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Royer’s Madcap Experiences: The Man Called Barlow

January 9, 2013 Leave a comment

By Ric Royer
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Today at lunch (rice and hot dogs), I met a man called Barlow. He showed me a fat album of off-center and out of focus photographs of distant limbs of trees. There were hundreds of them.

“At one time,” he said, in what seemed a slightly foreign accent, “I was the principal photographer of exactly this and exactly this only and after many years, they said enough. I recall two exceedingly fast nights spent in the burnt-out shell of a former paper mill, a third night in an ancient train tunnel and then a fourth night on a pedestrian bridge before being picked up by a park ranger. I was evaluated and sent here. They let me keep my portfolio.”

He lifted the fat book up and dropped it intentionally in his rice. The meaning of the gesture was slightly obscure.

“You have a very aquiline nose,” he commented. “We should walk together some time.”

I mentioned that I owned a hockey club. The man called Barlow started.

“My brother owns a hockey club. But he is a sort of monster. He eats pandas.”

“How terrible!” I lied. Because I too have eaten pandas.

Jello was brought. I began eating voraciously while Barlow simply stared. I thought for a moment that he was going to drop the fat book in his desert and I was suddenly gripped by deep despair. But the man called Barlow continued to stare. His gaze was so applied, in fact, that I was able to steal his Jello quite handily.

Finally, he said, “If you walk over the two hills, through the point of rocks and down a third hill that is quite smaller than the first two hills, you will come upon the remnants of an abandoned stone village. I would like to take some photographs there of specific tree limbs.”

Nothing was said for a moment. Finally, I offered, “So what?”

“Ah, well, if that’s the way you feel about it.”

And the man called Barlow left the table and asked an attendant to accompany him back to his room.

I waited awhile. Then, I motioned one of the servers over.

“Yeah, I never got any Jello,” I said.

They brought another one over. I ate happily.

Categories: 2012-13 Season, Royer's Madcap Experiences Tags: , ,