Brain robbed (*)

Twice this week, pounding about the office on this errand or that, I've had a few moments to think about things I had been thinking about.

Pounding about is actually a good thing, because it frees you from your desk and the immediate task at hand. That's why I like to skip email and voicemail and get up, pound about and talk to people.

The problem is, the pounding-about part is so brief, that whatever brilliant thoughts my brain entertains disappear even before I reach my destination, i.e. the person I was pounding about to see.

But never fear, brilliant thoughts.

You are mine.

And here is where (*) comes in.

Next time I am pounding about, brain will return you to me.

However briefly.

Breaking Away

A long time ago, when I was a very young woman and my husband a very young man, we went to a movie called "Breaking Away." It is about four friends in an Indiana college town. The protagonist is a cyclist who has fallen in love with Italian cycling, and there they are, in his town. He learns rudimentary Italian and tries to befriend them, but they have no interest. Slowly he learns this is not a clique worth belonging to.

I had a similar experience in high school, my senior year. Somehow I fell marginally in with a group totally outside my circle. I really wanted to belong. But they had their own web of relationships that I knew nothing about. I got stuck far on the periphery of that web, ignored, while the spiders battled it out in the middle.

Now I am a grown-up, but I am still learning about trying to fit in where I don't belong. I keep trying to be good at skills that I admire and keep coming up short. I keep following the stories of people successful at skills that I admire and come away only with envy and frustration.

Can't do it any more. No more competing. No more dreaming. No more fantasizing about grand success where I have no chance. I don't have room for envy and frustration in my life.

I'm breaking away from the clique of unreachable aspirations.

I don't need you.

Good-bye.

The reason being

Thursday a.m.: Water main break Downtown so we skip the traffic and park on the South Side at Station Square.

Fine.

Thursday p.m.: I come home to something that sounds like a running toilet.

No.

It's the patio faucet, apparently burst from the 10 degree temperatures. And from someone who forgot to shut off the outside water valve in October.

That would be me.

Some people would marvel at the coincidence, proclaiming "Everything Happens for a Reason!"

I picture the 3 fates of mythology, spinning out lives. There's no reason for anything, things just happen. My pipe burst because of bad plumbing, cold weather and fallible memory.

The Fates do not give a rat's ass.

And they do not care about reason.

At  all.

Lives

One of my favorite publications is the New York Times' annual "The Lives They Lived" edition.
It has really evolved from its origins some 10 years or-so ago; now recounting some lives in graphic novel format, others in simple illustrations, and even including the unfamous: this year's examples being the community of Paradise Park, N.J., decimated by Hurricane Sandy, and the sad tale of Najiba, an Afghani woman martyred by backward Afghan men.
I came away from this year's issue, partly devoured early on Sunday morning when I could not sleep, with these keepers: (All quoted from the Times.)
From Susan Jeffers: "We live in a society that teaches us to grasp for control, total control of everything. But perhaps the grasping only makes things worse." Susan wrote "Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway" and "Embracing Uncertainty."
From Erica Kennedy: "What does having it all mean? Does it mean having some fancy title, executive perks, making a lot of money, having your book on the New York Times best-seller list? Or does it mean waking up and looking forward to your day, whatever you make of it?" Erica  was an author who wrote "Bling" and "Feminista."
From Kitty Wells: "Sometimes maximum impact requires minimum drama." Kitty was a country music singer who wrote "It wasn't God who made honky tonk angels."
One of the bittersweet emotions that wells up upon reading the obituaries of strangers is the great sadness of not having known them, or known of them. Only now that they are gone do I know anything about Susan, Erica, Kitty, Najiba, Paradise Park and the people who made it so.
Thank you for your stories. And for your lives.
Love, Katy

The Snowflake Confluence

Just as I decide, two days before the winter solstice, to abandon my unreliable 36 Banksville bus -- which comes in the evening rarely on time, usually 20 minutes late, occasionally early; in sum total, totally unreliable -- and decide to cast my fate to the slightly more reliable light rail line, entailing a 1.3 mile walk home at the end of the ride, but Christ, at least the schedule is somewhat more dependable, because the train is on a track, so things have to keep moving -- it starts to snow.

And that's fine, because this was a snippy snow, wet and sharp, staying around only long enough to make night sidewalks icy. But does it have to pelt my face no matter which direction I turn? Does the wind shift the fricking flakes to torment me as I turn from main road to sidewalk? Well of course it does. It's dark. I'm walking home, into the teeth of the storm.

It's just that I can't remember the last time I stood and looked up into the sky and watched the snowflakes fall from under the constellations. Just quiet and peaceful.

Now I lay me down to sleep

I'm not familiar with the Book of Common Prayer, except to know that it is part of the Anglican and Episcopal liturgy.
Whatever the book contains, the title seems to me extraordinarily comforting; a reminder of the humbleness of daily life, no matter what its trappings.
Today, I ran errands that had me in the midst of holiday crowds. Some people were pleasant, some were pushy and I wondered, amidst the bustle, what we would all be like if our immediate world suddenly descended to chaos. Would any of us be true to our public personas?
And then I thought, the lucky ones never have to know the answer to that question.
Are they lucky? Or just blind longer than others?
I wish it was not a question that has to be asked.

November oddities

The weather is strange, too warm for the brief days. It should be really cold, so that it feels good to be snuggles up indoors in the early dark.
Instead, we sit outside in the dusk, on a bare patio, the golds and silvers of sunset making pretty outlines of bare trees.
The dog is  puzzled, because, though it's warm, her summer sleeping spot in the back yard is in shade, not sun. So we put a blanket down for her next to our chairs, which normally would be in storage by now, and then she's fine.

Looking west on Mayfair, late fall.

The nice thing about the warm weather is that Twist & I can still go to the park. Normally by about now, our walks stick strictly to the street and sidewalks, because fall rains and snow make the paths in the park a little dodgy.
So Saturday at dusk, we wandered down. As we ambled along, I caught sight of a slow moving person in white, a black dog bounding ahead. After a bit our paths crossed and it turns out the person in white was my old pottery teacher.
We exchanged news and she told me she was still teaching. I had quit lessons, in the early 90s, after four or five years, because I didn't feel I was making any progress. And why would I have? Throwing pots one day a week is like practicing piano one day a week.
I just broke one of my favorite pots from those days and I mentioned that to her. Of course, she said, the ones we love are always the ones we break.
I think it's time for me to throw pots again.  I'll probably never be any good at it, but stranger things have happened.