Desi Vega's. Chapter 560.
Today is the feast day of St. Francis Xavier Cabrini, who I always call St. Mother Cabrini. She used to live down the street from me, in the old orphanage. I have been in her bedroom. I pass statues of her several times a day. You can tell it is her because she always wore a big bow tie.
She was the first American citizen to be baptized. She was born in Italy. She wanted to be a missionary in China, like St. Francis Xavier but the Pope told her, “Not to the East, to the West,” so, she came to America. She had blue eyes.
I have seen her arm bone in Chicago. I think it was one of her radii. I could have been an ulna. I do not think it was a humerus. There was nothing funny about it.
I sit and watch the currents of history flow past wherever I may happen to be sitting for the day. It is not always interesting to me, but it is interesting to the people who are doing whatever darned fool things they are doing.
I see I am in a mood. I have been since yesterday. I am not having an existential crisis. As anyone who knows me will tell you, the cement from which I have been cast has long been cured.
That reminds me of this lady I know. I do not know her well. I know her name and I know that she overshares personal information, but, I do not pay any more attention than I need to be polite in passing.
She was telling me about the people she knows who were close to her who died this year. She did not know Henry Kissinger. These were people you have never heard of. I never had, either, including her ex-husband.
I had stopped to wish her a Merry Christmas. The Vespa is running like a well-oiled machine, which it is. It has just been tuned up. Every one of the Vespa’s belts and gears are tight and taut and ready for excitement.
She wished me a Merry Christmas, too, and then she proceeded to tell me all about those people who died. I did not mind listening. This lady, who always wears a bucket hat, she apologized for talking my ear off about the subject, I said, “You seem to need to get it out of your system.”
“That’s what my grief therapist says,” the lady told me.
What the heck is a grief therapist? When did people become so fragile that they need therapy to grieve. What next? We obviously live in a service economy.
Too many people have nothing to do. Take it from me, I know.
Python Lady is a big fan of Henry Kissinger. She is like a Chinaman. Kissinger was bigger in China than he was in Japan.
I wish I could be big in Japan.
Now I am going behind the paywall to work on some Japan-worthy material. Mrs. King and I are thinking about moving to Budokan.