BEACH

"Never put a hat on the bed", my mother used to say. "Its bad luck."

Is there a connection? A connection between this and that, a bed and a hat, a fire in a flat in Berlin, and stones on a beach in Hawaii?

I'll tell you the story about a friend of mine. She's a wonderful (Berlin) designer, and she spent months building a new flat for herself, and everything was perfect. Down to the tiniest detail it was all exactly as she wanted it. And when she finished she went to Hawaii on vacation. And when she came back, her new flat was on fire. Man that's a drag. Black smoke everywhere.

And her first thought was, 'what did I do to deserve this?' You see the only way she could make sense of this terrible thing, was to see it - as retribution - which meant there had to be a sin in there somewhere. But for the life of her, she couldn't think what she'd done to warrant that level of punishment.

"I don't know," I said. "Did you leave your hat on the bed?"

Then somebody told her, you don't take stones off the beach in Hawaii. It's bad luck. And she'd done that. She had the stones in her purse. So she figured - that was it. That's what caused the fire. So she packed the stones in bubble pack and mailed them back to Hawaii with directions to return them to the exact place where she had picked them up.

But still, she didn't feel any better. She remained morosely depressed until about a week later. Then one morning she woke up feeling great and she knew, she knew then and there and for sure, that the stones were back on the beach in Hawaii.

So what's the connection? Is there a connection between this and that, a bed and hat, a fire in a flat and stones on a beach in Hawaii? Is there a connection between stones and bones and beaches, and cabbages and kings? And rocks and snails and puppy dogs' tails, and do some pigs have wings? And now tht we don't use them any more do sewing machines still tryst with typewriters on operating room tables? And could it be, could it be, could it be - that after all the universe is not indifferent?