Life Is a Buffet

Last night Daisy & I stood next to a young woman on a cell phone as we waited for the light to turn across from the Binge Store. Daisy gave her a happy look & she said, "Oh, what a cute puppy!" Unfortunately, Cute Puppy's look of interest swiveled immediately to the trash can on the corner which was filled to the brim with the tossed out eats wrappers of the intersection of Binge Street & Binge Boulevard. She jumped up & started pawing around before I pulled her out. I slid a look to the cell phone woman & said, "She's a buffet eater."

The light changed & I heard her telling her friend my remark. It made me think as I doled out ice cream to Daisy, freezer-burned enough that I think I may have lost my taste for the stuff for a minute. I've been low lately & using my blog as a way of talking. This strange zone of quasi-grief is not the only thing in my life. There is a buffet of moods, observations & tasks that I don't report here.

For one, after I posted yesterday, I took a galley & a gift over to Daisy's Uncle Gerry. We sat in his garden & I told him I'd ordered Eye Witness guides to Belgium, Amsterdam, Cracow & Budapest, but that I'd also been looking at a website called The Blue Army because I have an itch (mainly to buy up the girft shops) to go to Fatima & Lourdes. Fabulous tour but, we agreed, unbearable after a maximum of three hours because of one's fellow tourers. He gave me a handful of leaves to smell, lavender that kept breathing the scent of wellness every time I crushed them again. A small hour-long chat that did worlds to bring me out my morning funk.


I have decided that the only thing more wonderful than a slender woman wearing black balerina flats is a slender woman wearing red ballerina flats.


As Daisy & I were crossing yet another street (sans ice cream for once), we slowed our pace to match a whizzy-haired hippie mom with two kids who were ahead of us. She was loaded down with their backpacks & of course one had the name tag "Maya" hanging from it. I think even Daisy rolled her eyes.

It's odd that if I were to hop on a train & go ten minutes beyond New York City the leaves would either be in great yellow piles or blazing on the trees. Is it the ambient heat of the city that keeps the same trees that turn colors everywhere else from turning here. It's rare to see a tree in fall foliage. I didn't grow up with much of it in Montana so I miss it more keenly knowing it's out there, a ring of fire around the city.

Today I terminated & cut up two credit cards. One company tried to convince me the monthly fee & 23% interest was in my best interest. The other asked what they could do to keep me. I told them I wouldn't keep any credit card that was more than 14%. She very generously came back & offered me 14.99%. "That's 15%," I said. "Yes it is," she agreed. I terminated. Did Citizen's Bank think I would listen to the fourteen rather than the ninety-nine?

And finally, an overheard conversation between a yuppie mom & her eight or nine-year-old son.
Son: Mom, do you like nature?
Silence as both parties think about this question. Son realizes it's a sumb question.
Son: Like, you know, leaves?
Mom: Yes, I like nature. I like trees & flowers & animals...
At which, Daisy began barking her big scary bark for no discernable reason.

I wonder if there is a book in the Blue Army? I wonder what a year of Marion devotion would make me?

Now I have to deal with all the jewelry I brought back from Arizona & confirm the appointment with the possible new therapist. Noon on Halloween. Doesn't that sound...auspicious...?

The Price of Sunlight

I'm in a gushing hurry to finish many things before leaving to board with a dog and leave for Prague on Sunday, but I couldn't let your responses to my last post dangle as though I were too numb to absorb them. Indeed, your sympathy -- and in many cases, your shared experience -- had a profound impact on me. Possibly even more impacting was the effort and tears I put into writing that post and waking up on Monday to a calmer disposition.

It was weird, though. On Monday I felt like the previous couple of days had been a lost weekend, with grief instead of food or booze or something. I ran into a good friend who I see nearly every day and it was like I'd been far away to someplace bleak, like Chernobyl. But the air had cleared. The humidity dropped, the air was cleaner and cooler. I'd cried most of my available tears and had tried to articulate this process and its peculiar grief as best I could. I understand my reaction a little better and I definitely feel a community of people going through the same feelings.

But the price of having a little light back in my scope of vision has been not being able to get to sleep at night and waking to a churning stomach with all the things I have to do before I leave on Sunday. There comes a point in the afternoon when I wilt. I've been unable to get my body on to a subway to exchange dollars for crowns -- Herald Square feels amazingly too daunting for me. When I took a look at the Czech Airlines website, however, I saw that I could make the exchange at JFK.

And today I plum fell over and badly bloodied my knee, either not paying attention to Daisy or to the uneven sidewalk. Gawwww...

Sometimes I wonder what hallucinogens I was taking when I booked this trip. I'm an agoraphobe! Is someone who can't face the bustle of Midtown fit to travel to a place where there are words with no vowels???

I've done the best I can. I booked a lunch cruise of Vlatava River for five hours after arrival. I should just about make it, with time for dropping my bags, having coffee and finding the meeting place. From then until 2 I don't have to think. I can just take pictures of the bridges and castles and drink Czech beer.

It's been hard to go from that blotted grieving place to semi-productivity, but I wanted you to know there are breaks in this hideous process. I have a coaching project on hand and I really do love not only cleaning up prose but finding the story that is often missing from the pages. I've run errands when I can steel myself to get out and done odds and ends toward being out of hear in reasonable order on Sunday. I feel much better that I won't be a loose ends with jet lag when I arrive. I also booked excursions to Nizbor to see the Bohemian glassworks, to Kutna Hora, an amazing cathedral town, and to Terezin, because I believe that if one can visit a death camp, it's a moral obligation to do so. All of it leaves another six hours a day to see Prague in my own slow fashion.

And I think I will buy Christmas ornaments for my parents while I'm there. I think I will try to focus on what is beautiful and possible in their futures.

With a lot of help from my cyber-friends.