Jewelry Stash in Hollowed Out Book
Like many of the stories in this section, the surprise isn't in the finding of the treasure, it's in the bookseller "Doing the right thing" and returning the jewelry to it's "rightful" owner.
Think, then, of how often this occurs (and everyone knows the hollowed out book trick); and yet how seldom we hear about it. This is probably up there with the "reported" treasures found by builders when doing renovations on homes (practically nonexistent, yet rest assured there's a large underground traffic in antiquities and art recovered from properties where the owner is never made aware of it's existence).
Link: http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/143459/jewellery-stash-first-secondhand-book-seller
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- Category: Found
The Character Waiter
We've got dinner theater tickets and so I take the boy. It's one of those musical productions where every waiter has a part and between courses gets up on stage. This evening's production is a "Rock and Roll" themed event, so there's Madonna, Boy George, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, the Beatles, there's dozens of roles and no matter who you are you'll have a turn on stage.
We're watching this and I think I recognize someone. Someone I went to elementary school with, one of the 'luminaries', as it were, a smart kid, I grew up in a small town, there weren't many 'smart' kids and so I marked him from the crowd, everyone did, as being destined for great things.
Now I think I recognize him because in the wee hours one evening a couple of years ago I googled his name, curious as to what had become of him. and had found that he was playing in a touring show playing at this theater, and I had meant to drop around and say "hi" but circumstances didn't permit.
So he's serving, he brings me my wine, he's a big "AC-DC" type wig on his head but there's something about the face - the accent, the voice is all wrong, not what I remember at all, but the height - that would be about right, and the face...
The boy has dropped his spoon, character waiter picks it up, talks about spoons falling from the ceiling, this must be the worse job in the world - not really "serving", you're more an "entertainer", it's somehow as if you couldn't get a job as a waiter or as an actor and so ended up being the character waiter.
I'm filled with sympathy for him, ridiculous given my own situation of being a waiter-slash-unemployed, and he's made eye contact with me a few times and I'm not sure if he's recognized me....
I confront the waitress - she breaks character for a moment to confirm my suspicions, the boy is watching. He's just applied for the performing arts program and I tell him this could well end up being his career. He's not too enthralled with my vote of confidence.
The show goes on and eventually he drops by, the character waiter, and we talk. How long has it been? About 30 years. In fact, almost exactly 30 years, and you realize how old we're getting. And we talk briefly, catch up, he's now in "Arts and Entertainment" and I'm - well, I'm overwhelmed with compassion (and this only because there's an inability to recognize or acknowledge my own predicament...). He gives me his number, we'll go for coffee and catch up another time, he's working now, and so he walks away between the tables talking loudly to himself so that everyone can hear:
"It's OK to look at me, I'm famous...."
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- Category: People
Motorways and Pyramids
(3 dreams in one night, and a heap of illegible notes on the nightstand in the morning)
I'm trying to get out a big city - ish, driving, but the roads circle and loop about mountains and I'm forever coming back to where I started from. I'm at the top of a mountain, it's night time, or close enough, the sun is setting in the mountains behind me and in front of me are the Great Pyramids. They're huge, like mountains themselves, ruined, were it not for the obviously opened tombs on the tops of them, and the obvious "Pyramidal" shape of them you might not recognize them. They're lit in that orange glow of sunset, pink, almost as if they're on fire. My mountain, the one I'm on, it's cast into shadow and in the shadows there glows the phosphorescence of rattlesnakes, Gila monsters, coyotes, and there are vendors trying to lure you forward with the promise of tacky souvenirs but I know better and go back to the car ...
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- Category: Dreams
Trilobites in Banff
I've finally found them, knew they were here all along, just not exactly where.
There's a small cave under the highway - somewhere near Banff, it's not so much a cave as a rock overhang, and the rocks that have fallen from the top have piled on the bottom and make a sort of lip, and I'm hiking into it when I notice that the ceiling of the overhang is nothing but trilobites. Giant trilobites, like the impression of horseshoes in the limestone, hundreds of them, some are huge, several feet long, others are smaller. And everywhere, neatly piled, are the trilobites chipped from the rock that tourists took home with them, then felt guilty about taking and returned later. Some have been polished and look quite nice, I'm excited about this discovery, am looking through the countless trilobites when I hear a warden coming...
I crawl back further into the cave and crouch down behind a pile of rocks...There is no law against being here, but my intent is transparent...
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- Category: Dreams
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