Breakfast
with Dennis
I
scorch my hands on the steering wheel,
Burn
my bum on the worn out green vinyl of the front seat
of
my 1969 half-ton Chevy pick-up….affectionately dubbed
Tom
Joad… I Cruise through the morning miasma of suburban
Dallas
on a sweltering Sunday in early August of
1979….on
my way to breakfast with Dennis…
Any
meeting with Dennis reminds me that I have been fasting…There he sits, a benign
Celtic panther, in a booth next to the window giving us both a magnificent view
of the parking lot…his ruddy complexion, sandy hair, penetrating blue eyes all
contribute to his lively and engaging demeanor.
“Hey Al, I already ordered. Hope
you don’t mind.” “ No problem. I am
tracking on sausages, scrambled eggs, blueberry pancakes and some coffee.”
As
our buxom waitress approaches, Dennis twinkles.
She
says, “More coffee, Hon?” Dennis replies, “Fill er up please!”
As
she heads back to the kitchen and through the swinging doors we follow her with
our playful eyes.
With
the menu established we launch into the trade winds and maelstroms of western
civilization: politics, religion, philosophy, metaphysics and poetry all punctuated
by our particular stories…
Like
a master juggler or superb acrobat…. a virtuoso conductor:
Dennis
wields his encyclopedic knowledge of the West.
At
our Table at Denny’s Restaurant we hold court to Homer
and Shakespeare, Chaucer and Dante. We
join in the wrath of Achilles before the walls of Troy. We are lashed to the
mast with Odysseus as he listens to the Sirens implacable song.
We
look over Jung’s shoulder as he swallows Freud’s doctrine.
We
stop with Dante in the middle wood….long enough to catch a glimpse of Beatrice
calling him and us on….
Dennis
sings and hums…vibrates with “I and thou….”
When
he slows down…. we both take a breath in the caesura of the moment ….I find
Thomas Merton erupting ecstatically into our midst. Now with us, 11 years after his passing, he
continues to encourage us in our raids on the unspeakable…
Blueberry
pancakes notwithstanding we turn our gazes toward Titanism …Moby Dick and Ahab… Vengeance posing as the
servant of justice …the age old nightmare of military power and Empire….The
phantasy of perfection and purity forever luring the innocent into the armies
of the night…
At
the end of our breakfast we come down from the mountain tops….down from the
high heavens…..back here into the three dimensional world of space –time….back
into the present…
Where
all of these ancestors mythical and real, call out to us….
“Remember,
Rise up, Take heart….it is you!
You
are the one.”
