High Point of a Low Commute

I was waiting to turn right at a light. In the left lane, I see someone shaking a piece of paper. I look over at the movement and see it is a little boy, shaking what looks like a map. As I am about to look away, the kid looks up and sees me.

His face LIGHTS. UP. I can now also tell that he has Down Syndrome.

He waves, still grinning. I smile, because I can’t help it, and wave back. I figure the moment is over. He starts bobbing. Turns out, he is rolling down the window. He now throws an entire arm out the window, smiling and waving. I laugh and wave back.

Admittedly, it got a bit awkward since the light was so long and I’m not sure how the kid’s driver/guardian felt about it and I didn’t want to overstep any bounds.

But it was a nice moment to carry me through.

Heart-Swell

I’ve been reading the reddit thread on “What’s a moment in which you felt absolutely content, like everything was perfect for just that one second?” It’s a much better read than most of reddit (for me, anyway; emotional healthwise, anyway).

I don’t have a very good recollection of an absolutely content moment, but a recent very good, heart-swelling moment was this past Fourth of July. And I think what we’re really after is the heart-swell, no?

On the tail end of a week visiting with old friends in warm, open old home state, me and current closest friend and travelbuddy get on a flight. No delays, and fireworks from our plane window. Silent fireworks going off as we flew back east. So good. Being able to see the commonality and the connectedness of celebrations that aren’t entirely aware of each other. So good. So so good.

Today, a good laugh about the tiny Christmas-town he had to put together for his aunt. She was so invested in it being set up, though she did not participate in the process at all, seeing as she was tending to Thanksgiving dinner prep instead. Two north poles and little street lamps that had to be held up by tiny snow drifts.

Work tomorrow, but I am going to focus on how I want to be a person who works to live, because it’s interesting. I don’t work because it is a surrogate love or a surrogate life. Only get one, can’t f*ck it up. At least not that way.

Safe Transitioning Out of Thanksgiving mode, friends!

Stop Outlier-ing My Thigh

I got on the most crowded metro train I’ve been on yet (no big feat considering how rarely I am commuting during non-off hours). No one could read the things they had brought because there was barely even room to lift your arms to hold on to the rails.

The doors keep being unable to close. We get ‘announced’ at by the conductor. I feel like I am in grade school, but with less room and less of a future. A man in our car next to the door says something or other that signals to all the riders within earshot both (i) his solidarity in our desperation and frustration and (ii) that he is not the one stopping us from leaving the platform. Finally, doors close. I let out an overly young-sounding “yay!”, but life is for the living, eh? And rush hour home is for letting your mind rest a bit.

The man standing directly (verydirectly, spacepurposelyleftout) behind me makes some small talk. Little-girl-voice “yay”s may be a signal to others that you are an okay person to stranger-talk to. This is a guess. I am normally okay with stranger-talking, but it is to awkward in a city like this, in a situation like that, to encourage real conversation.

He was carrying Gladwell’s “Outliers”, which had spent the past ten minutes stuck in my thigh, despite our best efforts. I finally scored a seat. Before he got off at his stop, there was clearly awkward, do we say ‘goodbye’ attempts at eye contact possibly but maybe not and so look a little to the side but still in the general area aaaaand you know how it goes. I think it ended with someone walking through the line of sight when it might have happened.

Anyway, I will never be able to read that book without remembering this.

The Thanksgiving Grinch

Thanksgiving is this week and I am excited. Time off after this rough start to work and ThisCity-life will be very welcome. This is a big reason. But it is not the only one.

I am going to my boyfriend’s parents’ house for Thanksgiving this week. First time meeting them, so potentially a little nervous-making, but mostly exciting. Because I am sure they are rockin’ folks, but I am also told they have bookshelves full of family photo albums. RESULT!

Granted, I cannot sit there devouring family photos instead of talking with the actual family. Neither can I go for the baby photos and leave with their albums, even if I do have a hatchback now. (That would make the best impression ever.) Even if I took the albums, though, they would still have their memories – plus a new one … of the girl who stole their memories, like a Thanksgiving Grinch.*

Let’s not forget that being grateful is also way awesome. One of my favorite activities is writing thank you notes; I am all about this holiday.

*HT@Albinistic.

The Upwardly Mobile See-Saw

That’s how life feels right now. Ups and downs and lack of real balance, but it’s like the overall trend is upward and I’m poised for good things.

This is an interesting age to be and it’s an interesting age to … be it in. =)

THIS TOO SHALL PASS [danny schmidt]

Austin boy, whose C’ville show I am sorry to have missed. Song linked below.
I’m temp unable to sit at a computer for very long, but I’ve got a non-quoting post for you in soon enough.
____
Well, things change fast
But this too shall pass
Better carve it on your forehead
Or tattoo it on your ass
Cause who can tell
When the clock strikes twelve
If today’s become tomorrow
Or if it’s all just gone to hell

My friend makes rings
She swirls and sings
She’s a mystic in the sense
That she’s still mystified by things
But scared to ask
How can nothing seem to last
Cause like a cancer in your body
It all just goes too fast

We think too big
We think our self is one whole thing
And we claim that this collection
Has a name and is a being
But deep inside
When every cell divides
It sets upon the rule that states
Self-interest is divine, and

Cancer, too
Lives by this golden rule
That you must do unto the others
As the others unto you
All for the best
Cause that’s all the life accepts
And so we kill it like a buffalo
With awe and with respect

Don’t ask God
Just holler at the the sky, cuz
She’ll tell it to you plainly
In the clouds that whisper by
And praise the shapes
And then praise the way they change
And they’ll teach you not to pray to light
Without you pray to rain

So I pray to hands
And I pray to needs
And I pray to blades of grass
To find forgiveness in the weeds
But as for health
I just never did believe
And so I never prayed myself
Except to those that prayed for me

The story goes
Or the way that I was told
There was a king that always felt too high
And then he fell too low
And so he called
All the wise men to the hall
And he begged them for a gift
To end the rises and the falls

And here’s the thing
They came back with a ring
It was simple and was plainly
Unbefitting of a king
Engraved in black, well
It had no front or back
But there were words around the band that said
Just know: This Too Shall Pass

more e.e. cummings

if there are any heavens my mother will

if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses

my father will be(deep like a rose
tall like a rose)

standing near my

(swaying over her
silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my

(suddenly in sunlight

he will bow,

& the whole garden will bow)

e.e. cummings’ “i carry your heart with me”

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

A thing can be simple and a thing can be beautiful. It doesn’t need to be different things, but it is not always the same thing. This poem proves one or the other of those.

No Accounting for Nerdery

“I promised you 25% of the profit after expenses.”

Obviously after expenses, Star Trek character – that’s how you know you’ve arrived at PROFIT.

Not too lazy to linklove

On myself. Sort of.

Commercial Wisdom

This is a two-pointer.

They say the iPhone has an app for everything. I want an app that lets me search for restaurants by location, by hours open. Seriously, there are not many places open on Sunday nights.

I can’t stop being charmed by the man in the McDonald’s non-pretentious coffee commercial green shirt who says about his glasses, “I do need mine; they’re very real.” Or maybe I’m just charmed by that line, or the delivery.

Let The Right One In.

No way I could have watched this myself, but I'm glad to have seen it.

Nightmares become dreams?

Always let in like souls.

Tap out "kiss" to me.

Gringo’s Delight

I hear tell of a restaurant in Atlanta, a Mexican restaurant with a burger on the menu called Gringo’s Delight.

I want to eat this burger, even if it is just a normal burger. Or, if you’re a 30Rocker*, “I want to go to there.”

*30Rockster? 30Rockstar? A bit too flattering, that last one.

Small Happy Bouquet

A number of small, lovely items from a few weeks ago:

1) Back to the crackling warmth, facing out over the Eastern seaboard with my friend on my right. I see our bonfire shadows on fog. It’s so thick and gray, it’s a staggered, deep, misty canvas. I flap my arms like a bird. Not a graceful bird or a majestic bird. More like a turkey or a flustered, overweight penguin. My friend sees that I’m flapping and smiling. He starts to ask what I’m doing, but before he finished his question, he’s looked up and realized. He begins to do a macro-Vogue, full- and half-arms framing a torso rather than hands around face. We’re warm and we’re flailing and we are simultaneously become shadow puppets and puppeteers.

2) Squelching boots in red mud, I assume. It’s too dark to tell and we have to leave the warm, well-lit farm house, but there’s no reason to think it’s not the same red mud we slogged up through. Friend is holding a big black umbrella against a big black night sky. New moon. I hold a plastic superhero-paneled bowl holding leftovers of probably the best chicken salad-type dish that has been brought to a potluck, but maybe Friend holds it. Somehow, I light our way with two miniature plastic flashlights  supplied by the farm house denizens, considerate. Also, pink and blue on rainbow-colored lanyards, like twinned but independent headlights as we two walk on our four feet back to the car in the dark.

3) I reach up my arms and stretch out my fingers and they touch the ceiling. I am wearing only moderate boots. I am giddy. My arms come down so I can clap in reactionary glee. It is as happy as when I saw the fried chicken for eating.

Cloth Diapers Delivered

There is a van parked outside my house with this slogan on it. I am forcibly reminded of The Luck of Ginger Coffey.

I don’t know whether to hope for better luck than his or to be thankful if I get even his modicum of luck.

I’m pretty sure I won’t be cloth diapering, though. And if I do, I’m not sure how comfortable I’d be with the outsourcing of that task.

(Edit: I think it’s this business. I don’t think the van pictured matches the van I’ve seen aside from the name, but whatever. I can’t recommend them or anything, I just know that people get curious. And their children get poopy.)