the field pounding the pavement looking for the two nonexistent jobs, this is his only move.

But we’re talking about how a city can change overnight, how the heat that was a relief from the summer fog of Saint Plotniko now feels oppressive, and how the fragile pieces of Mummy P’s aging, which seemed perfectly manageable only two weeks ago now begin to add themselves up to a number that is too high, like bad cholesterol, like the levels on a busted oil pressure gauge, and they may be signalling the beginning of a new stage, one which Plot and his brother Schmeckl will bear up to and manage, but not as comfortably as before, not as easily as before, not without Belly to cheer up Mummy P. and Mischief to give her a few bonus licks on the hand.

Plot’s OK. He’s been anticipating this for weeks, and has once again applied a lesson previously learned, that it’s best to grieve in advance, to anticipate the worst, and do it in the middle of several dark nights in a row, and preferably don’t sleep and make sure you feel so low that when whatever you’re worrying about actually happens it’s never as bad as you feared.

Oh, he can’t lie to you, faithful Plotnikkies. Plot is sad, he’s feeling a little sorry for himself and his heart is heavy, but it’s supposed to be. If you can’t be a bit heartbroken when people you love like life itself move away, then you have no heart, then the love wasn’t worth it, then it was all surface, like this enormously empty city, once the Family Home for all the Plotniks, but today giving off the stench of a breakfast you already ate, a life you already lived, a home missing some pretty damned wonderful bricks.

On the other hand: BZ is here this weekend and so is PD and family and so is Mummy P and so are Plottie and Duck. Some housekeeper somewhere is cooking bacon and treating this neighborhood of imitation half-and-half to the smell of something real. Life goes on. Braindeads will be here on Monday and Plottie will be there, trying not to think too much about the way things come and go. Because, like baseball, once things have come and gone, they always come back again. You save up Frequent Flier Tickets. You text. You email. You phone. "Bomba" she says, when she picks up the phone, a little older and prettier each time.

3 Comments:

At 10:03 AM, Blogger Karen said...

This is beautiful, dak. Funny how the mind starts adapting to change by finding things wrong with what is being left behind, making the change easier. You know that I identify.

 
At 11:13 AM, Blogger notthatlucas said...

Wow - what a great post. This is going to be a tough transition no matter how you rationalize it. Throw the Home Improvement Project in the mix and, wow.

But honestly, the biggest fear is that Bellie might grow up to be a Yankees fan (out of spite, out of peer pressure, who knows). It's not too early to start some sort of intervention program.

 
At 4:43 PM, Blogger mary ann said...

Oh, this made me well up a bit. Such lovely, heartfelt writing. I feel for you and Barb.

 

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