Over the bridge after threading our way across the city, onto the freeway and back and forth along the highway stopping for groceries and browsing for books and and shattering our feelings on one of the best of last year’s movies before faking myself out on at a store, stopping for takeaway and finally settling in.
I should have made it over here four months ago when the pavement opened up at that intersection around the corner, but better late than never. I hope the spot next door is doing as well as it looks, because the line was long when I poked my nose in and thought about having enough time to grab a beverage before my ride showed up.
We managed to host some friends and deploy snacks and beverages during a lovely discussion, finishing up one volume and picking out a new one after some delightful suggestions, and spent the rest of the day after they left quietly puttering around while the rain picked up outside.
The moon is still new, and some types say it’s time to contemplate starting things. But I’m still focused on the other things, because of Events This Week that have me looking at city maps, weighing time and peering into chat logs and scribbling out memories. On top of that, it might be time for another (redacted) after nearly a decade.
I don’t think about the back of my hand. It’s just always there, holding everything together, usually out of sight if I’m cupping something or counting or doing some other task. Even when I’m actually looking at it, I’m looking through it instead, my attention on whatever I’m writing, keeping the head of the pen or pencil on the paper in front of me. No rings, no tattoos, no fingerprints, just bones and veins, nails and skin and melanin, always behind everything I grip or let slip.
I did a genuine double take at beating the rain to work, then spent the rest of my day slowly shaking my head, waving as the water headed eastbound and uphill, worrying about its potential, then winnowing my way through its impact, then winding my way home and watching it hang over the city and then the hills even as the western skies teased a toning up and a timing shift.
Traffic was slow enough after this morning’s rains that I could listen to the first album of a famous trilogy years after its release, and find it surprisingly abstract and more rhythmic than expected. Now to see what reviewers found in it before firing up the other two albums during this week’s drives in.
The systems that spin and surge around us, send up vapor and serve up solidity, are the stories we tell ourselves, the only narratives that matter, and everything rests on getting them not only right but truthful in a way that matters beyond any individual attention span.
A slow and purposefully late start turned into a mild disaster outside, a slow loop back home and a stressful day trying to stay in too of things in all too familiar constraints. Not the most auspicious resumption of a familiar regimen, but still reboundable with some focus and care, I’m hoping.
Since I knew the rain was coming, I could ignore it and focus on brighter things, like the library books and the literal walk in the park and the appointment across the street. But I couldn’t ignore it, much less the people who were bound and determined to ignore it and use it at the same time.
