Writing on an airplane is HUGELY productive. An expensive habit. Is it the boredom? Disinterest in the in-flight movie, especially compared to the delights of parsing the safety video? Sustained physical discomfort resulting in yoga-ish inward journeys? Mid-conscious realization that flight in a huge metal tube at lethally cold low-pressure altitudes is an hours-long defiance of the designs of Nature, and Nature ALWAYS wins?
In praise of long conversations.
Live conversations are good. Telephones are good. Not the smartphone part, with the data plans and the web surfing. Talkin’ ’bout the phone itself, verbal exchange function. One voice, another voice. Old school.
Texting can be a quick exchange of wit. Or a way of shooing away some nuisance you’d rather not truly engage. This aversion can be a tacit agreement.
Social networks are SORT of communication, more like flash-posing.
User: “Here’s a polished tableau, ponderously composed, now displayed for your appraisal.” [POST] “What do you think, world?”
World (consisting of myriad sub-Users): “Ah! Good pose. Will mark it. Then will respond with a counter-pose.” [POST] “Hey, initial User and fellow sub-Users, will you validate my existence by marking my selected façade?” [Eyes half-kept fixed on notification alerts]
Email burnout: I am days behind messages friends sent to my home account. Smartphone trills during the day with home email notices, so I’m aware of them. Once home it’s tough to find the will to start up email after obediently tending to it all day. Even when I care about my friends in the messages (and I always do). Even when I know they are waiting for my response and wondering where the hell I am.
But I like talking on the telephone. I especially like talking in person. If someone calls to propose some fun, or ask a question, I answer and bound into action immediately.
I don’t go out very often. “Ah!” I hear you thinking (you should turn the mic off on your computer, with all that loud-thought-stuff going on), “Maybe you should return home email messages more promptly, thus faciliate more social opportunities!”
Thanks for the advice. Imagine me making a “Meh” face.
This trait precedes interwebs.
My high school girlfriend and I had long phone conversations. 3 hours. A few 8 hours. Maybe a 10 hour in there. Wake up in the morning, phone handset pressed against face. Rat-a-tat sharing and laughs, then as things hit a downward cycle (at many points also hurtling back upward – we were like the economy) there were loaded silences. I once measured a 20 minute silence.
— A pause to reflect on how people in their late teens may not be able to speak with 100% certitude of inextricable metaphysical bonds and destiny. Even when meant really, REALLY hard. —
Okay. Back now.
As awful as they were (and laughable now), the loaded silences had charm. There was drama, but wouldn’t have been so loaded if there weren’t a deep trust and vulnerability. Rawness. In-the-moment. With voices. Interrupting each other when urgent. Human to human.
When stakes are low in phone conversations (or in person) a sweet span is that groggy zone where you don’t care if the next thing expressed would be intelligible in a transcript. The WHAT talked about may fade. What DOES last is that I-don’t-give-a-shit what I say next, because there’s trust and belief the other person is worth listening to. Voices (and faces) getting dumb and funny because there’s no worry about sounding smart. Dopey, slapdash, no typing needed.
Poses online can be a tedious pageant affirmation of existence/territory. Flash and counter-flash. Admire my plumage. I’ll glance at yours.
Phone calls and conversations reach deeper primate nature. Assurance you merit receiving shared things, worth being heard, and trusted with words and moments not planned.
Virtual personal trainers: you aren’t the boss of me! (But I crave your approval)
My Wii avatar, nomenclature: “Mii”. Note the smirk.I’ve been using two fitness programs on the Nintendo Wii: Wii Fit (for about two years) and EA Sports Active (once two days ago).
Wii Fit was ready to go. No extra stuff to attach to your person. No mess. Bouncy, soft. Yoga a big component. But a lot of the yoga stuff is weird. You must maintain balance as measured onscreen by a red dot centered as you move and hold positions. Then you are given a star rating. Hardly a contemplative or simplifying journey inward based on modulated breathing. More like competitive yoga, a vogue-off in slow motion with softer music.
Well, hell-lo, there. Why, yes, I did splash on a little Paco Raban.There’s a choice between having a female or male trainer talk you through the strength and yoga exercises. I went with a lady trainer. I DO NOT perform and stretch and moan and strive for the approval of dudes. No way, José. Eros is a fitness motivator. I don’t want to rise from embarrassing positions to be invited by a sausage fest on my television. Even if virtual, I feel better taking orders from a lady.
Dude trainer = Yelling about issues “Is that good enough for ya, Pop? Is it good enough for ya?” or competing for the attention of the female trainer lurking in the background, stored somewhere in the machine. “Hey, virtual guy. Look at MY plumage indicating willingness to mate. Behold and tremble at MY MIGHTY WINGSPAN! I shall DESTROY YOU! (Can you see this dominance display, are you awed by it, yon virtual female trainer?)”
All was well for a while. Okay, I ignored Wii Fit for more than six months. But when I got back to it, Wii Fit was all like: “Hey. You okay? Oh, you weigh the same. Welcome back, prodigal sack of meat.” and I got back to hula-hooping and step aerobics and doing yoga EXACTLY WITHIN THE LINES every once in a while. I visit a gym about twice a week, and go on walks and occasional bike rides. So, somewhere in there, I moved through three dimensional space beyond lifting fingers and arms around a laptop.
About a year and a half ago, my kids gifted me with EA Sports Active for the Wii. It came with a crazy pair of devices requiring assembly that was more than I wanted to deal with so I shelved it until two days ago. Here’s the ensemble:
That gray thing is not a face mask or a jock strap but a leg strap for the right leg to hold the Nintendo nunchuck controller to monitor your leg movements. The orange ribbon is a resistance band, a contraption that always looked pathetic when seen in fitness infomercials or footage of the elderly or infirm wanting just a TOUCH more challenge than gravity, but not any actual WEIGHTS, fer Pete’s sake.
Who was/is Pete, and why are we concerned with his sake?
You will find my enthusiasm, fitness, and bird-like face compelling.See the lady on the box? She’s the female trainer and in the exercis demo videos. What of the male trainer? I saw him to only reject him in the initial setup for my profile and options, and he popped up in a video showing how two people could do the same exercise in a chummy way, and at the end he nudges the lady trainer away. “Hey, bub, don’t be such a DICK to my new virtual friend here. And RESPECT MY MIGHTY WINGSPAN! BEHOLD MY POWER AND DESPAIR!”
So, chivalry increased the bond I felt with this lady trainer, a real live person in video footage. I had defended her honor, and she would reward me by persuading me to do goofy things like squats back and forth and pretending arm curls with a resistance band resulted in anything at all and, gods help me, her voice (or the voice of another female) made me walk in place, jog in place, then do high back kicks so my heels would nearly touch the rear of my thighs or butt.
We hardly knew each other, yet there she was already TASKING ME to abandon dignity. The nerve! Still, she’s cute, seems nice, and has a job (getting me to do stuff), so history is littered with less dignified relationships.
Jogging in place – there’s no way to make that cool. In the early 80s my Mom had a mini-trampoline that was used to jog in place while watching television. She gave it a go for a while. Maybe she got bored with it. Using it looked like tantrum calisthenics. Stomp in place a good 20-30 minutes so your legs would be READY to outlast anyone not giving you that thing you wanted. “Holy moley. That mom/dad has been hopping up and down, pace undiminished, for 20 minutes. We’d better cave in and exchange that oscillating fan without the receipt.”
The mini-trampoline WAS excellent for bouncing action figures and toy cars off of. Not sure what the statute of limitations is on getting in trouble, so let me say thay my brother and I knew some people who discovered that…
Bob Greene, Oprah’s fitness guru sez: “Hey, let’s rap while sitting on giant blue balls.”EA Sports Active features videos by Oprah’s fitness expert Bob Greene. He’s been on her show jillions of times (I’ve heard), co-written books with her (I’ve seen). One of the few Oprah shows I’ve seen had her in a restaurant after she’d dropped a lot of weight lecturing/scolding her staff on how they should order a salad that met specific criteria she knew all about, or they utterly hated themselves and were doomed to early death. Have you seen Oprah the last few years? Yeah, I skirted by any Bob Greene videos.
Went through a solid hour of activity from EA Sports Active. It was VERY lunge and squat happy. I did it obediently. Scoffed “This is EASY. People DO this for exercise and think it makes a difference?” Lady voice complimented me on pacing and form.
Tried to pick a suitable customized avatar. I think all the models make you look about 22 years old. Below is the closest I could get:
Nudge that body type thing to the left = too skinny. Tried to be realistic about hairline, color, height, all that stuff. THIS virtual dude is ready to inline skate (one of the activities I did in this hour), in real life? Not so much. Clothing options were all more current and hip than Real Life me, too. Bet this virtual me probably goes to cooler concerts all the time, too.
My avatar, one notch toward chubby. TOO chubby (I hope), but note the arms are still JACKED no matter what the body type selection.Spouse got home from her trip to the gym. I packed up shop. Thought I would probably give this EA Sports Active thing another try down the road. Unstrapped the contraption from my leg. Folded up the resistance band. Started up the morning.
Next day, legs were really, really stiff. Those squats and lunges kicked my ass (or my heels hitting my ass literally kicked my ass). The sort of good muscle soreness that indicates good exercise. Though sitting on the toilet puts pressure on my tenderized haunches and make the pain receptors say: “Hey, hey! What the heck? Ow!”
After I recuperate, I’ll use the program again. I want to show that lady trainer that I can do powerful side kicks AND left and right crosses consistently and knock the hell out of that pretend punching bag. She will nod or give a compliment. I shall blush slightly then stand a little prouder the rest of the day hoping I closed the blinds to all the windows so the neighbors couldn’t see.
Update on 2011-07-23 18:02 by Derek Denton
Did two 25 minute workout rounds with the kids in the living room watching, occasionally making comments (mostly quiet), and keeping the dog out of the way. Nice to know we’re making future memories for them to comment on my behavior some day. Paying it forward…
Standing at the “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jatte”
Une anecdote de Un dimanche après-midi à l’Ile de la Grande Jatte
Skritch skritch go my Keen sandals on the wooden floor. Painting hung from the ceiling to thigh level. If I were levitated the painting would still exceed me in both height and width. Disappointing it does not rest on the floor. We are meant to regard then walk into it. Now it would take a lean over the sill and a slide on the belly or a scissors kick to get within. Like spotting a pie in a window, then noting more pies worth sampling indoors.
Except for the glass pane. Disappointing, careful textured work now pressed behind it (or is it suspended above the paint?). Fear of a maniac somewhere, a testimony to the power of art by violating it with a slash and a chant or prayer for glory to be known as the maniac who…
To be honest, I’m not incapable of that, if ever riled. Double negative. A continental affectation. I am capable. A SERIOUSLY crabby mood, though. Until then, I shake my head at such people. Alas, ye erratic apes.
Shuffle my feet up to the calf-level stanchion wire.
Now for the inevitable tension between me and the museum docents/staff – how close will they let me get? Shall I squint and feign nearsightedness? No staff in the room. Security monitors scrutinized now, or do the cameras record for future review after the alleged deed? How close could I get before security is summoned, or would an amplified voice intervene first? “Sir! Back from the painting, please!” Me? Sir? The room turns and throws darts of disdain.
Light is diffuse enough to minimize the glare, yet. Damn it. I want to near my eyes and nose and mouth to see if the little dots taste like candy. Pointilistic dapples of tinted sugar, right?
How if I take off my sandals, and in my socks hop atop the wire with an initial wobble then with yoga breathing attain balance. Would those little metal posts groan toward my poised but 191 pounds of heft as I scan around and then peer deeper, hips jutting backward to balance?
Sod it, I’ll only be here once. The wire is a guideline. I shuffle my feet so my toes transgress the imaginary forcefield. Such daring, may be only the 12th or 50th asshole to congratulate himself for such courage today. Or in the last hour. It’s a museum. The artistic mind, even manqué minds, tend toward criminal pathologies. And as anyone who has had a phone or wallet or bike stolen or home broken into, most criminals like aesthetes are pedestrian.
Closer in. My sense of people standing behind me waiting for their chance at unmolested regard, or to take their ironic/irreverent/”Oh, YOU!” photo trying to pose within Seurat’s work, wanes. Foiling those who would extend the sight to a tableau vivante may be why the painting is raised. Eyes go out of focus then pull into sharpness By the man’s hand. As he was. As he wanted people generations later to see, my turn to obey his orders.
Feet standing upon the ooze of the grass on that day. Not closely cut, but the impression of cropped solidity by piling the blips of accumulated colors just so. Point your toes in, your feet drawn into the muck up to your ankles.
Nods to things in motion, but this painting is not alive. It is not a snapshot of a moment. It is a series of comments. Frozen impressions. Not drawn in to walk around each object. Frolicsome dog, garbage curious dog, distant frolicsome dog, playful child, tense arced back monkey all inserted to connote motion but Georges knew better, knew it was a dodge. We know better. Each point carefully applied. To bring in motion as crass and clumsy as a diorama of posed, pinned butterflies.
Dots of pods and seeds, beside flecks of dashed chaff, over golden grains. There is a sound of rustling waves of grass. Not totally inert here.
Micro splotches of milky pastel candies stacked on each other like leaves fallen sideways adhering to the canvas. Can hear the water. Smell the water. Was the grass freshly cut? Septic problems making the coloacal and mictural necessities more prevalent. Air fresher on the island shore? A sound behind in the room draws me back away and in the whoosh a whiff of paint a century past pushes by then is gone.
Bearded Mandy Patinkin in a white smock stands on a ladder painting on the other side of the scrim, harrumphnifting at something ripe delicate Bernadette Peters said to him. But now the work is done, I am not looking through the gauze of staged canvas to watch him, but standing to regard what he did, the complete object, from where he did it, the true Seurat absent and instead selectively dramatized as he wanted here.
“What do you think…?” there is no one beside me. Only me. Uttered nothing.
Où est Georges?
Bet he was going to remain out, then overcame his reserve (in defiance of…?) to ultimately add his avatar. Seeing to the future, clearest detail, solo, drawing on his pipe. Sunlight warming his legs and pants and his feet obscured. Staring to the water knowing he would portray the world behind him. Not accurately, not needing to retain each element as it was. Who was truly behind and beside and before him at that time? Did not matter to him, as it does not to us now. The moment would be his, as he wanted it, and that would be what lasted.
Virgin Mary on a furry back seat.
Saw this hipster setup walking around today (6 miles before work!). A plastic Virgin Mary rests on the leopardskin backseat of a Ford Galaxie 500. Mr. Springsteen, assuming you see this photo and write a song, put your contact info in the comments so my agent can contact you about the royalty check.
Flying back from Chicago
‘Cloud Gate’ by Anish Kapoor (also known as The Bean”) in Chicago’s Millennium ParkOn a plane headed home. Four and a half hours to kill. Groggy. I typically have trouble sleeping the night before traveling. Not with worry, but wondering if I should dash out and do one more thing in a famous place I may never see again. Flush away the minor concerns of sleeping and packing and proper sleep. Grab the supply of the wines of experience to fill my brain and have it swirl around in the hope that between my eyes and the cheat of a camera it will stain the walls or its residue will settle at the base of memory to give an aroma when scratched.
I packed in stages. Made up one last jaunt. Came back to the room and packed some more, then split the difference: stayed in the room and selected photos with their subdued colors (Chicago was overcast, but mild, the whole time) and lack of depth and sound and smell and motion and will and posted them to share. Wrote terse captions while my sense of geography and paths were fresh. Fell asleep after 2:00 a.m.
Woke up at 5:30. Push-ups. Shower. Wimbledon on television. Reviewed the comments on the posted photos and videos. Enjoyed the attention but also the reward of delivering the boon of new visions or evoking memories for some people who are dear, others I’ve not seen in decades, still others I’ve never met or have spoken with for scant seconds or minutes. An exhaling gust at my deeds and my people. I turn on my heel and remove the shaman robes and set them on the rack, or hand them to someone else to don. Can’t recall if the robes are in a closet or another’s possession. I had to pack, and only know the robes did not drop to the floor.
I get to airports at least two hours early. It’s prudent, but also to get through security and take strolls up and down concourses to get some exercise into a day of being launched across states and time zones, but while sitting on my ass.
An actor from a cult t.v. show (Michael Horse – Tommy “Hawk” on ‘Twin Peaks’) popular 20 years past walked by, slightly hunched, into the Men’s Room. Wiry white hair to his shoulders. Blue denim jacket with a patch of a white hand making the peace sign, words “American Indian Activist” over that logo. He looked well, and not visibly anxious about being in public. I let him go pee instead of saying “Hey!”
On the plane as it ably performs its aeronautical miracle of transport, but the cabin air is hot and muggy. The air nodules in the console above offer no cooling, allowing minimal airflow like pointing a body-temperature, sustained, stink-free dilated fart lasting several hours.
Big gourmet headphones (not Bose!) clamped over my head, I am surrounded by rectangles. This journal. Book of poetry on my lap but under the seat tray. When Music player wedged between my legs piping about an hour of The Western Canon audiobook (a chapter about Marcel Proust) before I switch to Québécoise chanteuse Martha Wainwright trills and torches Piaf songs ably and with a full voice she does not commit to her own songs. One bar of organic fair trade chocolate in my belly, another bar of another kind in my bag at my feet. Laptop in that bag. Portfolio holding notes and outlines of a writing project. Kindle. Powered-down smartphone in my bag (pssst… you don’t truly have to shut it down, the crew only needs that for your attention during the tender take off and landing phases – so says science and airline pilot columnists). Girl two seats down jumping from movie to movie on her parents’ laptop. Rows of monitors mounted above us play the CGI cartoon film Rango and I wonder if someone in an airline meeting room raised a hand and suggested they routinely calibrated their monitors. Am guessing that person was shut down by a bean counter or a philistine boss who sees no problem with wildly different hues, washed out or blown out colors that look nothing like what artists and other billion dollar companies intended. The same kind of philistine who thinks the wide screen HD televisions with murky non-HD programs look just fine so long as the stretched image fits the whole screen even with people looking like squat blotchy toads. Usually within minutes in a hotel room I’m trying to circumvent the pokey Fisher Price remote and leaning behind the t.v. searching for buttons or knobs to make the window to the world or to fantasy look normal.
I have a fever. Wish they would hook up the apertured fart vents above us to a frost giant. Can I roll down the window? Frost along the edges show it’s nice and cool outside.
Walking and Chicago
Was in Chicago the last four days. Each day was occupied from morning to early evening. At night, time was my own.
I’ve never been to New York City. I’ve been to Los(t) Angeles multiple times but vague on what “Los Angeles” is. I was thrilled to be in Chicago for the first time. Daunting history both known and unknowable. Tall, dense architecture. Great weather. Walked around about 25 miles in three days. Weather was cloudy, colors in photos subdued, but the air was mild and ideal for strolling.
Took an L train line to the projects in South Side. Foolish to wear an expensive(ish) camera slung around my neck? Blocks of concrete grounds and grass overgrown in the cracks. Citgo gas stations with people hanging out all around the grounds. Sitting and leaning against their cars, some on their car hoods. Loud music. Conversations and boasts and teasing and conferral about errands and later plans. Growing up in Oregon, it is just about impossible to find any city block without white people. For about a mile from the Garfield station to the University of Chicago no other white people, no Latinos, either. I trotted across streets, but kept a normal pace otherwise. Didn’t have time to go through Hyde Park or Washington Park (it was 8:00 p.m. when I got there) but wished I could.
I wanted to museum the brains out of Chicago real, real hard. Museums closed at 5 p.m. Closest I got was walking into the Chicago Cultural Center where I snapped the above photo (and about 80 more). Small galleries, beautiful domed roofs.
It’s fun to spend that much time in completely new geography, open to whim, deep in your own self-reliant mind but also distracted from drawing too inward by the excitement of the sounds and sights.
But, to be honest, I missed having someone else to turn to and get their thoughts and cast light from different angles on all of these new things. It would have meant traveling more slowly, touring decisions by committee, but the conversations, moments of standing in place and taking things in would have been deeper, more informed, richer.
I want to come back to Chicago.
It was a mad and gloomy walk.
It was a mad and gloomy walk, though less than Abraham and Isaac’s.
I had to get back to that patch of dirt, now mud, in the thunderstorm.
Crackling random nearness of the lightning bolts. Warm, demanding, saturating rain.
In cars growing up I would ride with a friend and we would chase down thunderstorms, what a cool way to die, we’d laugh, but we meant it.
Had a lightning bolt struck the car, BARROOMMMED next to us, us teens, we’d have been as blissed as panicked. Up hillsides we’d be close to eye level with the storms and sidle up to the churning forces. Hey.
Harrumphing now, as a man, in my mad and gloomy walk through the deluge I knew I would prevail on the way there, I would get there like a salmon to its ground unless nature escalated. I reached the patch of mud, once dirt, and knew it would be dirt again. I stood on my place. Mine. I would likely never return to it after looking around this last time. Over my shoulder, with a nod bequeathing it to all others in existence by my grace. The gusts and the light and the drama and bursts of rattling noise and the blanketing rain and the ripe damp saturation of everything made my mind quiet. Nothing left to keep dry. My thoughts and wants and memories and wishes no longer had to crackle and rumble and whisper and whoosh – the world was that all around me. Thoughts were a stone on the surface of the water, above the ripples.
Clothes including the boastful, now hubristic waterproof Gore-Tex jacket were soaked and so pointless the only thing keeping them on was modesty.
I still like walking in inclement weather. Boastworthy in a “How’s the weather?” chitchat the day of the walk. But mostly a leaning forward into hard circumstance. Make things wild and harsh, dear Nature (within endurable measure), and grant an interval of peace within.
June is my favorite month
While Autumn is my favorite season, June is my favorite month. Even though half of it is lost to the school year, that pivot point in the middle of June is part of its charm. June means the freedom of the summer starting before the tedium of too much unstructured freedom sets in. Winter and spring are spent looking eagerly to June.
The weather gives the promise of solid warm sunny days ahead, but not so many or so hot that bitching about the heat is the first thing people say to each other.
In June, July and August are still ahead and you can think “Two months of awesome freedom ahead! What can I DO in this incipient bounty of self-determined time and leisure?”
The days are longest. People look their best. We collectivly brim with optimism. The world is brightest in June.
Obits in print and online
After getting breakfast ready for the kiddos I sat down with the morning newspaper and a whole wheat toaster waffle. I slowed down at the obituary section and saw a lengthy entry for S with two photos and an extended tribute to her life and family. Interesting to see the intervening 18 years or so filled by a few paragraphs, but helpful in getting a sense of her complete life as I’ll be attending her memorial on Saturday with long-dormant friends. But an online component was something I’d not engaged with before.
The newspaper obit gave a link to a website, Caringbridge.org, which provides a place for patients and their families to tell their stories.
This morning, the page for S shared about her six-year bout with cancer, its remission, and re-emergence a year ago after it spread to several organs. It described a series of treatments and her courage and photos of her with her three children, husband, and some with her undergoing treatment including a brace on her head for removing a tumor in her brain.
All of the content described her in the present tense, as it was last updated before she died. There was a video consisting mostly of a photo montage of her over the last few years, and ended with a shot within a car driving, trees alongside both sides of the street near her home with orange ribbons on them. “All of this for me?” was the caption. No voice, no faces. Only the line of trees moving by as viewed from behind the windshield.
Tonight that has been scrubbed, with details by her spouse Peter about her death and cremation that happened at 4:00 p.m. today. Also newly posted: info about the funeral Mass for her Saturday, and a party following after the orange ribbons are ceremoniously removed by children associated with S and her family/friends. Not looking forward to the Mass. Organized religion interferes with the very human need to gather and confer and share with its self-serving mumbo jumbo and unprovable delusions that hold our species back. In truth, such moments are deeply meditative for me, as I try to ignore the propitiations the robed figure burbles and instead listen/watch for the genuine humanity that shines through.
In going to the newspaper’s website tonight the obituary section is full of ways for people to express themselves with tributes, signing an online guest book, sharing the obit out, ordering flowers, sending a gift, ordering a copy of a death certificate (weird), and making a donation (though not to the one specified by S and her family – a generic charitable organization lookup).
While the extensive text of the obit and both photos were also online, the effect is really noisy. Yet, it makes sense, with obituaries online, that people would want services and online tools tied into it. With deaths, I’m accustomed to direct interactions and commisseration with others in-person, quiet, perusal of memories, laughter at moments of fond honesty, listening to eulogies or giving them, and not having technology in the hand, lap, or in front of the face. Death and grief and wakes have been strictly real life. Hands, embraces, nods, tears, smiles, laughter, celebration and NOT typing and mouse clicks.
But for people not able/inclined to be at a specific place and time, having something like that online is better than nothing. it would let people contribute or participate preceding or following a service. I wonder how long her family will get notices of people encountering news of her death online weeks, months, years hence.
There have been businesses around that offer a service of managing/deleting your online materials and accounts after death. Again, sensible when pondered from a distance, but inescapably ghoulish.
MAKE NO MISTAKE: Despite the somber tone of these last few entries, life and mind skitter around. All day I’ve had the WiiFit music that accompanies the Basic Step aerobics workout. All day. Kicking again right now.
While sad for extended friends about S who knew her better, I’m not distraught. A dear friend recently got some bad news that is on my mind more. It’s a commonplace to observe as you get older you start turning to the obituaries first. Today was my first step in that territory. Seeing these elements to modern death is slightly interesting, but will also serve as an orientation/scouting trip for when a death occurs that hits closer to home.