Venus and Mars / Wisdom

Venus and Mars

A woman senses I’ve been low. She says to me, “You look much better than yesterday, brighter.”

“Yes, I feel better.”

She looks down at me like Nurse Ratchett, and says, “That’s good.”

I smile pathetically and feel like a certified loony who has been given shock therapy and is now in a halfway house, been allowed to go out for coffee as a concession for good behaviour.



A guy senses I’ve been low, well I pretty much spell it out...

He calls me from across the country so I can hear the torrent of rain outside his window.

I am reminded that life is good. :)

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Wisdom

Since you are the wisest person at the table, tell me, is one more accepting of life as one gets older? Do the existential questions fade away? Does the confusion simmer down?

She gave me a little smile. “Let me tell you a story.”

Vincent was a family friend who lived in Goa. His father was a rich Portuguese trader and his mother was Konkani. He inherited land, a title and an elegant lifestyle. Never worked in his life, was an accomplished opera singer, owned a sailboat. Was always surrounded by the best of friends, had a wonderful wife and two lovely children.

When the Portuguese left India, he was seventy. Though offered Portuguese citizenship he chose to stay in India. He had lands and money. Life was good.

Except that the price of his brand of cigarettes increased, just by eight annas initially, but then steadily, year after year.

This mundane eventuality broke him.

At the age of seventy-five he could tell you the time of day from the number of empty bottles on the right side of his bed and the number of full ones on the left.
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Have been reading the writer chick’s manuscript. It is quite good, found me smiling to myself at a few passages, the kind I would read out to a friend or post here.

Just wish she wasn’t so exasperating.