Flying with You

[Leafstorm]

One evening I picked up Jiá after she’d finished teaching a Tai Chi class and we drove across town to check out a new Karaoke bar. We thought it a little strange that the place didn’t look anything like a club. It looked more like an elementary school library. Bookshelves and books lined the walls, and the room was filled with little chairs beside small round tables.

At a long table on one side of the room sat three judges: a grumpy looking old man, and handsome young man who yawned frequently, and a beautiful woman who appeared to be exerting great effort controlling her smile. Pieces of paper and boxes of crayons were spread out on the table in front of them.

We became aware that the grumpy old judge was scanning the room, and whenever he caught someone trying to ingratiate herself by making eye contact he would stare unblinking at the hapless hopeful until they averted their eyes or burst into tears. Jiá and I quickly sat at a table with two other people and kept our heads down.

The room was well-lit and there was no music playing. The only attempt to alter the atmosphere of the place was a pungent odor in the air. I spotted the source on top of a low bookcase: a small but potent chunk of Ylang-ylang incense, burning inside the wide open mouth of a bronze frog with a blue-green patina. Thick greenish smoke rolled out of the frog’s mouth. There was no bar in the room, which was too bad because the incense smoke gave me a craving for a cold San Miguel.

The people at our table and everyone else in the room were talking softly. I assumed that everyone, like Jiá and me, was planning to sing a duet, and that they were discussing their song, and were speaking quietly so that no one would hear them and steal their idea. This was good, because I’ve seen fights break out over stolen Karaoke songs, and I wasn’t in the mood for a Karaoke bar brawl, or even an elementary school library brawl.

I made a complex head motion to Jiá and she got my non-verbal message: “We’re set to sing our arrangement of Nilsson’s ‘Coconut’ song, right?”

“Roger that,” she replied with a silent nod.

I smiled knowing that few judges could resist hearing Jiá sing in a Caribbean Creole with a Mandarin accent.

I was starting to feel a little impatient because the judges were doing nothing but scrutinizing the folks sitting at the small round tables. Occasionally a judge made a note with a crayon on a piece of paper, and then another judge leaned over to see what they had written or drawn. At one point the bored young judge borrowed a Periwinkle from the beautiful smiling judge, but when he went for her Wild Strawberry she slapped him and a little spat ensued. Things settled down when the grumpy old judge crumpled up both of their pieces of paper and threw them at the heads of the nearest contestants.

Finally one of the judges spoke.

“Anyone want to sing something?” asked the bored young man.

“Or. . .” the grumpy old judge added quickly.

Everyone in the room looked at their partner and then at the judges; but no one spoke. It became obvious to me what was happening: we were all being intimidated by the “Or. . .” The judges wanted to make a short night of it, didn’t really want to listen to amateurs slaughter beautiful songs, and so they were playing psychological games with us to keep us quiet and in our seats. It seemed to be working.

Finally, a woman raised her hand.

“What!” barked the beautiful smiling judge.

“Excuse me,” said the woman. “We, the four of us, would like to perform a Karaoke contra dance. We’d like to do it to a reel called ‘Danish Misfortune’. If you don’t have it we brought our own CD and – ”

“Impossible!” snapped the smiling woman.

“No way!” said the old man.

“Phooph!” said the young man with a flick of his hand.

I leaned over and whispered to Jiá.

“I don’t see how they could have done it anyway. Karaoke dancing would be like acting in a reality show, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” said Jiá, “or like a ventriloquist mime.”

“Or like lip-synched Kung Fu.”

“Which is dangerous.”

“Mm. But they’re brave to try, eh?”

“Anyone else?” snarled the grumpy old judge.

“But . . .” the woman added quickly, with a bit of a smirk at the edge of her smile.

Again we were all afraid of a mere conjunction. It annoyed me to think that these three people, with their arbitrary power, bad hair, and silly V-neck sweaters, could bully us into abject silence. Yet I too now felt mild terror at the thought of standing up and singing “Brudda bought a coconut he bought it for a dime. Sista had annuda one she paid it for da lime.”

“We’d like to sing a song,” said a voice from the rear of the room. All heads turned and all eyes focused on two geese, a male and a female, as they waddled deliberately up to the front of the room. I marveled at how the male goose, with his head turned to one side, was able to stare down the grumpy judge until the old man lost courage and began to color vigorously on the young man’s back with a black crayon.

The young man, frozen in mid-yawn, ignored the old judge. The beautiful woman’s effort to master her smile made her face twitch and her ears flare out like raised wing spoilers during an emergency landing.
Everyone held their breath, until finally the grumpy old judge signaled with a wiggle of his black crayon that the goose couple could proceed.

The male goose waddled over to the Karaoke laptop and tapped a few keys on the keyboard. As violins started to play the two geese took up mikes and the male began to sing a love ballad:

Come bring me your softness
Comfort me through all this madness
Woman, don't you know, with you I'm born again

Then the female goose sang, gazing into the eyes of her mate:

Come give me your sweetness
Now there's you, there is no weakness
Lying safe within your arms, I'm born again

Their voices were breathtakingly beautiful. I noticed that the smiling judge’s ears and face relaxed, the young man’s mouth closed, and the old man put down his crayon and gazed at his blackened fingers. The orchestra music swelled and changed key. The geese, their eyes fixed on one another, wove their lovely voices into a musical pattern of love:

I was half, not whole
In flight with none
Reaching through this world
In need of one

Come show me your kindness
In your arms I know I'll find this
Woman, don't you know, with you I'm born again
Flying safe with you I'm born again

Come bring me your softness
Comfort me through all this madness
Woman, don't you know, with you I'm born again

Come give me your sweetness
Now there's you, there is no weakness
Lying safe within your arms, I'm born again
Woman, don't you know, with you I'm born again

I was half, not whole
In flight with none
Reaching through this world
In need of one

Come show me your kindness
In your arms I know I'll find this
Woman, don't you know, with you I'm born again
Flying safe with you I'm born . . . again

The music faded, the geese put down their mikes and headed back to their table. I glanced around the room and saw nothing but moist eyes and grins of joy. Jiá was crying, and I felt a lump in my throat as I commenced the applause. Now everyone clapped and we all stood and shouted “Bravo!” and “Thank you!” as the pair of geese waddled back to their chairs. They turned their heads this way and that, and made modest little honks of acknowledgement.

The applause faded and all eyes turned back to the table of judges. The beautiful woman, released from the bonds of her smile, was holding and comforting the old man, who was weeping softly. The handsome young man yawned, but in a more sympathetic way than before. He then made a thumbs-up sign. The beautiful woman did the same.

The old man, having experienced a profound catharsis that had purged him of grumpiness for the rest of his life, looked up, glanced around the room at us all, and gave a final thumbs-up. Applause and huzzas again filled the room.


Out on the street Jiá turned to me as I opened the car door.

“We. . .” she said.

“I. . .” I started.

In the seconds that passed Jiá and I thought about miscarried marriages, failures and failings – burdens of baggage and empty cups of courage that we assumed would prevent us from ever getting off the ground. I finally broke the silence.

“We’re not geese.”

I dropped her off at her apartment and headed home to mine. On the way I spotted a pair of geese in the night sky, flying home.