In The Past
Tuesday. A step at a time. Mail some prints I've promised, finish getting the problem with Social Security resolved - a matter of a two paragraph letter and attachments - maybe some cleaning here around the computer table. It's nine in the morning, the papers have been read over breakfast at the usual place, the sky is clear and the sun is shining, although it's still quite cool here in the apartment. Haven't checked the weather report, probably won't, I'll learn what's coming as it arrives.
Sitting here without the radio. No NPR news-discussion-whatever assaulting the brain. Easier to write, easier to think, the silence interesting in that I realize how little of it I experience. An addiction? A rut? Easy to fall into life's various ruts. I have people tell me I'm too comfortable in mine. I guess it gets down to “comfortable”. What does it mean? You've sold your soul to the devil for a life of white noise, three hots and a cot? Or, you know, you're “comfortable” in your life in that you've reached a place where you generally get up in the morning looking forward to the day? Of course people giving advice are talking to themselves, myself whenever I do it included. What should you do with your life? Shit, this morning it's about getting some pictures and a letter in the mail.
What was that about?
I don't know. Maybe just a more than many introspective moment this morning sitting here at the computer watching Ms. Emmy racing about the living room bouncing off the furniture. Drag race cat. She'll head for the bedroom pretty quick and flake out on the bed. Another it's only Tuesday here in Oakland.
Later. Packaged up and mailed the parade prints to Ms. G and decided to go by the Social Security office rather than mail the documents they're telling me they need. An hour and a half wait, but I did give them what they said they were after and maybe we're finished. How long has this taken me to get done?
Sitting there in the waiting room I watched a younger woman go ballistic with one of the clerks for one reason or another, probably for having to wait and wait and wait, and then recalled the two older men who stomped out after dealing with a clerk at the transit office yesterday while I was buying my old guy bus tickets. No violence or shouting, but in a tight, lowered but discernible voice, each of them hissing to those present they'd been dealing with idiots; a little go postal moment, a flash of insight to never, if at all possible, find yourself working in one of these places where you have to deal with the public through bullet proof glass.
And you were the model of decorum and charm?
I was. I can be snippy, if I find myself waiting overly long in a line, the supermarket sometimes difficult if I get there in a funk. Not nearly to the degree of the younger woman today or the older men yesterday, but it's interesting to consider how I may be faring in another ten years. Crotchety old fart muttering to himself, a pleasure to be around. Another ten years. Makes me wonder what they're going to be like, if they're going to be at all, after seeing how this last decade has honed and shaped my perfectly pleasant disposition.
Maybe we both need a sake tonight.
We have, I believe, discussed this sake business at some length in the past.
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