Paradox is the resting point where impossibility has to be faced as a rare kind of pleasure. – Fanny Howe
The young redhead had told him not so long ago he had the best body of any man his age she had ever seen. Something to the effect. He had been dissecting that sentence like he was back in Miss Nepful’s eighth-grade English class.
How many naked old men had she seen, he wondered. The boys had called her Miss Nipple because she had a big rack. We were thirteen, fourteen years old boys. Give me a break. How did he look compared to younger men, he questioned. Then the old man decided, who the hell cares and held that compliment close. His spine even seemed to straighten. Shoulders widened. Little bounce in his step. He carried less time and crime in his body.
She was good medicine.
Another time cuddled together watching some English guy walk around a museum and tell us a pile of pots and pans is great art. We can’t get a parrot, she says. Just like that. Nobody was talking about a parrot. They live too long, they’ll outlive both of us, well, you for sure.
Couple minutes later. I don’t want a bird with your vocabulary let loose on an unsuspecting world.
The old man knew aging was a probability. If you are lucky. Growing slower and weaker and slower and weaker was a rare kind of pleasure. Convince yourself of that and you’re a mystic.
Rather be a parrot.
Paradox is the idea of pain that never calls a halt. So he decided to rest there.
Before it was impossible.