Chapter 7 Section 5

I was afraid that these aimless days would be over in the blink of an eye, so I said to myself: Let us enjoy these aimless days while we still can. At breakfast Babette read each of us the results of the divination in her storytelling voice.When she read my inscription, I wanted to hear it but tried not to, and I thought I had a few clues. After dinner, when I went upstairs, I heard the TV saying: "Let's sit quietly like a lotus half-opened, and keep our mind on the gate of life." Not long after I fell asleep that night, I felt a bang, like jumping into shallow water, my heart stopped beating, and I fell out of my body.Waking up from the shock, I peered into the darkness and realized I had just experienced a more or less normal "muscular spasm".Is that what it is: sudden and involuntary?I thought, would death be like a swan throwing water, with white wings, graceful and smooth, without a ripple on the water?

Blue jeans rolling in the dryer. We bumped into Murray Jay Siskind in a supermarket.His basket contained ordinary food and drinks, some unbranded things, with only a few words on the simple white packaging.There was a white can labeled "Canned Peaches."On the white box of pork, there is no clear plastic window showing a representative slice.There is a piece of white paper on the bottle of fried peanut kernels, and the words "unusual peanut kernels" are written on it.When I introduced Murray to Babette, he kept nodding to Babette. "It's a new form of sobriety," he says. "The packaging is really tasteless. It intrigues me. I feel like I'm not only saving money, but I'm contributing to some sort of spiritual consensus. It's like the third World War I has started. Everything is white. They are going to take away our bright colors and use them all for war.”

He looked into Babette's eyes as he picked up groceries from our cart and sniffed them. "I've bought these peanut kernels before, and they're round, split and pitted in the middle. These are crushed peanut kernels, and there are a lot of small bits at the bottom of the bottle, but they're delicious. My favorite is the packaging. Jack, you are right, this is the last avant-garde. Bold new form, shocking power." A woman tumbles onto a shelf of paperback books in front of the store.At a far corner, a short and fat man came out of a high pavilion and walked towards her cautiously, turning his head sideways to get a better view.At this moment, the cashier called out, "Leon, parsley." As he approached the fallen woman, he replied, "Seventy-five cents." His breast pocket was full of soft felt-tipped watercolor brushes.

"So you cook for yourself at the boarding house," said Babette. "I carve out a space in my room to cook. I'm happy there. I read the TV papers, I see the commercials in The UFO Fans Today. I get to immerse myself in American magic and horror. My seminars are going well. The students are bright and responsive. They ask questions and I answer them. When I talk, they take notes. That's no small surprise in my life." He picks up a bottle of strong painkiller we've picked out and sniffs around the child-resistant cap.He also sniffed our honeydew melon, soda and ginger ale.Babette went to the frozen food department, which my doctor had advised me to avoid.

"Your wife's hair is nothing short of a miracle," Murray said, gazing into my face, as if to pay me deep respect with this new information. "Yes." I said. "She has 'terrific' hair." "I think I see what you mean." "I want you to be proud of that woman." "absolute." "Because women like that are rare." "I see." "She's got to be great with the kids. Even better, I bet when things go wrong in the family, she's there and it sorts it out. She's the kind of person who can take control and show strength and determination. .”

"Actually she was at a loss. She was like that when her mother died." "Who wouldn't?" "When Steffi called from camp to say she had a broken bone in her hand, she was also bewildered and disoriented. We had to drive there all night, and I found out that I had driven the car on the lumberyard road. Babette all the way crying." "Her daughter, far away, among strangers, and suffering. Who wouldn't?" "Not her daughter, but mine." "It's even more remarkable if it's not her own daughter." "no." "Outstanding. I have to admire."

The three of us leave together, trying to move our shopping cart among the paperbacks strewn all over the exit.Murray wheeled one of our cars into the parking lot and helped us lift our double-bagged items into the back of the station wagon.Lots of cars coming in and going out.Policewomen in miniature cars with zippered canvas tops make the rounds, searching for red flag signs on parking meters in the area.We added Murray's only light bag of some white stuff to our own load and drove across Elm Street to his boarding house.It seems to me that Babette and I have bought a great variety of things, full of bags, an indication of our abundance; look at the weight, volume and quantity, these familiar packaging designs and vivid instructions Words, huge volumes, special family packs with neon sales labels, we feel prosperous; these products bring security and contentment to the deepest nests of our souls—as if we've achieved a kind of The fulfillment of life is incomprehensible to those who lack food and clothing and dare not expect extravagance. They are still calculating their lives on the lonely sidewalk at dusk.

In parting, Murray took Babette's hand. "I'd like to invite you to my room for a chat, but unless the two of you are prepared to be intimate, it's too small." Murray was able to make a look that was both cowardly and candid.This expression is enough to cause disaster to others and make his lust succeed.He said that in his old days with city women, he believed that there was only one way to seduce a woman, and that was to express desire openly and explicitly.He takes pains to avoid self-deprecation, self-deprecation, ambiguity, irony, subtlety, vulnerability, a civilized misanthropy and a tragic sense of history—it is these, he says, that are most important to him. Natural thing.There was only one of them—vulnerability, which he let creep into his straightforward lustful schemes.He's developing a vulnerability that women are fascinated by.He strives for it consciously, like someone lifting weights in front of a mirror in a gym.But so far his efforts had yielded only this half-bawdy look of docility and flattery.

He thanked us for giving him a lift.We watched him make his way to the sloping porch of stacked cinder blocks, where a man sat in a rocking chair staring at the sky.

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Notes: