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Monday, September 19, 2011

Selling My Books on the Streets of Brooklyn 9/19

Jack visited the floating bookshop today and he was in rare form, delivering an anti-religion rant, using terms I'd never heard. Maybe he was set off by the copy of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics I had on display. He began by saying a Coney Island girl he was once nuts about, Irene, brought him, an Israeli by birth, to Our Lady of Solace. That parish is very meaningful to me, as a woman I was nuts about for ten years of unrequited love went to elementary school there. I also used it as the model for the church in The Power of Prayer, a short story that is part of A Hitch in Twilight. I left it unnamed, as I had no desire to embarrass the church, nor was I certain about any possible legal issues. Anyway, Jack claims Irene had him take communion, whereupon he immediately spit out the Host. Needless to say, the relationship ended right there. I doubt it actually happened. I think he was using a little artistic license. Okay, more than a little. He said Christ should be taken down from the cross and Krishna pulled from his chariot, as they are nothing but lies. He described transfinity and transtrinity, and most of it went over my head. He said the Big Bang was not first but third after the photons and vibration that caused it. He said Earth, a space ship barreling along at 67,000 mph, was in a pre-apocalyptic age. He claimed that life is the miracle, not walking on water or the cannibalism/vampirism of turning bread into flesh and water in wine to be consumed. His spiel was interrupted Larry, a mildly autistic man who calls me Mr. Books, who was bent out of shape about the Manhattan bound trains being out of service. Jack left and, when he returned a half hour later, picked up right where he had left off. When he was done with me he pointed at the bus driver who had rolled up to the stop, stuck out his thumb as if to hitch a ride, and rolled up his pants leg ala Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night (1934). "The walls of Jericho" did not come tumbling down, but the driver did look at him as if he were nuts.
Speaking of Communion - thanks to the gentleman who purchased Whitley Streiber's allegedly true story of alien abduction. Maybe Jack is an alien. Nah, I think he'd just been drinking. And thanks to the local home attendant, who bought her sixth book on knitting, and to Herbie, who took a thriller endorsed by his favorite writer, Dean Koontz.
Read Vic's stories, free: http://members.tripod.com/vic_fortezza/Literature/

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