Turn against all those who have ever contradicted you in public, failed to laugh at your witty repartee, ques-tioned your right to suggest they should seek professional help, criticized your spouse (your child, your wardrobe, your hair color, your antipasto, or your grasp of experimental theater). Bear a grudge against these people forever. Especially bear a grudge against anyone who has ever told you that you looked tired when you weren’t.
While secretly indulging in elaborate revenge fantasies in which these people are dramatically humiliated for once and for all, in public express these grudges in a civilized manner. Forget to invite these people to your summer solstice party. Forget to call them on their birthdays. Take their numbers off your programmable phone. Do not return their calls. Tell them your answering machine is broken. Lose the umbrella, the book, the Bundt pan, the kid leather gloves that you borrowed.
When encountering these people in public, do not embrace them and kiss them on both cheeks the way you do with your real friends. Tell them you didn’t see them downtown last Saturday afternoon when you were going into the Chinese grocery and they were just coming out. If any of these people are childish enough to ask if you’re avoiding them, say incredulously, “Of course not! Why would I do such a thing? You know me better than that!”
Understand that the average suburban shopping mall was intended for a class of people to which you do not belong. Such places should be frequented only as a last resort. They may, for instance, be useful in No-vember when you are just finishing up your Christmas shopping. (You, needless to say, are not the kind of person who leaves this task to the very last minute.) There may be, through no fault of your own, a handful of people on your extensive Christmas list (relatives, employees, neighbors, and the like) whose tastes run toward the sort of merchandise carried only in malls.
If you have small children, you may find yourself forced to visit the mall on a rainy Saturday afternoon when they cannot possibly be taken to the park instead. (Having become a parent, you will frequently find yourself doing things that formerly you wouldn’t have been caught dead at. This includes having hamburgers or pizza in the food court at the mall while surrounded by other families desperate for something to do and by mangy adolescents and adults who apparently do this because they like it.) After an hour or two of being dragged around the overheated mall with their winter coats hanging off them, your children will be more than ready to go home and have a nap.
Milling through a crowded, noisy, often malodorous shopping mall cannot possibly be good for your image or your morale. Many trips to the mall end up with everyone crying in the car in the parking lot.
Strive to be the kind of person no one can ever imagine trudging through the mall with a cart full of plastic place mats, vacuum cleaner bags, a stuffed purple dinosaur, a toilet brush, a Weed Eater, a hamster cage, and a twenty-pound bag of kitty litter.
Value your time and organize it wisely. What with all the things you have to do, all the places you have to go, and all the people you have to see, your time is at a premium. Assuming that, in addition to all of these pursuits, you must also devote a certain number of hours to a job each day, efficient time management is all the more crucial. Implement a variety of tools and techniques toward this end. Most important of these is the leather-bound gold-embossed appointment book. (A zippered closure is a discretionary but always impressive option.) Be sure to select a book which features a whole page per day. Your busy life cannot possibly be contained within a two-inch-square block of white space.
Recent technological developments have made time management even more complex and time-consuming. You may wish to take advantage of these advances by purchasing a pocket-size electronic organizer for each family member and/or by installing on your home computer a calendar program complete for the next fifteen years. This will allow you to see the future in reassuring detail. If you have already noted several important social commitments in the year 2003, you need no longer be plagued by the suspicion that nobody likes you and that you are being left out of all kinds of interesting things. Even more importantly, a calendar filled years in advance will effectively ward off those feelings of emptiness and ennui which invariably lead to the contemplation of that pesky meaning-of-life issue.
(A word of comfort: If, upon catching a glimpse of your intricate time management system, your friends begin to bandy about such phrases as anal retentive and control freak, feel free to smugly ignore them. Take consolation in the knowledge that three months from now when you are having the time of your life at a fund-raising dinner for animal rights, they will be at home alone washing their hair because they thought the dinner was next week.)
Welcome any opportunity to improve and expand your vocabulary. Learn the proper spelling, meaning, and usage of such words as: semiotics, solipsism, obsequious, oli-garchy, palimpsest, epistemology, fiduciary, and polytetrafluoroethylene. Any conversation will be elevated and enlivened by the timely insertion of these and other polysyllabic terms. Never miss an opportunity to use the words dysfunctional, empowerment, Tuscany, and radiccio. Whenever possible, use them all in one sentence.
Xenophilia: cultivate it. (If you have not yet improved your vocabulary, the word xenophilia refers to “a mania for, obsession with, or inordinate attraction to for-eigners and all things foreign.”) Cultivate a love for all things imported, including wine, food, clothing, cars, carpets, and films. Subscribe to the belief that anything of domestic origin is inherently inferior to its foreign counterpart.
Especially cultivate an interest in geography. Even if you have neither the means nor the inclination to travel, stock up on guidebooks to all the best countries. This will enable you to participate effectively in those sophisticated dinner conversations in which all the other guests discuss their most recent vacations abroad.
On their vacations, these people do not go to Bemidji, Minnesota, for the last two weeks of July. They also do not go to Disneyland, to Niagara Falls, or to Winnipeg to visit their elderly aunt. These people go to the Greek islands, the Black Forest, Tuscany, Costa del Sol, Istanbul, and Paris.
Having studied your guidebooks, you too will know that the best rooms at the Grand Hotel Summer Palace in Rhodes are situated in the new wing, featuring pink marble floors and marvelous paintings of water nymphs and goddesses. That at Tuscany’s Museo dell’Opera del Duomo (formerly the bishop’s palace) you can view Donatello’s original reliefs for the Pulpit of the Holy Girdle (admission 5,000 lire, closed on Tuesday). That at Les Bookinistes on the Left Bank (fifth bistro annex of chef Guy Savoy, a charming postmodern room with a delightful view of the Seine) the mussel and pumpkin soup is the perfect appetizer to precede the ravioli stuffed with chicken and celery (closed on Sunday, no lunch Saturday).
Refrain at these gatherings from putting forth your theory that people who travel excessively are usually running away from their real lives at home.
Also do not mention your recurring nightmare in which you, having finally made your way to Paris, stroll into a charming brasserie in l’arrondissement seizième only to find all of them assembled there pour le déjeuner.
When in the company of these urbane frequent-flyers, avoid the word pretentious.
Yearn in public for the good old days when life was sim-pler, the air was cleaner, and the food was fresher. In private, get down on your knees and thank the Lord for the cellphone, the laptop, the fax, the modem, the mi-
crowave, the electric bread maker, the self-defrosting freezer, the automatic teller machine, the remote control car starter, voice mail, and antibiotics.
Especially thank the Lord for your electronic sound machine which allows you to listen to the ocean, the gentle patter of rain, the babbling of a brook, or the relaxing lullaby of a summer night (complete with crickets and frogs) whenever you need to escape from the unrelenting stress of modern life. The added beauty of this machine is that it allows you to commune with nature without actually having to go outside where you would run the risk of getting wet
and dirty, not to mention the possibility of being bitten by mosquitoes, black-flies, or a rabid raccoon.
Zealously embrace the pursuit of perfection. Simple self-improvement is no longer enough. Strive at all times to ascend to the absolute zenith of style and sophistication. No matter how self-satisfied you may be at any given moment, remember that there is always more work to be done. Take heart. Take pride. Take the bull by the horns. Take over. Take credit. Take charge. Take notes when necessary.
Above all else, take strength from the knowledge that the cream always rises to the top.
SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS
Some of the illustrations in this book appear in their original form. Others are collages created by the author.
The illustrations were taken from Images of Medicine: A Definitive Volume of More than 4,800 Copyright-free Engravings, edited by Jim Harter (Bonanza Books, New York, 1991) and from the following volumes of the Dover Pictorial Archive Series (Dover Publications, New York):
200 Decorative Title-Pages (Alexander Nesbitt); 3800 Early Advertising Cuts (Carol Belanger Grafton); Albinus on Anatomy (Robert Beverly Hale and Terence Coyle); Animals (Jim Harter); Cesare Ripa: Baroque and Rococo Pictorial Imagery (Edward A. Maser); Children (Carol Belanger Grafton); Decorative Alphabets and Initials (Alexander Nesbitt); A Diderot Pictorial Encyclopedia of Trades and Industry: Volumes One and Two (Charles C. Gillispie); The Doré Bible Illustrations (Millicent Rose); Early American Locomotives (John H. White, Jr.); Food and Drink (Jim Harter); Goods and Merchandise (William Rowe); Handbook of Renaissance Ornament (Albert Fidelis Butsch); Harter’s Picture Archive for Collage and Illustration (Jim Harter); Historic Alphabets and Initials (Carol Belanger Grafton); Love and Romance (Carol Belanger Grafton); Men (Jim Harter); Montgomery Ward & Co. Catalogue and Buyers’ Guide, No. 57, Spring and Summer 1895 (Boris Emmet); Music (Jim Harter); The New Testament (Don Rice); Old-Fashioned Animal Cuts (Carol Belanger Grafton); Old-Fashioned Illustrations of Books, Reading and Writing (Carol Belanger Grafton); Old-Fashioned Illustrations of Children (Carol Belanger Grafton); Old-Fashioned Nautical Illustrations (Carol Belanger Grafton); Old-Fashioned Romantic Cuts (Carol Belanger Grafton); Old-Fashioned Transportation Cuts (Carol Belanger Grafton); Perspective: fan Vredeman de Vries (Adolf K. Placzek); Picture Book of Devils, Demons and Witchcraft (Ernst and Johanna Lehner); Picture Sourcebook for Collage and Decoupage (Edmund V. Gillon, Jr.); Trades and Occupations (Carol Belanger Grafton); Transportation (Jim Harter); Victorian Women’s Fashion Cuts (Carol Belanger Grafton); and Women (Jim Harter).
Acknowledgments
The factual information contained in these stories was gathered from a variety of sources including Atlas of Stars and Planets: A Beginner’s Guide to the Universe by Ian Ridpath (Facts on File, 1993); The Book of Answers: The New York Public Library Telephone Reference Service’s Most Unusual and Entertaining Questions by Barbara Berliner with Melinda Corey and George Ochoa (Prentice-Hall, 1990); The Compass in Your Nose and Other Astonishing Facts about Humans by Marc McCutcheon (Los Angeles, Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1989); Fodor’s 96 Europe, edited by Linda Cabasin (Fodor’s Travel Publications, 1995); The New Illustrated Universal Reference Book (London, Odhams Press, 1933); Perspective for Artists by Rex Vicat Cole (Dover Publishing, 1976); Planets and Satellites (Barron’s Educational Series, 1993); Saints Preserve Us! by Sean Kelly and Rosemary Rogers (Random House, 1993); and Why Eve Doesn’t Have an Adam’s Apple: A Dictionary of Sex Differences by Carol Ann Rinzler (Facts on File, 1996).
I would like to thank the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council for their generous financial support.
For their unwavering faith and their own special forms of devotion, I am deeply grateful to my friends Carla Douglas and Jim Kane (an extra thanks to Carla for the relish recipe on page 58), Merilyn Simonds and Wayne Grady, and Katherine Lakeman; to my agent, Bella Pomer; to Lois Rosenthal of Story; to my editors, Mindy Werner and Phyllis Bruce; and especially to Alex, my dear son.
Also By Diane Schoemperlen
Our Lady of the Lost and Found
In the Language of Love
Hockey Night in Canada and Other Stories
The Man of My Dreams
Hockey Night in Canada
Frogs and Other Stories
Double Exposures
Copyright
Forms of Devotion
Copyright © 1998 by Diane Schoemperlen.
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EPub Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 978-1-554-68956-9
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Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Schoemperlen, Diane
Forms of devotion
I. Title
PS8587.C4578F6 2001 c813’.54 C2001-901525-9
PR9199.3.S34F6 2001
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1 American Wonder, the best variety, Helen orders the seeds from a catalogue. The plump green pods hang on delicate vines that curl up the stakes and the chicken wire. Helen likes to eat them raw when they are still young and tender. Later in the season she cooks them up in cream with parsley and pearl onions.
2 Ladies Knife with three blades, finest quality steel, German silver bolsters, 41/4-inch stag horn handle. Helen has had this knife for as long as she can remember. She uses it to cut off dead blossoms and leaves in the garden. Sometimes she uses it to cut slugs in half. After her gardening is done, she cleans the dirt out from under her fingernails with the thinnest of the knife’s three blades.
3 Woven common elm, middle-hinged lid, brass closures, sturdy handle, gingham-lined. Helen is not sure where this basket originally came from. It is one of those objects that has simply always been there. She has never used it for a picnic. It is filled with junk: old screwdrivers, a baseball shedding its skin, a coil of copper wire, a broken flashlight, two padlocks without keys, and the guts of an old alarm clock. Helen does not exactly know where this junk came from either. It is as if the old house were quite capable of accumulating such objects all by itself.
4 Carlsbad China Tete-à-Tete Set, decorated with a spray of pink roses and green leaves. The set indudes teapot, sugar bowl, cream pitcher, two cups and saucers, on a fine china matching tray. Seven of the pieces are in perfect condition but there is a small chip on the lip of the cream pitcher. The set is over a hundred
years old and very delicate so Helen seldom uses it except for special occasions like Christmas, Easter, and her birthday, the fifteenth of September.
5 Peach and Pepper Relish: In food processor, chop 2 hot red peppers and 12 sweet red peppers, seeds and all. Add peppers to 12 large peaches (peeled and chopped), I cup white vinegar, and I teaspoon salt in large preserving kettle. Add 4 lemon halves. Boil gently for half an hour. Remove lemons and add 5 cups white sugar. Boil for another half-hour or until mixture is thick. Bottle and seal. Helen knows this recipe by heart.
6 Nottingham Lace, single border, point d’esprit center with beautiful Brussels effect. Helen washes these curtains (and a similar pair that hangs in her bedroom) by hand twice a year in the bathtub and then drapes them over the shower rod to dry. When she hangs them back up at the windows, they are as soft and fragrant as freshly washed hair.
7 Cupid’s Dart, 6 inches high, finished in bronze with fancy dial and Ansonia movement. Having been largely unaffected by the sting of Cupid’s dart in her lifetime, Helen loves her little clock anyway. The fact that it has never kept good time strikes her as fitting somehow in an object of desire. The clock is pretty but useless and Cupids left wing has long since broken off and disappeared.
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