Umatilla Dreaming

Every since someone I know (I can't for the lice of me remember who) told me that she used to sit and talk with Uma Thurman regularly in some park (either about kids or dogs, again I don't recall), I find myself daydreaming about meeting Uma Thurman, usually in the West Village. I even chant about it: nam-myo-ho-ren-ge-ky-u-ma-thur-man... Damnz, I wanna meet Uma Thurman! But actually, I should qualify that, cux when I thought about it, I realized I don't just want to meet her (cux really, what would I say? "OMG, you're Kill Bill!" Really think about just how stupid that sounds).

I want to run into her in a park or some preposterously unlikely place, and I want her to totally fall in love with me, in the falling-in-love-without-the-love-per-se-love kinda way. Which I guess means that I want her to just adore me, in a way kind of similar to the way I love the cat; maybe in a more doglike way, or in the way someone loves a precious, beautiful alien from another world. Yeah, kinda the last way, I guess. Anyway, I want to sit and chat with her, and have the sun hitting both of us at that golden, near-sunset angle that washes everything out, and then we go walking and describing could shapes and maybe have a who-can-piss-the-farthest contest or something, when she tells me that she's actually a citizen of Spain and wants to marry me and talk me away from all this to her oceanfront house there. Of course I go and we live there for a while, and one day I'm looking in the bathroom mirror and I turn to her and say, "Uma, something weird is happening to my hair--look how it's this yellow color here." And she says, "It happens to everyone. It's this place, you see; this life. When you live here, like this, with the sea air and the flowers and the sounds of angel dogs playing in the surf and the wind whispering through the verdant trees, your hair returns to its original innocent blond, like a golden boomerang. You see my hair? It used to be darker than chestnut, but now it's like yellow gold. That's all that's happening. Embrace it like a pillow of scented toilet tissue." And we smile and strings swell in the background.

Then one day Uma asks me, "Ed, how would you like to be a movie star, like me?" To which I reply, "I'd love it, Umula! But I don't want to put in that kind of work!" And she says: "You don't have to, my love bean! It's all digital these days. I just go in and they take a Polaroid of me and I quack a few times into a microphone, and the entire movie is built from that. So you see, we really don't even have to leave our Shangri-La, except to attend premieres." I agree to it, and then she does a musical number, something akin to Just Around the Riverbend, from the popular Disney film Pocahontas. And then one day we're sitting on the grass outside, watching the sunset drinking Yoohoos and huffing whiteout with Parker Posey, and she says to me: "Ednerbean, what we have here is more than any human being could ever want. I simply couldn't interrupt it by having another child. Tell me you won't ask me to have another child, and I'll promise you that you never have to eat imitation crabmeat again." I say, "I promise you, Umatilla." And she says, "Really?" Then I say, "As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.*" Just then Parker Posey throws up, and we laugh and laugh...

Sigh, so that's what I think about sometimes, especially on days like last weekend. Talk about beautful! So much sun--it felt like one of those long summer days that yawns into oblivion like a sinkhole. I had a great time just hanging out, until I got bored on Sunday afternoon and then was all blasé. But all things considered it was a great coupla days.

And today I got my (presumably) penultimate birthday present! Mark Baratelli got me a digital voice recorder, which I've been having fun annoying people with today, but will come in handy for recording ideas whenever they pop into my mind. Yay!

And that's the beep for now.

Beep!
Ed Shepp

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