puzzle pieces

Coddleston, coddleston, coddleston pie. A fish can’t whistle and neither can I. Ask me a riddle and I’ll reply coddleston, coddleston, coddleston pie.

I was sitting in a hotel in San Blas with Adam. Adam had come along on the trip at the request of his girlfriend Amara, only Adam and Amara broke up two weeks before and now she was seeing Brad. Adam didn’t have the decency to bow out or sell his ticket and came along anyway. Brad and Amara had the sense to get a room in a hotel on the other side of the plaza and, in a cost saving move, I had offered to share a room with Adam, which meant I got to watch his slow mental deterioration over the course of the two week holiday as he watched his ex-girlfriend frolic in the hot Mexican sand with another man. It was something straight out of a Somerset Maugham novel.

“Two monks were traveling together,” Adam continued. “Devout and holy men, they had been together for twenty years sharing life together though neither had ever spoken a word. One day they came to an impassible river. With neither boat nor bridge in sight the first monk turned to walk back they way they came when the second held out his had. Without a word he gingerly stepped into the water. Miraculously the water bore his weight and first one foot and then the other he proceeded to walk across the river. When he had reached the far side he turned and beckoned his friend to follow. The first monk stared incredulously at the second and then shouted “If I had known you were such a charlatan I would never have walked with you” turned and walked back up the dusty road.”

Adam smiled smugly at me.
“What?” I asked.
“You don’t get it do you?”
“No” I said, “I don’t”
“It’s about the abuse of power.”
I looked at him for a minute trying to decide whether to say something or not. Adam was enjoying one of the few confident moments he had enjoyed all week. I looked at his haughty smile. It was tiresome. Finally I shrugged and said “Oh that part I got.” I paused as he looked up at me with disbelief “but if the second monk was so much better why did he break his vow of silence?”

Coddleston, coddleston, coddleston pie. A fly can’t bird but a bird can fly. Ask me a riddle and I’ll reply coddleston, coddleston, coddleston pie.

Standing in my makeshift studio in the garage I am surrounded by canvas that refuses to cooperate. My eye lands on a piece I was working on yesterday “That is a dark purple” I think to myself, “I wonder what it would look like with white?” I reach down and grab the corners and lift it towards the easel. I feel something prickling on my hand as I lower the canvas the prickling moves. It is a roach. I drop the canvas and shake my hand. The bug drops to the floor and I stomp on it. “Very un-Buddha-like” I think as I kick the bug and send it skidding only to come to a rest up side down beside the trashcan. I gather brush and paint and turn towards the canvas, casting one long sideways glance back to the dead roach. It is missing. “A people should know when they are defeated” I think.

Coddleston, coddleston, coddleston pie. Why does chicken? I dont know why. Ask me a riddle and I’ll reply coddleston, coddleston, coddleston pie.

G’s shrieks emanates from the bathroom. Moments later she emerges and calmly asks “Today is the last day of swim lessons?”
“Yes.”
“And afterwards we go to Braum’s” she asks, again, calmly
“Yes”
“Why did you scream in the bathroom?” asks her sister.
G. stares at her sister with disbelief.