the seltzer scene

     This was one of her fantasies for the book she was writing, a book about Demeter and Persephone. When she realized that she was the daughter in search of her mother, that she was living the myth in reverse, she stopped writing that book.  Yet this scene still played in her mind:  The town’s bookstore, as many are, was also the town’s cultural center. It was the old days just after the humanistic movement gave birth to the new age.  There were a group of people, gay and straight, that gave themselves the name of The Naughty New Agers.  A young woman came to town.  She wanted to join them and radicalize them as well.  Her idea of being a radical included being gay. Whether she was or wasn’t who knows. Along the way, she accidentally on purpose created a golem. These things can happen. The golem fell in love with one of the new agers.  But it had also learned about jealousy from a book.  When it realized that the ‘radical’ was in love with the same person it tried to attack its creator. The radical tried a decantation but the golem didn’t come from a bottle like a genie, it was a Jewish ginni made from Jersey clay.  It remained intact and chased the radical to the street. The radical ran into a deli for safety, as many people often do. The golem came storming after her. A woman was sitting there eating her pastrami sandwich with coleslaw on top when her niece, aka ‘the radical’, entered in a flurry. [Her sister had died and her niece came to this particular town to find her aunt but, as is often the case, got lost finding herself.] As many her age do, her aunt knew about golems.  She grabbed a syphon seltzer bottle from the display case. They were there as art not seltzer, but they were filled.  She sprayed the golem.  The golem was about to strike the radical with its muddy fist when the seltzer hit. It worked quicker than knocking the one letter off the golem’s forehead that changed the word that animates golems to the word that takes its life away. The golem melted, it collapsed in on itself, and it disassembled from the form of a woman to a pudding of mud.  The moral of this story, never underestimate the power of seltzer.  It is water with attitude.

raga or the 10,000 things (6), the seltzer scene, by freda karpf

Except from riding the waves:  a tale about being home in the world by freda karpf    @thewildblues