Flo said: "You get old, and get shingles. By law we should just drop dead at 70."

 

Flo’s  Mathematical Revelation

 or 365 x 74 = 27,010 Days

 

Flo said she had a very naïve

comprehension of numbers

said she couldn’t understand

how a person who

lived 24 hours each day

365 days a year, plus 1 every 4

going around the sun

74 times so far

had yet to learn

the difference between good and evil

that caring for each other

loving and laughing

planting and growing

working and playing

caring, crying and caressing

are good for each other

in our dazzling variety

for the earth

learning, loving the nuances

of life and ideas

was the reason for it all

How could anyone, she wondered

especially those born

with the pabulum of wealth      (like a once president person)

given the foundation to learn with /at the best,

carry the most burden and ability to give

could share the highest goodness

see only belligerence

violence and ridicule

with a center ego/mind of only a mighty

                          ME
in this little planet on the fragile edge

of the universe?                                                                                                              dream of 10/20/2020 © j.m.frase-white

 

About Flo  

 

                    I first met Flo in about 1887, in Paris when I was Gustav, the mystical  painter.

                    I do not recall where, maybe during an intimate concert,  or a nocturnal place, a party, somewhere performers of all kinds gather.  Immersed in the magical charm of absinthe we fell into friendship, enchanted with talk and art, filled with all that was new, the scent of paint, marble dust, exotic, elegant, in a free dance of all the senses.

                    A revolution

 

And then I met her again, almost a hundred years later, in Newburyport, in my café on the harbor.

She would regale me with stories, bits of wisdom and her history, with humor, wisdom and regret.

You could tell she had been a beauty, her eyebrows still penciled on, a beauty of her age.

Many a soldier took her in their hearts before being shipped off to fight the Nazis or the Japs.

Years after I left the port city, a friend told me of her passing.

She still visits me in dreams, sometimes from a half century ago, sometimes twice that.

 

À propos de Flo

 

                    J'ai rencontré Flo pour la première fois vers 1887, à Paris lorsque j'étais Gustav, le peintre mystique.

                    Je ne me souviens pas où, peut-être lors d'un concert intime, ou d'un lieu nocturne, d'une fête, quelque part des artistes de toutes sortes se rassemblent. Plongés dans le charme magique de l'absinthe, nous sommes tombés dans l'amitié, enchantés de la conversation et de l'art, remplis de tout ce qui était nouveau, le parfum de la peinture, de la poussière de marbre, exotique, élégant, dans une danse libre de tous les sens.

                    Une révolution

                    Et puis je l'ai rencontrée à nouveau, presque cent ans plus tard, à Newburyport, dans mon café sur le port.

                    Elle me régalerait d'histoires, de morceaux de sagesse et de son histoire, d'humour, de sagesse et de regret.

On pouvait dire qu'elle avait été une beauté, ses sourcils toujours crayonnés, une beauté de son âge.

De nombreux soldats l'ont prise dans leur cœur avant d'être expédiés pour combattre les nazis ou les japonais.

                    Des années après avoir quitté la ville portuaire, une amie m'a raconté son décès.

                    Elle me visite encore en rêve, parfois il y a un demi-siècle, parfois le double.