3-D moments

2/19/08

Madeline finished driver's ed today. When I went to pick her up at
5:30 at the high school, there were all these disaffected looking
teens milling about, waiting to be picked up, holding green
half-sheets of paper, their tickets to freedom, the certificates
signifying that they could take the written exam.

Before you know it, you're dead.

Liam took out my trombone, brought it up from the basement, and opened
up the case in the middle of the kitchen floor. One of those arresting
3-D moments.

2/17/08

NYTimes picture of Egyptian newlyweds dancing on a bridge over the
Nile River. I like that phrase.

Yet another bit of time melancholia: Jacob Wetterling would be 30. His
disappearance has a direct impact on me today in my concerns about my
children.

Splendid Table as I stopped the car by the front door of my work this
Sunday morning. A "pancake" in Ames, Iowa makes me want to drive there
on 35.

As I walked in the door, one guard was pacing in the lobby, the other
sitting behind the desk, chin in hand, looked asleep, and Lynn Rosetta
Casper's voice filled the air.

She had just gotten done talking to someone about Pyrexes cheese--raw
sheep's milk, timeless ritual of herding sheep to and from the
mountains. Perhaps the pacing guard is waiting for those times to
return.

Six-word memoirs--Not Quite What I was Planning--Smith magazine.

Martha's on Friday to visit with Daba, an Amity from 2001-2002, who
lived half the year at Martha's house. Talking about what she knew and
what has happened since made for a melancholy sense of the passage of
time. A lot has happened.

Steve, the owner of the cafeteria at the Riverbank building where I
work, raised his prices this past week. That's probably the third time
in ten years.

A squib, a squab a day. That is what I am looking for.

--
David
www.schons.net

Comics eating

2/16/08

At Subway on West Seventh behind the Alexandria girl's JV volleyball
team--some of them, anyway and their moms.

2/13/08

Things never are what they once were, I thought as I looked at Liam at
the breakfast table, reading the comics while eating cereal.

Guys, laptops, cellphoned, and coffeeshops. What is in the air?

--
David
www.schons.net

Wow. I totally missed January.

Had a great deal of difficulty remembering what day it was. Couldn't
decide between Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday--go directly to work;
Wednesday, school bus. The decider was only one carton of milk in the
frig. The milkman comes on Tuesday.

--
David
www.schons.net

Lake Superior

Gratuitous TV everywhere. I am sitting in the breakfast room of The
Inn on Lake Superior, looking out the window at the emerging horizon
line. Wonderful, beautiful, spectacular. Marred, however, by the TV
on in the background. TVs are now flat-screen.

--
David
www.schons.net

Grackle cackle

On the bus, on the way to the Y. Grackles cackle and flock to the top
branches of a remaining elm, individuals and unit. A truck passes
below them, and they alight as a flock. High over head, toward me
diagonally across the street they come before veering back across the
intersection, over the corner apartment building, to the next nearest
big elm, in the apartment building's backyard. The cackle begins
again, birds perched in top-most, and continues as stragglers arrive.
Next, on some unobserved signal, birds flock to the power line,
telephone wires stretched along the alley. Cacophony redux.

Finally, back towards the original boulevard elm. But no--the leaders
fly over and past, some other objective luring. As the leading edge of
the group passes the tree, members of the back land in the upper
branches, and begin to chatter en masse. Those who had been the
leaders now are the stragglers called home.

Bus arrives.

At the YWCA, the spruces are silent. When I arrive earlier in the
morning, those trees are alive with the festive cackling of a flock of
birds. Perhaps also grackles, though I imagine chickadees. And now
wonder if I will ever see a flock burst out of the spruces.

Now much later in the day, I am at the Walker with Dorothea. It is a
free first Saturday. Dorothea wanted to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit.
There is a forty- five minute wait in line. I left. We'll meet up
again when she is through.

--
David
www.schons.net

Starbuck's

I just missed the bus (again). My timing from .the house is off; takes
me just a minute or so more than I think it will.

Sitting in Starbuck's. I hate ordering at Starbuck's. There is
low-in-the-sky, small, far away looking moon, with a prominent planet
nearby. Wonder if I will remember to look on my weather calendar?

--
David
www.schons.net

Gossip Girl

Last night, I watched Gossip Girl with Madeline and Liam. Obvious adults (supposedly teenagers) cavorting in a pool, scantily clad, drinking, taking other drugs, being sexually intimate. A guy hits his head and falls into the pool. 911. Now they are all in trouble because the pool is the school pool. But I must say that I was impressed with the choices and turns. People end up doing "the right things." If they had be true to reality, those kids would not have called 911.

 

A few days ago, I sent an email to livingdot.com, my internet provider. I was wondering about upgrading to MT 4.1. I know it is a total makeover from MT 3.2, and am not sure that I want to go through with it. They do have WordPress now. So I think that they are going to install both and I can experiment.

 

Dorothea is at a funeral. A nun friend of her died just before New Year's, suddenly, of a heart attack, while baking bread. The woman was 68. Sounds like the nun, Aggie, was a mentor to Dorothea when Dorothea was in her early twenties; Aggie introduced Dorothea to migrants.

 

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