Perfection

This is Saturday.

I have a pile of mail to go through, usually all trouble, and there is a brief hiatus in a few cases so that I could force myself to catch up, but I was not interested in work, an increasingly foolish effort, like playing the violin as the Titanic takes on water. I get a tight stomach when I arrive at 206 Glen Street. This is sign that should not be ignored. So...

I went to the Coffee Planet, ordered peanut butter, crunch, on a dark bread toast and sipped upon a dark, gourmet coffee and the prose of Nathaniel Hawthorne. I read about the garden behind the House of the Seven Gables, which, so far is story about nothing.

The book is not a novel, according to Hawthorne, but a romance. Mostly, it is a delicate and sensitive portrait of a curious family and home in New England in the 1850s..

Why, I learned yesterday, that aged coffee cherries were as valuable as gold; then, thanks to Google, I learned coffee made from this "mocha" (Arabica aged during trip from Africa) was syrupy and low in acid.

There is something wonderful about knowing there are others who could see into your soul and to accept it, no matter how lost. I read the chapter without any concern there was no story only interesting people with diverse pasts who attempt to enjoy each others lives.  I have stopped skimming and gently take in the story of people long past who mostly lived in their past.

Still not wanting to go to the office, I drove north to the YMCA. I did my fifteen minutes of basketball to warm up and spent a good half hour working all my muscles groups, done efficiently thanks to modern engineering. Then, the reward: a shower.

This adventure was not enough. I did not stop when I saw my office and, instead, drove to the southern most part of Lucerne where there is a great music shop.

Ed has been there thirty five years, just had a $24,000 treatment for cancer, and sits in a corner surrounded by two million dollars worth of inventory, none of it financed. He can fix the inner working of an amplifier, my Roland keyboard, a sax, or help you buy the instrument just for you. Because his business model is to not screw people, he has five cars and no debt. The Ford truck belongs in a movie of the future.

Ed is wistful. He knows his children cannot possibly take over the business; he is, after all, an accomplished musician, technician. and electrician.  He cannot train them or hire people to replace him because of our laws and taxes; he cannot afford to hire people and knows he could not bring in the next Eds, as no one could afford to buy the place, so when he dies, the business is over.  We talked about nothing and everything for a half of an hour.

Then, I drove north to Lucerne, I get confused if it is Luzerne, and stopped at a wonderful cafe and ice cream shop on the river, just north of the terrifying falls. The air temperature was 91, but the back porch was delightful with the gentle tease of a constant breeze.  I worked slowly through a mesclun salad and a Guiness.

I read a bit of Hawthorne and watched the deceptively placid looking river.  The waitress says she had to move to Hudson Falls, her apartment in town having been part of a house that was sold. (This is a move from heaven to purgatory). There was no sign of any loud tourists, just sensible folks out for lunch. No one spoke above a whisper.

There were half a dozen young men off in the distance near the falls, which would be more like a horrible "chute."  I mumbled to no one in particular that I hoped they were not going into the water. I didn't see any boats which would have been bad enough.

Well, this started the porch talking. One man, a lifer in Luzerne, said he was tired of cleaning up the mess the bodies leave when idiots jump into the river. However, "They can kill themselves is they want." There is, and has to be, a powerful "hydraulic," as a canoeist calls it. It is a sucking you cannot escape.  They said in two weeks, your body would be buoyant and float to Corinth.

The porch people agreed cleaning up the mess was terrible and were happy it is now illegal to jump there. You can see the edge of the location on the left- some rocks where the chute begins. Most important, during this talk, my waitress convinced to get the 72% chocolate chip ice cream.

After bidding a sad farewell to the chocolate, I sat silently watching the river, the mist, the boys off to the right swimming from an exposed rock. The coffee did not intrude. I had earlier expanded the thought of the fireman, he who cleaned up bodies, that this spot, right now, was the best place on earth. I have been around, I told him.

Good people, wonderfuly simple food, and a warm, gentle, August breeze running up the rive into the foothills of the Adirondacks.

This is perfect.

 It would have been nice to share this perfect place and time, but sensing the perfect is more than being in its presence. I wish perfect moments to everyone.

In the presence of perfection, all the rest is noise.