PEZ NATION
Okay. I’ll admit it. Much to my dismay, I collect Pez candy dispensers.
It began innocuously enough. My wife announced I needed a hobby to occupy my time and inquired what I would like to do. I’ve learned throughout the years she is quite the joker and assumed this was one of her less humorous jokes.
I responded with equally poor humor, “I think I should collect Pez dispensers. After all, one of the lead characters in Pulp Fiction had an Elvis Pez. Maybe someday they will create a Mike Pez, and I sure don’t want to miss that.”
I suddenly began receiving Pezez — I don’t know what the plural for Pez is. She says it’s Pezezes or Pezzi but I think I’ll stick to Pezez — and I began to receive them from all quarters. Children, second cousins, my wife, even a client after I won a trial. Pretty soon I had over two hundred of the things. It’s as though they got together and if I were due a present, they mused just get him a Pez. Even co-workers gave me Pezez. (Hint: for next present, I want to colect sloop sail boats. And I’ll only need one. A thirty-two footer would be good. Two would be nice but a little greedy.)
My wife, ever the cheerleader, bought me a lighted, seven-shelved, oak, corner display case. For some inexplicable reason (most of what she does is inexplicable), she believed I wanted to showoff my Pezez to visitors. I filled the case and had Pezez left over. I wanted to hide my silly endeavor or at least not have it dominate my living room. For now, the case holds a prized spot which any Seventh Day Adventist or Mormon missionary would be able to spy from the doorway.
I inform all those who view my Pezez that they come alive at night. My Irish grandmother used to tell me faeries danced on the front lawn just before sunrise (“faeries” as in Edmund Spenser’s Fearie Queen, which, as far as I can tell, has something to do with Britain’s Queen Elizabeth I and old Irish folklore.) If Grandma can have faeries dance on a suburban lawn, my Pezez should be able to come alive at night. My older brother Patrick is more the Spenserian scholar than I, but we both were required to read him in high school. It is a very long poem. Painfully, excruciatingly long.
Sometimes I tell guests my Pezez are stoners, and work as caretakers at a White Castle. Sometimes I proclaim them as on Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Occasionally I say they are graduates of Ridgemont High School and are clones of Jeff Spicoli. But fret not, I have smoked nothing yet today.
Lest you believe the caring and maintenance of Pezez is devoid of responsibility, I will disabuse you. It is a tiring task. For the uninitiated, I have complied a list of helpful hints should you attempt to join the ranks of the Pez Nation:
Always assume your Pez is loaded. Nothing is more embarrassing than having a Pez surprisingly eject a pill of candy. Serious collectors seldom eat the candy because it is simply sugar and could cause health issues. I must confess, I do occasionally eat the candy but I do so under cover of darkness.
Pezez love public television and public radio. If you want to make your Mirth of Pezez happy (a group of Pezez is referred to collectively as a “Mirth”), subscribe to both your local Public Television and Radio stations. Members of the Pez Nation particularly enjoy The Moth and Radio Lab. Beware, your Mirth may break out in dance if music is being played, but only just before dawn.
There must be a few “Parrot Heads” in every Mirth because Pezez are wild for Jimmy Buffett. They especially like Wasting Away in Margaritaville and Cheeseburger in Paradise. They also are partial to Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, and Maurice Ravel. This is along with Beethoven, Mozart, Shubert, Brahms and the other classical standards.
The Pez Nation holds The Rolling Stones in high esteem, but believes Keith Richards is dead and is just propped up by roadies.
If you opt to join the Pez Nation, remember a considerable amount of time and effort is required. Next to Pezez, maintaining an aquarium is easy. But as far as hobbies are concerned, Pezez are cheaper than a photography hobby where buying a full frame camera costs over $2,000 and there is no guarantee your pictures will turn out.
If you ever wondered how Pez are made:
spectres of slaves
1.
weep
when serpent senses
secret
2.
spectres of slaves
listen to waves
gaze
3.
wing
to wing
sky
silt
ash
air
annihilated
birds
make movement
weep
4
shame
of shadows
still
terrified
5
lay waste
lay
In waste
under depth's
depth
6
remember
passages
corridors
arcades
end
or ending
time
7
so
many skins
stained
skins
worship
wind
flood fields
time
bell haunts
horses grey
horses gallop
hideous harmies
tuned to damnation
time
memorial
destitute shadow
start
to speak
in silence
what
passes for silence
beginning in silence
8
grieving gift
stigmata
silence
vanished
beg
beasts
turbulence of torrents
damnation
not
so dark
moons émanation sings
terrifyingly
of twigs
9
sleep
walk into seas
never
come
back
10
suicide
succinct
syringe
superstructure
for act
in foretold
tragedy
tie wings together
beloved
11
whisper
witness
tears
black
skin
burnt
surrender
wings
to wind
12
water's
dread
dooms
night
falls
& leaves
13
water
rushing
from ghost's mouth
cursed
heirs
14
stay
still
bamboo
breaks
pit
opens
spears
sharpen
15
rains falling
on mourners
bodies
turn
howl
curse
16
sea
becoming
seas
bone
becomes
oil
body
being
becomes
bank
17
heritage
hell
sing
that
to skulls
on poles
let them
speak
lips
flags
18
sing
song of this
debacle
dead perform
perfectly
just beyond
your bent
backs
bent
bridge
to another
circle
19
veins
burn
breathe all
memory's
remains
sea
sound In skull
resonate
remember débâcle
tone
tumult
sea from sea
tremble
tremble
remembering tides
endless death
you shall sing
with choir
of corpses
20
cry
for moon
shriek savagely
for sun
suicide
succinct
scorpion sings
stinging
way to consciousness
consciousness
constructed from clay
table
you imagined
already
at seven
in short
pant
vomited
into bag
of sandwiches
& kitchener bun
vomiting endlessly
all fluid
in little body
remebering this
exactly
standing on chair
pissing
pants
premonition
an alchemy
absorbed in arteries
you open
you open
Painting: Jules Bastien-Lepage, Diogène (1877),
horse battalions
horse battalions
howl
sleep
pities
sleep
continuity
collapses
sea to sea
bitter
blood
beg
before urn
brother
bite
into
bone
cherish
carnage
after all
we were
impregnated
in abattoir
torso
taut
but being
stretched
by strings
held
between
horse's teeth
obsessed
with oracles
breathe
blood
viper
enters
vertebrae
belief
sea
empty
bowels
in barrow
when wise
this
that
apparitions
avert
gaze
go
to gate
leave
KEEPING BUSY
KEEPING BUSY
July 4, 2017
Mimi liked the Phillies. She would sit in her chair in the living room and listen to every game on her small transistor radio. But her hands were never idle. As she listened, her hands were ever busy, crochet and needlepoint always making something. Most of her creations ended up as gifts for some occasion or another, otherwise we would have run out of room for them all.
This was a busy household. Roland once lamented in a letter that between Alan’s motorcycle, Bill and Sarah’s models and other projects, he had been run out of his own basement. He clamped a board to a windowsill in the living room and used it as a workbench for his own creations.
This is how families amused themselves 100 years ago, or at least it is what my family did.
When ownership passed to my father, he still stayed busy in the basement and that is where I learned to use and love tools. Growing up, we were always building something; tree forts, go-carts and other products of our imaginations.
There was another remnant of the past that I was occasionally subjected to. The Jingle Club. It was devised as a way to keep the kids home and off the street and guests were always welcome. At one time, around my grandfather’s youth, the club met weekly. A word would be distributed for the next meeting and all invited would write a poem using that word. Some were submitted using pseudonyms and those present would try to guess the author.
As that generation grew up, the club disappeared but was revived for a time by my grandfather and again during my youth although meetings were much less frequent. I quite honestly, hated it. The attendees were mostly older than me and far more literate. With age, I have become a pretty good story teller but never mastered poetry beyond the occasional Haiku.
Here is a sample from 1975, a meeting I did not attend as I was preoccupied with other endeavors of youth.
Preferences
Jeanne K. Hunn
Written for the “Jingle Club”, June 22, 1975
There was a river rat who loved water, wind and sailing
One day his boat upset and swamped but the salt continued bailing
He drifted seaward on the tide, his efforts faint and failing
When a stinkpot entered on the scene and viewed the frantic bailing
The nasty, nasty motorboat spewed gas, smoke and confusion
But offered the sailor a length of line, damaging his delusion.
That yachtsmen are a different breed not worthy of one’s friendship
The stinkpotter gave a helping hand, so draw your own conclusion
We’re not so different after all, but in our choice of locomotion
The sailor enjoys a silent ride, one filled with deep emotion
While the yachtsman travels speedily, soaking up the scene
The sailor glides by quietly in a state of bliss serene
To each his own now I say
Merit hath these two
Why not call a truce today
And let us ride with you.
vocabulary
pulse
remembering
vocabulary
break
down
bird’s
wing
way you have
with beasts
& martyrs
we are slaves
to movement
watch
rapace glide
gaze
with eyes
closed
first
to last
out
in field
in forest
desecrated
water
pass
through
haunted
hieroglyphs
hewn by horse
in horse’s
hours
forgive flight
what
of wing
need nectar
now
all
on knees
remember
exact details
place
purpose
ancestral
self stained
be
my twin
weep
longitudes
& latitudes
fall
go on
ring bells
for birds
keep
on going
ceremony
of remembering
arteries
still
torrential
watch water
spill
sleep forever
in forest
with fallen
from depths
you cannot see
sea remembering
whoever we were
we are
créatures
so cruel
leave us
alone
open carcass
some day
or other
night
night
knows
night