Current Events

Makes me laugh.
This is kind of what White House news announcements sound like.

Darkness

I notice that people who grew up in the light, so to speak, like to play around with darkness a whole lot more than people who've lived in it. I'm guessing that they think it's not a big deal. It's just a style.

"Dumbest idea ever."

I guess it's true what the bible says, that the light came into the world but men loved darkness rather than the light. It's just a style thing, you know.

Hello Past

I can't believe that I actually fell in love here. Under a cashmere canopy that blocks out all traces of heaven. Behind Olive Garden on 196th. This place is as ugly as it gets. One lighted sign after another. Painted aluminum siding in hideous colors, separated by gangly tree branches soaked with rain and littered by cigarrette wrappers. All I smell is exhaust and the Chinese buffet across the street.

I fell in love right over there. I can see it from where I'm standing.

I wish I could have seen where I'm standing right now back then.

What was I thinking?!

I'm going walkabout today. Taking Lynnwood in by foot. I grew up here in he strictest sense of the phrase. This place is where I turned 16 and 18 and 21. I worked here, went to school right down the street from where I'm walking right now. My first kiss happened about two miles from here, in a damp house, on a velvet lounge chair.

I suppose there is something interesting about walking these roads.

Eagles

We watched eagles flying across the lake today. They're here on a stopover on their migration to New Mexico. All along the road were photographers with fancy cameras on stands, aiming their lenses up the mountainside to the frost covered branches where most of the eagles perched.

At first when we were driving and I saw the photographers, I thought they were looking at the mountains covered with snow. It was a beautiful scene, but didn't seem worthy of that level of photography.

I guess that's how a lot of us learn to judge others. From our point of view, they're wasting their time. From our point of view, they make a big deal out of something not very important. But when we finally see what they see, their decisions make a lot more sense.

Oh, that each of us would work tirelessly to see what other people see.

Don't Give Dirty Looks

My brother took me for a morning drive in his BMW around the lake road in Coeur d'Alene. He has a funny commentary dripping like this wet rain from his mouth almost all the time. The grey air is like one of those IKEA lanterns, where the light is hiding behind a wax paper, illuminating everything without seeming to have one source or another.

There are little piles of snow on the sidewalks from last week, little snow poops.

As we pulled into the alley behind my mom and brother's house, a woman and her two daughters were standing in front of his closed garage door. They didn't recognize him, so as he turned into where they were standing, rolled his window down and said, "How's it going," the woman apparently thought he was a stranger stopping to talk to her and her girls. She got a very defensive look that was probably meant to show him that she was not interested in chatting, and partly to show him that she was irritated with him pulling over to talk to her.

It would have been right around that time that she might have noticed the garage door behind his car slowly lifting up. He put the car in reverse and began to back into his parking spot in the garage. If I were her, I would have felt pretty dumb.

Oh, you live here.
Oh, you weren't stopping to talk to me, you were preparing to back into your driveway, and I was standing with my raincoated girls in front of your garage, looking for our cat that's missing because even our cat has picked up on our attitude and wanted to find a better home this Christmas.

Apparently a woman down the street lost her cat and came to knock on the door, wondering if my brother's Rottweiller might have ate him. My brother says that cougars are on the loose in the neighborhood and laughs. I'm not sure if he's being serious or not.

I arrived in the Las Vegas airport before 6pm and made my way slowly along the corridor's blue pattern carpets to the bathrooms, where I meticulously hung up my purse, laptop and heavy coat on the small metal door hook. The bathroom visit was a triumph of creativity over frustration; having to wash my hands without all of my belongings swinging full force into the soaking wet, hair-covered counter-top. Afterwards I wandered slowly along the busy terminal in search for a sandwich shop, which I found in the shape of a Subway very near to my departure gate. I paid for the sandwich and walked a few gates down to mine, where most of the gate seats were empty.

It didn't take more than a moment to spot him. Black wool jacket, newsboy wool cap, cool retro sneakers, carved Italian face with a five o'clock shadow. Probably 28-33, at least 6'2". I sat four seats down from him and imagined all the beautiful and interesting conversations you could have with a man like that.

By the time I began to eat my sandwich, however, any fantasy of two travelers thrown together by winter and fate disappeared as he gathered his book and laptop, got up, and moved down to the end of the row away from me.

I was startled by it, but didn't outwardly acknowledge any of it. After finishing my sandwich, I picked my stuff up and headed away from the gate to the bookseller to see if there were any cheap reads available. It took me easily 30 minutes to choose a book and walk back to the gate, at which time I rounded the corner to my gate and found the seating area stuffed with waiting passengers. There were no seats open.

No seats, that is, except two next to "him."

I stood there stupidly for almost a minute, scanning hopefully across the room for any break in human heads. No such luck. But part of me wanted him to see me having no other option and wanting one desperately.

So I sat down, not next to him, but in the only other seat, leaving a space between us. Even as I sat there adjusting my belongings and preparing to read under imagined scrutiny, noticing my fingernails were dark blue and dirty looking from rubbing against the indigo in my jeans, I had to admit that he was gorgeous. Even without looking I could sense it by the way his dark jeans looked out of the corner of my eye. I also noticed that I was holding my breath and beginning to sweat.

Within two minutes of settling in, he again gathered his belongings and rose out of his seat to find seating elsewhere. There being no available seats, he chose to stand over by the windows, looking out into a darkness as black as his unfriendly soul, I imagine. I searched for answers within myself: Do I know him from somewhere? In the minute possibility that we had met before, was there also some strange possibility that we had bad blood between us?

I would have remembered him. I would definitely remember knowing him.

Time passed and I looked over to see where he was and he was talking on his cell phone, pacing and talking. He caught my glance and stopped in place, and I felt caught like a petty criminal.

But inspite of myself, even caught like that, I looked away and smiled sheepishly. I don't know where he went or what he saw after that, because I decided to content myself with my book and let him be himself all by himself wherever and however he wanted.

But curiosity and women being what they are, I lifted my head and looked for him. My gaze immediately met his, as he was standing less than ten feet away from me to my right, facing me and only me, staring deliberately at me. So shocked was I that I laughed out loud, pulled my head directly back to my book and let my lips mouth the word "wow," as my eyes opened wide in amazement.

I didn't dare turn back around, for he looked serious rather than playful.

Before ten minutes had passed, the seat to my right became the only seat available and I saw his tall frame amble over and sit down next to me. I couldn't help myself at the awkwardness of it. I smiled so big that my my lips felt chapped. He didn't look at me, didn't turn even slightly, and as good as I am at feigning indifference, you can imagine how easily I showed no response one way or another.

The crew began loading for the flight from that gate to Milwaukee, at which point the seating area began to empty out completely while everyone lined up by letter and number by metal poles along the window. Finally he stood up. I didn't look up. He turned around and faced me. I didn't look up. He buttoned his beautiful wool coat. I turned the page. And because I am what women generally are, I lifted my head and looked straight up at him. And he was staring at me. Motionless. Somehow imploring me. For what? I don't know.

He must have expected that I was on his flight because I had been there for an hour and a half. But when I looked up at him in all of his ferocity, knowing full well that I neither knew him nor would ever know him, I smiled politely and dropped my head back down to my book and started back at the top of the page.

Sometimes one gets the impression that they are an integral part of a story that doesn't really involve them.

Delayed Brew

"A sack was never so full but that it would hold another grain."
Another Italian proverb.

Speaking of sacks being full, I just finished packing for Idaho. I have to be up at 7am in order to eat, drink coffee, shower, drink coffee, get ready for church, drink coffee and still have time to put my suitcase in the car to get out of the door by 8am.

One of the better inventions of the last 100 years is:

Not the automobile, although it is useful.
Not spacecraft, for that matter, because I'm talking about on a small, things that make you smile level.

Brew delay on cheap-o coffee pots.
I'm borrowing Marissa's "about-as-fancy-as-Hanes-underwear" coffee pot from the BGKY house for the winter break, and it's got this button you can hold to set a time for the coffee to start brewing {am I testing your patience? Do you all know how delayed brewing works? Yes, probably, on both counts}

So I've got delay brew on like King Kong.
7am.
Plus I set the actual coffee pot to be ahead about three minutes, so that means my coffee will start brewing at about 6:57!! Wow, that's amazing. My suitcase is stuffed with Christmas presents and clothes. But when I say clothes, I should really just say my bag is stuffed with black, v-neck tees and jeans. I must have stopped buying other colors awhile back, so that's something interesting. I realized it as I set out the clothes I intended to bring on the carpet. Why is it that the first thing I thought of was, "Wow, I guess all the pictures from the entire trip are going to look like they happened on the same day with me wearing the same clothes. Bummer." What a strange first thought to have.

Also of note: It seems to be snowing here in Nashville. I wish I was in the mood to take full stock of it or to fully appreciate, but I have a feeling that where I'm going there will be plenty of snow, maybe even too much.