The Window View

I have been otherwise engaged, as they say in those articulate English plays that Manhattan Theatre Club used to import, until everyone decided to go raw and unrelenting.

In the bus terminal, a woman was pushing a cart loaded with three gigantic bags of laundry, piled on each other like soft boulders, a refugee's load.

"I just got out of the hospital," she explained to those looking. "These are all my clothes."

The bus driver informed the passengers how long the trip would be, what time the bus would be arriving in Atlantic City, and encouraged us to take off our shoes and relax for the ride.

"Unless you have funky feet," he said, "then I'd ask you to be considerate of your fellow passengers."

I must say this is the first time I'd ever heard that particular travel advisory. Then he announced:

"Once we're clear of the Lincoln Tunnel we'll be showing a movie called 'whatever you see out your window,' that's your movie."

Rather Zen: life does unspool like a movie, though seldom sideways.

At Caesars Palace, the elevator doors opened and a pair of luxury-sized motorized scooters zipped out in tandem, driven by a husband and wife whose transport vehicles had ridden inside the elevator car side by side. They were on the move, these two, like Ponch and the blonde guy in CHiPs, nearly running over a slow set of toes or two.

An elderly woman said, "So Liz Taylor died."

Her friend said, "I thought she had already died."

"No," the woman said, "they had it wrong that time. This time she died for real."

It's such a strange country once you leave Manhattan.

Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2011/03/the-window-view.html

Rev. Al Sharpton Than Shwe Aung San Suu Kyi Yulia Tymoshenko Elizabeth Windsor