12.(11-13) Ali Explains - A Walk on the Wild Side

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11: Ali on Monday

Ali wants to explain some things. She telephones Dan, who comes down from upstairs.

   “When I'm not on the sofa, I sleep on the floor.”

   “Why? It sounds uncomfortable.”

   “Oh no. In Japan the people sleep on the floor, on a mat - a futon.  It's good for the back but that's not my only reason.”

   “What other?”

   “Space, Dan, space!”

   “Ah yes, I recall from your lecture, the Japanese value space because they have so little of it."
   Then, in front of Dan, Ali lays a futon: she unrolls an under-mat and places pillows, lays a sheet and tops it with thick, colorful comforter.”

   “Will you lie down with me, and make me your naked Maja, Dan?  And I mean, make me!”

“Now, my dear, dear Miss! Once was interesting for an old gentleman like I; and it was good to help heal the shock after Margaret’s death; but are you sure you want to continue. My desire is not so strong and I am not unhappy without it.”

   “Well, my desire is real strong and yours is the only you-know-what immediately available so could you and would you? Pretty please?”

   He did and after that Ali goes to sleep on the futon and Dan tiptoes out and goes back downstairs to his apartment.

12: Brenda & Ali

Brenda is 2nd year, a junior, at nearby, all-girl Walton High School. On this Monday, Ali appears at 8 AM in front of Brenda’s door ready to help carry Brenda's books on the 15-minute stroll to school

   It recalls lyrics of the popular Glenn Miller song, I liked her looks when I carried her books in Kalamazoo-zoo-zoo-zoo-zoo zoo …. (To hear it now, click the YouTube below, and then come back to the reading. Note the lyrics follow the instrumental)

Glenn Miller - (I've got a gal in) Kalamazoo (1942) [Digitally ...

   “Aw, Ali, you didn’ really have ta. I t'ought you was jokin’”

   “Negative, Bren. I want to do a Kalamazoo on you.”

   Brenda gives Ali 3 of her 6 books as they step down from her house's porch, walk a path between early spring red tulips and yellow daffodils, and go out the front garden gate, turning right onto a street, lined on both sides by expensive stone and brick homes.

   “Whaddaya gonna do here in da Bronx, Ali; an why’d ya come?”

   “The War, Bren. I'd a been a dangerous alien in Japan and I got other things on my mind than rotting away years there.”

   “Like, wha?”

   "Like loving you, hon."

   “Gee, Ali!  Really? Am I woit it?"

   “Tell you later, alligator. But what is your style, crocodile?  Are you gonna try for college?"

   “Yeah, Hunter College,” Brenda indicates with left forefinger the Gothic Hunter College campus that they are, just now, walking past.

   “What do you wanna study?”

   “I wannabe a vet."

   “An animal doc?”

   “Yeah, I like cats and dogs.”

   Ali grimaces and says: “I an't a furry pet person. A vet? That's just a way for you to earn money. You oughta go to college to get cultured.”
   Ali, you are the strangest pal ever! I never hear anyone say dat. I guess it's why I like to be wit'you.”
   “Bren, when I finish with you, you're gonna be speaking Bronx only when you are slumming here.”

   “Y'mean, you gonna edoocate me, Ali? Hey, I like dat."

   First of all, stop with‘dat’. Mind your d's and t's."

At the high school, Ali hands the books back to Brenda. 
   "OK, little girl, now go away and I’ll ask you to stay layta for French fry potata."

   Brenda runs into the school building with the other arriving girls as the bell starts ringing for morning classes.

13: Ali Finds a Personal Pond

Saturday 5 AM finds Ali on her floor futon listening to her steam-heat radiator making banging and pinging sounds. She sits up, reaches for and gets her prepared morphine hypodermic, sticks herself in right front thigh, presses syringe plunger, and the fluid flows into her.
   Then comes a contented feeling.  
   Her mind lets go of the usual worry and petty thought. She detaches from the moment while keeping in touch with herself lying flat on her back on the futon. But her mind flies along interesting paths. A recently read article on Einstein’s Relativity starts her thought heading away from Earth and the Earth receding behind but she continuing to expand into an enlarged universe. ...

After 30 minutes the morphine effect wears off and Ali dresses in workman blue Levi pants and a dark flannel shirt, and a green New-York-City-Parks-Department long-sleeve sweater that Alfonze gave her.

 6 AM; still dark outside and she gets into sneakers and jogging clothing, goes downstairs and sprints out from the front courtyard, turning right onto Mosholu Parkway North and running up to and crossing Gun Hill Road. There she turns sharply left and heads down the hill, the short distance to the end of Gun Hill Road. She continues to jog and at bottom of hill she turns right into the Van Cortlandt Park wild forest area, along a beaten-down path and heads west, the pale red rising sun behind her. The pleasure from the morphine in her muscles plus the stimuli of the cool air and her jogging all give a very pleasant feeling. 

   The path has been widened for Parks Department small vehicles to get into the woods. To Ali's right through the trees she sees a high wire-fence, on the other side a golf course green, and an early golfer making the tee. As she plunges deeper into forest, the fence is lost and she begins to mouth a phrase from the movie Wizard of Oz, ‘Lions and Tigers and Bears’ and, had it not been for the dawn sky lightening, she'd have started seeing the trees as living creatures with faces and arms. Off on her left she knows is Van Cortlandt Lake. She thinks, Maybe I shall fish there on quiet summer days. But then she considers, from brother Tommy's teachings and the Tokyo seminars, that her humanity has risen up to a caretaker-of-earth feeling that is not into killing other living creatures for sport.

   Now, down at bottom of hill, she sees Sawmill River Parkway ahead. Only one car whizzes north. She knows Sawmill River is small ponds connected by a running stream.
   The morning dew in the ankle-high grass soaks her sneakers and socks and is near freezing. She turns right on a side path and heads more north toward the pond that receives the drainage water from Sawmill Lake. Climbing out onto the highway she walks north on it several hundred meters and then, carefully watching for whiz-by car that may kill and race away, she crosses to west side, jumps its side bar and goes down slope, feeling bushes clutching at her clothes. Now she reaches an edge of the pond. It is about 4 meters down and hidden from view by trees. The water flows slowly out of a tunnel and she can see clear to bottom.

   My personal pond, she thinks, and takes off her wet sneakers and socks. The water is cold; it alerts and stimulates her morphine-primed body and gives joy. The stream bed is firm sand but she is careful to watch for sharps that may cut her feet. Rolling up her pants above-knees, she wades to center of the stream, and the water rises to her mid-thighs. She takes a long thermometer out of her backpack and dips it in the water for 1 minute. “Thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit! - That is zero Celsius!", she says out loud, thinking, But the flow prevents its freezing. She takes a water sample to test for acidity/alkalinity.

   My personal pond, she thinks again. I shall enjoy it much. One of her ideas is to do a science study of the woods and waters of this North Bronx wild. Most people think the Bronx, being in New York City, is only crowded tenements. But it also has its wilds. More of this later.   
For next, click 12. (14-15) Ali & Dan - Sharing