Red Hurts

"I am a writer!" my friend David Juda exclaimed as we settled into a luxurious dinner at Picante's, just a few blocks from where I live. I was wondering how come this was the first time I had ordered red snapper. Maybe it hadn't been on the menu before. Everything was panning out so easily, the conversation we were having, his epiphany, "I am a writer!" and our mutual enjoyment in the beginning, middle and end, and from where it all flows. "I see it all now in the specific!" he said, popping something I missed into his mouth with his left hand. Is he left-handed? Is he right-handed? It's theater, and I loved it. I didn't realize until later one of my favorite tests for whether I like someone: If I like eating with them. It's all so easy. "And one of Edgar Allan Poe's editors told him, 'Always write close to Death! The public loves it!" David knows things. I know things. "I am a person," I heard myself saying. Just to myself.


Trends and Everyday Events in

the Early Twenty-First Century

|

Richard Ames Hart

Friday 21 February 2003