I've been home sick for the past two days with The Crud. I've been existing on Hawaiian pizza, white cheddar Cheez-its and cough drops. This does not bode well for my wedding dress-fitting appointment with the tailor on Friday. I read through the entirety of ErfWorld (despite being of the wrong genre of nerd to appreciate many of the jokes, but I really enjoy the dwagons), I'm a few years into Questionable Content, and our gift registries at Crate & Barrel and Macy's are now full of all of the typical newlywed items. ::snicker:: It'll be nice to have a toaster, and to not run out of clean bowls in two days. I'm so bored of being cooped up in this really nice apartment that the bright spot in my day is tonight's new episode of Dirty Jobs. One can vacuum only a certain number of times in a 48-hour period before wondering if one has been slipped a couple doses of crazy pills in her enriched bran flakes.
We received our very first wedding gift this afternoon! It's a deep blue rectangular pppporcelain pppplatter from Ppportugal. And I have decided that S's pseudonym on this blog will be Caspian.
Oh, the subpoenaed thing. Remember this post? Well, that guy turned out to be a really nasty person. I was called in, along with J my co-worker and R the security guard, to pseudo-testify to the DA, some kind of pre-trial deal. I'm wondering how this event could ever go to trial. I'm guessing that the drunk guy sobered up in jail, wondered what he'd done while sloshed, and claimed that he'd been panhandling, not propositioning me. Lies!
Natty told me a story today that caught my fancy. Here it is.
After work, Natty and her husband, Pepper, often go for walks or runs at a nearby city park. The trail in this park runs parallel to a wide creek, which flows down into the valley from the mountaintops.
Last night, after Pepper arrived home, they headed over to the park for their run. Pepper had forgotten his flashlight and Natty's flashlight turned out to be wimpy, so they ended up running in the dark. It was a particularly quiet, velvet evening; no cars in the parking lot, no sounds of children playing, no other pedestrians on the trail. As they ran in the deepening gloom, Natty spied a glow up ahead in the creek that she thought was a reflection, but there were no lights around for the water to reflect. Curious, they walked over to the bank of the creek, and caught in an eddy, was a lit floating candle! They sat and pondered it together for a few silent minutes, and then continued with their run... But they got scared in a particularly pitch-black section and went back to watch the candle for awhile longer.
I think that candle trumps any meteor.
1 year ago
2 comments:
A lone floating candle in the dark... I can picture it, but I'm not sure if I would find that mysteriously creepy/ominous or mysteriously comforting, had it been me running by. It really is a simply yet beautiful thing to ponder though. A 'koan', physically manifested... ooooooh.
It's a strange and beautiful thing to be in an unknown place and find something unexpected that reminds you of light and warmth and humanity.
I was in a macabre mood today and read through Elena Filatova's photojournal that documents the dead lands of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia surrounding Chernobyl. The effect is quite the opposite of the candle... Imagine finding yourself in a place that looks familiar from a distance, but that turns out to be a hollowed shell of familiarity, resonant with the silence of 23 years of time, abandonment and gamma rays.
Which is haunting, and just as alluring.
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