THE SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICK NOOS

“Coo, coo,” the pigeon calls and attempts to needle his glassy eyeball into the depths of my soul.

I am not alone.

Were I more hospitable, more congenial, more filled with Yuletide nog, I might say ‘G’day mate’. But it’s me here. I glare and narrow my eye.

“Be gone, foul wretch, from my window. I know your seasonal psychoanalytic trickery. Don’t you have a fireside festival of Santa scraps to attend somewhere?”

The evil minion gets the hint and legs it. He leaps off the fire escape with wild abandon—off to find his next sap of a patient. Pigeons. Always trying to analyze a body. Let me tell you, all that patronizing head-tilting and bobbing really gets on my nerves.

Don’t fret—I am still not alone. A pleasant gaggle of guests have squished their way into the Noodle box this Christmas day. Roll call.

First, there is the smell of a roasting bird in here, stinking up the joint pleasantly and keeping me company. My nostril hairs are sharing some sort of sporting camaraderie and are doing a wave, though I don’t think it’s Mexican in origin.

There is still the feel of cool, herbed butter getting friendly between my fingers while I type. This poor keyboard and its greasiness and innocence lost. I catch a glimpse of the future. I’m typing fast. Like the damn wind, Captain. Like my life depends on it. But so fast that my right index finger slips off the buttery goodness of the ‘T’ and slams into the screen of my laptop, crippling my finger and ending my career right then and there. And all because of this day, this Christmas day where I washed my hands before typing, but still a buttery residue remained. Read the rest of this entry »