4473. MANCHING'S MISERABLE MOTHER

MANCHING'S 

MISERABLE MOTHER

Well, here we are again  -  you are standing like

a prim doll next to the flowering cherry trees in

Branch Brook Park, while all around us a hundred

crazy Asians are taking pictures of each other  - 

posing like mascots and wedding dolls beneath

the petal'd tree. Kids squeal and shout; young

girls wince in their party dresses, and a few old

men  -  seemingly tired and bent  -  are slow and

overdressed, as if already late for their own western

funerals. What a strange world this is. Outside the

pictures, the hot-dog wagons and pastry trucks ring

bells and send aromas across the field like those

broadcast advertisements one sometimes sees in

the American skies. An ice cream vendor hawks, on

foot, his collected wares from a pushcart wagon he

drags across the grass as people already line up.

Captive audiences like this need never any introductions;

all the world over, wherever they go, they seem the

vain prisoners of their own indoctrinations. A bright

light, I see, across the water, is but another camera

person setting up a tripod and lights and easel; an

already tired fake backdrop to a day when nothing

fake like that is needed at all.