So I'm walking through Borders with K one afternoon a while back -- maybe two or three years ago -- and I'm about ten feet ahead of her, and I hear her call behind me: "Ma!!" She sounds not so much in fear or pain as she sounds ... confused. I turn and go back to her and she's looking down at the new books table, unable to say anything at all. She gestures, and laying there on the table I see this book:
And I am confused, too.
These two people are my great-grandparents, my father's grandparents. They are Shlaime Baer and Rasel. (No kidding.) This is the Rasel I'm named for. This picture was, at the time, hanging on the wall in my parents' apartment, and had been all of K's life. No wonder she recognized it.
What are they doing on the cover of a book?
What the hell are they doing on a cover of a book with this bizarre title?
Turns out it's a novel, and the author is somehow a distant cousin of mine whom I've never met. She found this picture among her mother's things and thought it perfectly represented her story of how, even though Jewish people have had a lot of impact on Hollywood and the movie industry, they remain outsiders looking in. Just like these two people, who, she said, were startled at the life they found in America.
Hmm, I emailed her, these two people lived and died in Europe and never came to America.
No, she replied, she's sure they did. The name of a New York City photography studio is printed on the back of her picture.
Gee, huh, I answered, well, someone must have had a copy of the picture made in New York. They were my father's grandparents (and only distant relatives of hers); I think he'd have known if they'd ever come to America.
So, surrealism. Almost as good as irony, sometimes more amusing. And generally random, as was this entry.
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I'm watching a James Bond movie - R's choice
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