Friday. December 7, 2001

the flag, honor or desecration?

"There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision."

William James, The Principles of Psychology

I stayed up too late and I'm groggy and I'm trying to get to work on time and the Capresso is acting weird and I have trouble getting dressed for some reason.

I turn over my food for the ASA food bank to a guy who is going to deliver it. It is about 10 and, since I got in the car to drive my car to his, I just go to the mailing place and send the kids' digital camera and accessories off to them. At lunch it will be impossibly crowded there.

I try to work, but I'm distracted. The holidays and all the usual stuff. And hearing about a friend who just found out that she had a cancerous brain tumor and they are operating today. It always brings me up short. But then I go back to sweating all the little stuff pretty quickly. I guess we are just incapable of considering what's important unless we are in the teeth of it ourselves.

At lunch, I go to Kyoto with three girlfriends. People I've known a long time. Gals of a certain age. It's very nice being with them and being honest about it all, how work strikes us these days and all that.

I go to a meeting where I think that we really focused our thinking. I believe that if what we said were written up that it would provide a good vision for that team. I say I really enjoyed the meeting.

"You should get out more," says one colleague.

"That's what I was thinking," says another.

I leave work early. I can't concentrate.

We change and head out to the campus Performing Arts Center for opening night of The Nutcracker.

The front of the PAC has this graffittied flag. It looks like something we would have been arrested for in the sixties. Forrest says he remembers Abbie Hoffman on TV being interviewed. They made his side of the screen opaque because he was wearing a flag T-Shirt. So the interviewer is talking to this blank and you can hear his voice.

Times change.

Yeah, I've seen it before.The Nutcracker. But I like the music. I like the fresh touches Stephen Mills has added to the acting and dance. I like the costumes. I'm a sap. It hits me just right this night and I don't doze to the music but watch the dancers and marvel, drinking it in.

We go to Eastside Cafe after with some friends and some friends of theirs. FFP is a little put out that they wouldn't go to Four Seasons and that we have to wait in the shop next door for fifteen minutes or so. I enjoy the food and eat too much.

"I just want to go home now." FFP says in the car. I assume he means that he doesn't want to go to Four Seasons for Rebecca's last hour of playing.

"Fine with me."

And soon we are dozing in our chairs. I find myself waking with a start, a piece of newspaper in hand. It's raining outside. Probably no dog walk tomorrow.

My food this day has come too late. And, I had a gin and tonic before the ballet. I get up in the middle of the night and swallow two Advil and two aloe vera gel caps. That does the trick. What is it about gin? I love the smell and taste. But it bites me.

JUST TYPING
You know it's true.
You say it often.
But.
You don't really accept.
Mortality.
Especially your own.
But.
Really the entire concept.
On an individual basis.