Almost Waltzing

In the year 2010, after prices at the pump had climbed to $25.00 the
gallon, in Washington and London an environmentally conscious Congress
and Parliament were still holding firm against removing former
legislative obstacles to renewed exploration and exploitation of
domestic oil reserves.

In the Mideast, there were heaps of Riyal, Dinar, Yuan, Yen, Euros,
Rubles, Pesos and Dollars to rival the greatest mountain ranges of the
earth with peaks of Yuan and Euros towering over abysses of Dollars
and Yen on the international monetary charts; and there was certainly
enough gold buried in Saudi and Kuwaiti vaults to pose a threat of
instability along sundry Arabian earthquake faults, a matter worthy of
some nervous notice no doubt, among nuclear physicists working with
reactors everywhere from Riyadh to Tehran.

The "Yes We Can" diplomatic efforts of the Obama administration aimed
at the Mideast were being lauded by progressives everywhere. Israel
had finally been made to submit, once being convinced that any pre-
emptive raids to defend against Iran's grandly growing nuclear ICBM
arsenal could only lead to a complete cut-off, not only of its own
petroleum tap but that of Europe and the US, to boot.

To say that the entire "Free World" had its back bent over an Arab oil
barrel was a futile argument to the hearing of those who remained
convinced that solar, wind and bio-fuels were the only way to go--and
never mind that to have your prospective corn on the cob knee high by
the 4th of July and to eat it too, was to pay dearly for it by the
middle of August, 2011 at the rate of $5.00 the ear.

It was just no good to say to the Obama administration and the Eco-
crat controlled U.S. Congress that without a certain necessary degree
of compromise on the environment, there can no longer be a single car
in private possession; no trucks, trains or planes on the road, over
the rails or in the skies, as neither may there be any heat in
anyone's furnace: the environmental purist must insist for mankind to
come completely to a stop and freeze to death. But, by this logic,
they refused to be convinced, that plain common sense has long called
for a compromise to be made over the Alaskan North Slope, the off-
shore prospects for the British Isles and coastal California, the Gulf
of Mexico--or . . .

"Or?"

"Or else."

"Okay," she licked her liberally pinked lips. "I'll bite. Or else--
what?"

"Promise you won't go running to the dean, once you've heard an
extremely politically incorrect opinion?"

"Honestly, Doc! What on earth do you really take me for?" She gave
that air of guardedness about his silence no chance for reprieve. "Aw,
g'wan! I'm a big girl. Lay it on me." She really wasn't so 'big' as
all that, but for a fairly formed bust and cascades of naturally
endowed curly waves of dark auburn hair gathered by imitation tortoise
shell to the middle of her back: if anything, at 4'11" she was petite,
and that was her appeal to the not so large, quite studious looking
man of 41 walking beside her. Red ochre was the shade of a falling
maple leaf that fluttered earthward between their shoulders as he'd
turned to face her:

"You ever see the play, Cabaret?"

"Me? The original Sally Bowles? Just who d'ya think you've been
talking to?" The look of charmed surprise in his eyes made her laugh.
"I played her over two seasons of summer stock."

"A theatre major! I might have known."

"I'm a regular Berthold Brecht and Lotte Lenya all rolled up in one. I
mean, could I get any more political or let alone correct, than that?"

With no more than a smile for his answer, he gently touched her at the
arm as they began their ascent over a flight of marble steps which
stretch from one side of the elm-lined mall to the other; halfway up
he turned to her:

"Sing me the *Money* song."

"Ah!" She threw back her head in delight, only to think of it. "But,
right now?" She looked around. "Here?"

He shrugged her a laconic, why not? "But first let me ask: Did you
mean it as you sang those verses, or were you only acting?"

"Only acting!"

"Only in the sense of 'strictly'."

"Hm." She paused at the height of stairs. "To tell you the truth, I
can't distinguish: I mean it, when I act. There is no separation."

With only the tips of his fingers to the small of her back, he set
himself in motion, as she, almost waltzing, followed through. "Please
sing it to me," he said.

The student couple passing by to their left laughed, turning their
heads the better to see "Sally Bowles" hamming it up, transformed in
dance as if to a cat, on the prowl about her professor . . .

"Money money money money money money!"

"That's it!" He enthused. She didn't drop a beat . . .

"Money makes the world go around,
The world go around,
The world go around!
Money makes the world go around,
It makes the world go 'round."

She took him by the hand to carry him across the curve of a narrow
lane of asphalt toward the walk on the other side, as still she
sang . . .

"A mark, a yen, a buck, or a pound,
A buck or a pound,
A buck or a pound!
Is all that makes the world go around,
That clinking clanking sound,
Can make the world go 'round."

"Money money money money money money!"

"Yes!" He exulted. "But what of the part about 'no coal in the stove'
and the 'curse on the wind' and oh . . .

"That was for the Master of Ceremonies."

"Ah, the Joel Grey role."

"That's what, and it's just a monotone chant, a rap, Hip-Hop of a
sort . . ."

"Perish the thought!"

"Well, do you wish to hear it, or not?"

"But you do know it? Please!"

She took him by both his arms, stopped him, raised a finger and began
very sternly to lecture . . .

"If you haven't any coal in the stove,
And you freeze in the winter,
And you curse on the wind,
At your fate;
When you haven't any shoes,
On your feet,
And your coat's thin as paper,
And you look thirty pounds
Underweight.
When you go to get a word of advice,
From the fat little pastor,
He will tell you to love evermore.
But when hunger comes a rap,
Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat at the window..."

She raised both her arms straight out, raised up upon her toes, hung
her head to one side and shrugged.

"Migod! Is this the choreography they used for the stage?"

She nodded. "Telling, isn't it?"

"More than mere words can say."
--

Later, we pick up further on their conversation as they sit for cokes
and coffee a block off campus at the lunch counter in Gregg's Drugs.

JM http://whosenose.blogspot.com
http://jesusexegesis.blogspot.com