a somewhat hibernate-y saturday

[fflo]

well i did dash out to get to the library before it was locked up. but it's been a lazy, time-slighting course through this rotation of the planet.

a quick jot-down on "glad" and "grateful": the former more (and enviably) in your own skin; the latter somehow like the (said to be universally desired) not alone in your skin. god as a substitute for other people, cuz god is & does whatever we want or say he or she or it is & does. can be counted on that way, at least philosophically, unlike other people. or is that only true for some. and it is only some true, anyway.

today's "this american life" had this guy talking about realizing, all of a sudden, that the assumptions he'd made about how all his friends thought of him as an asshole were off. that they weren't kidding. got me to thinking about how the boys used to kid kid kid each other when we were teenagers & young collegians. and then all of a sudden (they so noticably weren't laughing and) i figured out that what i'd thought was just companionable kidding was actually joking around around a lot of very serious, and sometimes hard, feelings. on both their parts. though more sensitively on one of theirs.

it was a change of world view for me. brought about vicariously, laughably enough.

so.

opened a piece of mail from st. joe's that says i have to go back for a follow-up mammogram. it was accompanied by the piece of literature they put in with such requests to keep the recipient from freaking out too much. with (among other things, i'm sure; i didn't read it all) statistics on these routine follow-ups that indicate that the area of concern ---i'm pretty sure they take care not even to use "concern"--- is very probably nothing. i didn't read through cuz i didn't want to see how many (count 'em) ways they are reassuring, so's not to have to feel compelled to conclude, if there are quite a few, that they protest too much. i take my comfort largely from confidence that life isn't always as predictable as bad art, as in "The L Word," whose shotgun-over-the-fireplace breast cancer set-up episode i've seen, and so i know (Drama 101) (or, hell--- Remedial Drama) that the character in question's a goner, even though i'll have another several episodes with her, and at least one or two before she figures out what we know.

i have also already visited in my mind briefly more than once how there's no breast cancer in my family, that i know of. and i've observed mentally how big breasts and lots of caffeine work well as pigeonholes into which to stick, whenever it blows out and into my face again, the memo of inevitable "geez i sure hope not" i now have to live with for some unknown number of days henceforth.

i think maybe it is a good night to play records.

the overcast and chilly not-quite-spring outdoors, with dampness hanging in the air, fits. a fire in a fireplace would be nice, too. especially if there were someone to curl up with, and with whom i'd like to curl up, feeling like sitting in that trite scene with me, wordless, staring peacefully into the dancing flames.

Comments

[sprig5.livejournal.com]

I read that about Joshua Bell as well. It'd be interesting to do the same thing in NY and see if results are different. I don't know that I would have recognized Joshua Bell if I had gone through the metro station that morning, also having been a violinist, I think the music would have made me stop. But I do know how, esp in the morning, people are in a hurry-- and have their routes and timing down to a science, down to the second, in this town.

I actually saw Joshua Bell play in 1986 or so. He came to the university where I was a student. We were all wowed-- he was our age, and very accomplished and cute. I saw something on 60 Minutes about him in the 80s too, I think.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i like the point is made that he is almost 40 and single AND straight, "a fact that is not lost" on his young and female audience members. he does look nice. he's aging well.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

aging well, schmaging schmell. bah. phooey! let us now praise the aging "poor"ly!

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

what i mean is, he doesn't look like he'd spent the past twenty years in pain and suffering. you wouldn't have to be handsome for that, just have some sort of joy on your face. you can be wrinkled but look good. you can't look angry and resentful and look good.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

ahh.... oops. chortle. or chortle lite.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

ya know. the man did bust his ass over the past 25 years. and it did pay off, obviously [unless you count being invisible to the masses], but it's paid off for others, too, and they look like shit . he kinda looks like he's a happy man, which i generally appreciate.