Just Trying To Stay Loose And Keep The Juices Jangling

What a voice and what a way with words this old man I met today had. He was out for a stroll –on a lark, he said, just trying to stay loose and keep the juices jangling. Nice day for that sort of thing.

I hadn’t seen him around the neighborhood before. He sounded like a man who sat beside God’s bed and read Him stories to help Him sleep. I’ve honestly never heard such a voice, and would use the word mellifluous to describe it if it didn’t remind me of an entirely bogus high school English teacher with a ponytail. This, he said, reaching down to scratch my dog’s ears, is a fellow who has clearly done the Lord’s work. His magnificent skull and the mysteries it contains are purest perfection.

We chatted for quite some time, and every sentence he uttered seemed like a bright ribbon embroidered with words, slowly unfurling from his mouth and drifting out across the neighborhood on the breeze. I don’t, unfortunately, remember much else he said, so dazzled was I by his voice, but every word seemed so beautifully shaped and carefully chosen.

I didn’t want him to leave me. I should have invited him into my home and asked him to speak into a tape recorder, to intone a message of love to my wife, something I could hide away for her to find after I am dead.

He did, though, eventually go on his way. And I thought: wouldn’t it be nice to have even a few of that man’s lovely sentences in a jar of formaldehyde on my bedstand? Even now I am thinking about that idea, that image of those words floating beside me, undulating slowly like beautiful fish and keeping me company through the night. I like to imagine they would glow in the dark.