The woman at the corner of 6th and Mass, the pink platypus, and me.

 

It all began with the honking of a horn as I was standing on the corner of 6^th and Mass on a sweltering August afternoon.

You were trying to get my attention as I was standing on the corner. I didn’t realize that it was you at first. Then you honked again. And then it was unmistakably you. And the next thing I knew, you were driving down 6^th street and I was walking down Mass. Out of your open passenger window I had heard you say, “I’ve been thinking about you.” And then you were gone.

It felt a little like a dream.

It feels a little like a dream that we met all. But we did.

And so, when I got home from my walk that afternoon, I made a joke - just a little one – and I sent you a text. It was something about seeing a pretty young woman at the corner of 6^th and Mass - or maybe it was just sunstroke. And then a question: “Was it really you?”

I pressed ‘send’ and then, the next thing I knew, I was making a Thai curry. Prik Khing, with pork and long beans, to be specific. My mind was still drifting a little.

And then moments later, I was sitting on a bench near my garage, shucking corn on the cob.

And then my pocket ‘pwacked.’

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. It was a text from you: “It was really me, bertrude.” So it was you, the woman I saw driving by as I was standing on the corner of 6^th and Mass. I could almost hear your voice in the text. It’s how you say my name, after all. They say that there are something like 100 trillion connections in my brain.  I think that you must be somewhere in my mind. I could almost hear your voice.

And then within the discontinuity of texting, I asked if you wanted to come over for supper. I meant every word. I was making plenty of food, after all. But in the same moment, I was also making a joke. You were Eatstreeting food to people all across Lawrence after all.

But then I began to follow the thread that had begun in my mind when I saw you, standing on the corner of 6^th and Mass. trying to untangle the complications of your life as I walked.

And so as I sat with my phone in my hand, some of my mind began spilling out into a digital text. I started to tell you about my thoughts, about dreams, about heaven and hell, about time - and lifetimes. It might have been a text about hope. It was a long thread. I hit ‘send.’

I suppose that I must have managed to get something of myself into those flat words on the screen. I think that they might have been words you needed to hear. And then, when you texted back, I knew it was you. You said, “I love you, bertrude.” I could almost see your face and hear your voice.

And then, since supper for us was not an option, I texted that maybe we could do lunch on Friday. Vietnamese sandwiches. You agreed. “Sammiches,” you said. Another little joke, but we’d both been there.

 

And then it was later.

I went to bed. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up. I went down into the basement and piddled around with stuff. In the middle of the night, I was still trying to follow you and the train of my thoughts through the 100 trillion connections of my mind.

I must have traveled to the moon and back.

It’s not so important to me that I make sense all the time. Losing your mind is another way of finding yourself. You often don’t know what you need. And even when you don’t know who you are, you just have to keep looking. And sometimes – every now and then you find what you need.

And then when I turned my phone back on in the morning, another text was waiting. You couldn’t do sammiches on Friday.

And yet between us, the promise remained. It was there in a text.

I try to say what I mean. But only when I mean what I say. And sometimes when I’m making a joke, what I mean is the truth.

But I’m getting tired of texting. I’m not sure I know what I mean any more. Or who I am. What I want is to be alive. I want to be the man standing on the corner of 6^th and Mass. I want to make a Thai curry. I want to sit on a bench under a clear blue summer sky. And I want to have sammiches with you - sometime.

 

And then, as these things happen, it was the next day.  And this is where I get to the part about the platypus.

As I was about to go on my walk, I texted you that if you saw an older man with a pink platypus on his shoulder on the corner of 6^th and Mass, that would be me. It was a joke.

But then I took my platypus along with me and snapped a selfie of me and my platypus. And then I texted that photo to you. Of course it made no sense.

 

And then again in the middle of the night I was awake. Down in my basement. Messing around with stuff. I do have lots of stuff. I like things. Things you can touch. Real things. And so then I decided to take some pictures of my platypus among my things.

My basement workspace is one of my favorite places to be. And I think one good way for people to tell other people who they are is to show them the places where they are themselves.

So, since you were not there, I took the photos.

I think that you might try to look at these photos as if they were Tarot cards. You could do a reading if you wanted to. In the color and the clutter, you can see images of things that have gotten randomly shuffled over time. Haphazardly arranged. Things placed by a careless hand in the absence of my mind.

I think that you might try to look at these photos as if they were Tarot cards. You could do a reading if you wanted to. In the color and the clutter, you can see images of things that have gotten randomly shuffled over time. Haphazardly arranged. Things placed by a careless hand in the absence of my mind.

And so then in the middle of the night, I put the pink platypus down in the middle of it all, framed a picture, and clicked.

Look carefully. It’s not text this time, but midnight photos. Might the universe be telling you something in these pictures? Are they revealing some of the hidden secrets of who I am?

 

But now let’s go farther back in time. And this is the part where the pink platypus first came into my life. It was on a Halloween night several years ago. You could listen to my story from that night on this YouTube - or skip ahead as you wish.

But look at these photos. You might recognize me under the pink hat and curly gray wig.

 

And that was me and my platypus in the photo the next morning. It was really me, Jessie.

 

And this is where this story of me and the platypus really began.

It was near the end of the night. I had been sitting in the front yard in my pink hat and curly gray wig. Candy had been given out. I had scared my share of kids. I was just waiting.

And then I saw two middle school girls walking by on the sidewalk. Each of them was carrying a fuzzy pink platypus in their arms.

 Although I sat there motionless, I followed them with my eyes. And then out of the corner of one eye, I saw them stop. One girl turned and walked back to where I was sitting. She very simply put her pink platypus down on the table and said, “I think you need this more than I do.” And then she walked away. That’s all it was. I never saw her face in the darkness, but I can still almost hear her voice in a nearly forgotten corner of my mind.

So there it is. My platypus has been living in my basement ever since. From time to time, when I see it, I think about that girl. She was probably right, you know. It was what I needed

And then, the other day, I was thinking about you.

So did I tell you that I’ve been to the moon and back since I last saw you? And back into time? And do you remember the part where you honked at me? And when you texted what you texted to me?

Linear time is one thing. It started with the Big Bang more than 13 billion years ago and then in that instant, time began to point to a distant future that didn’t yet exist. And now here we are, still traveling through time. And after all these years, we are now living in a discontinuous time. Fragments here and there. Memory mingles with the present. Thoughts and feelings come and go at nearly the speed of light. Sometimes we take photos or write things down so that we can try to bring the past along with us. And sometimes we text. But we can’t really keep any of it. Time doesn’t exist. We hold things and each other for a little while and then we let go.

But some things are real. We are alive. One day a pink platypus came into my life. And one day you and I saw each other on the corner of 6^th and Mass. It was really me. And it was really you.

And Jessie, maybe there will be sammiches.

I will have to make them with bread and meat and stuff. You will pick one up in your hand. Bite into it. Maybe you will get a little mayo on the corner of your mouth. Maybe it will happen my backyard. It might be on a Wednesday. But if it happens, it will be in some real place at some real time. I will see your face and hear your voice. And you will see me.

And maybe the platypus.