Notebook - My Crime, Your Punishment

Notebook
Believe it or not, as massive as this website has become, I was thinking yesterday about significantly expanding it. After all, what’s 879 pages? A mere tip of the iceberg. And it’s all so neat and organized. Even a librarian would be proud. And if I were to die tomorrow, any biographer could waltz in, and, after a couple of years of intensive reading and research, come away with my life story. Oh, sure, he’d have to travel to my hometown and interview a few of my old grade school teachers, and he’d have to call on a few writers, editors, and publishers to hear their side of the story, and he’d have to hope they’d saved some of our outlandish correspondence, and that I’d saved some here amongst my piles of rejection slips and old manuscripts and books and hats and notes to myself. But that would only take him another year or two — provided, of course, I wasn’t hanging around in spirit form, pestering him, and intruding on his thoughts. Who knows what I’ll do when I’m dead? I might even go on adding to the website. No matter how long I live, there’s no way I’ll ever finish all the work I have to do. So I’ll probably just go on doing it. Don’t mind me, I’ll say. You just go about your business while I upload my dream-sequel to The Brothers Karamazov — in Russian. In other words, my crime, your punishment. * * * I think our poor old appliance repairman has finally fallen off the edge of his alcoholic abyss. In need of his help a couple of days ago, I rang his phone only to be informed by an electronic voice that his number was no longer in service. So I dropped by his little shop. Sure enough, his pickup was parked right outside, but the doors of the shop were closed. I thought I heard him shuffling around inside, so I knocked, and I called his name, and I called out my name. No answer. After I tried a second time, I talked to a guy in a dimly lit wood shop a couple of doors down. He stopped sanding a chair long enough to tell me our repairman was sleeping in his van these days, and that I’d have to “kick the door down to wake him up.” I did try pounding again, but to no avail. And I thought, what a horrible thing it must be to hear someone you know pounding on your door, and to be too ashamed, embarrassed, or incapacitated to meet him face to face. Having dealt with him many times over the years, I was torn between wanting to help by having him fix our twenty-five-year-old clothes dryer, and leaving him alone and sparing him the embarrassment. About then, his neighbor joined me outside and suggested I come back in an hour. I told him that sounded like the best idea, and left. I didn’t go back. Because our dryer was so old, and because I didn’t know who else to call, I bought a new one.	Also by William Michaelian POETRY Winter Poems ISBN: 978-0-9796599-0-4 52 pages. Paper. —————————— Another Song I Know ISBN: 978-0-9796599-1-1 80 pages. Paper. —————————— Cosmopsis Books San Francisco Signed copies available Main Page Author’s Note Background A Listening Thing Among the Living No Time to Cut My Hair One Hand Clapping Songs and Letters Collected Poems Early Short Stories Armenian Translations Cosmopsis Print Editions Interviews News and Reviews Highly Recommended Let’s Eat Favorite Books & Authors Useless Information Conversation Flippantly Answered Questions E-mail & Parting Thoughts
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