All Creatures Great and Max

I note it's a Saturday, like any other, except, today, there's an edge.

Wife's out of town at a convention. I need to find an urn for Max.

I head downtown to gain my bearings.

First stop, the library, once an elementary school, still echoing the sounds of a century of use. An old friend who I haven't seen for 34 years, Persig, lays on a dusty shelf, while his proteges, the courtyard hoboes, type away on laptops.

To the East, the Running Buffalo Trading Company levitates over Main Street - feathers, flutes and drums for sale. A clay pot offered by the proprietress as Max's eternal home isn't right for the one who burrowed under any close blanket.

Farther east, urns notwithstanding, Riverby Books beckons. A cry through the open door asks "hey, where've you've been? You've got no credit, bring us more books!"

Who could resist? (And so I complied, a week later, earning $24 in credit, immediately gambled away on the Fitzgerald Odyssey, complimenting the Classic Comics Illustrated Iliad, issues 1-8, minus 6, I've been slowly devouring for months.)

The demure cashier laughs charmingly when she writes on the receipt, "The Heavenly City of the 18th Century Philosophers," saying goodbye in her own way to a obscure tome she instinctively knows by the look of the buyer has found a place at last on shelves holding dozens of other oddities.

Flagging, I'm at, coincidentally only, The Blarney Stone, where promises of Guinness easily tempt tiring passers-by. Swapping horror-builder stories with the bartender: him 4, us 4, on the same job; his, months not weeks, us, 6 weeks going on 4 months with no end in sight; a Waitsian crustacean reads attempted assassination stories from the paper aloud; an unemployed new father swears he'll tend bar but never bus tables - this might as well be Mulligans, Temple Bar, Dublin, and I, a real writer, harvesting essay fodder.

Truding West, a bit soggy in mind now, and avoiding, at first, as too obvious, Dog Krazy. Now, it's my last best hope.

Even at the specialists, the urn I'm seeking isn't easily found, so I avail myself of expert assistance, finding with her help: a silver treat jar embossed by a paw print (Max's signature greeting on birthday cards he mailed to family); a stiff standing bag painted with scenes of Min-Pins cavorting at the seashore (on his final, only, visit to the beach, Max stood stoically, gazing far into the distance, steadfastly sinking in the wet sand); and a story, offered for free, of how she was mis-diagnosed with cancer, nearly took chemo which would have killed her instantly, but just in the nick of time discovered it was only a skin disease so she lost 300 pounds and sold her convertible.

With the end-table shrine erected, the lawn mowed, and few clothes washed, I was unusually restless.

Finding myself at Borders, drinking dark coffee, listening to a French chanteuse singing "I'll be Seeing You," scribbling furiously away at notes which I might or might not be able to decipher in the morning, Persig's Zen Classical/Romantic dichotomy occurs in that while most of us find comfort on the Christmas village Main Street, there's another cross-street, where complimentarily, the jazzbeat of a cool Borders evening allows time for the contemplation of small town sentimentalities, propelling their essence onto wilder rides of rhythmic mathematical expression.

The Buddha is in both.

I miss Max.