Is there a Bermuda Triangle of broken stuff too? I have two broken shoelaces, and a watch at the repair shop that won’t be fixed for two weeks. (Two weeks without my watch is not OK. I shower and sleep with my watch on. I check it nonstop. It’s like my pulse with the sweeping hand and the constancy.)
I am so psyched about this quick hop to New York for the Lambda Literary Awards Ceremony that I can’t seem to focus on things like reading and writing. I’ve watched the entire first season of True Blood on DVD, and the Daniel Craig Bond films. I’ve busted out pushups and sit-ups, although, I’ll never get my nineteen-year-old body back, and that’s just the bitter truth. I’ve worried about black shoes. How do I not have a comfortable pair of formal black shoes? Don’t all grownups have a comfortable pair of formal black shoes?
I ate the first watermelon and cantaloupe of the season and they were spectacular. Give myself a break, right? Take it easy and enjoy this. I haven’t been to New York in a decade. The last time I went, I’d just graduated from the MFA program. I was a child. Twenty-four and kind of a bastard. Certain of everything.
This is better. Now is better. Even without my watch. I’ll probably be fine. They have clocks everywhere. And other people have watches. I’ll just sneak glances at theirs.
I like this. I like how it seems all over the place. The Bermuda Triangle of thoughts, perhaps.
I broke something today as well: my car. Okay, well the idiot who ran the red light broke it. Retired it, I should say.
But not me. And that’s the whole point of this episode, isn’t it? Measuring the things that matter in the face of what we thought was irreplaceable?
Jeez. Are you OK?
I got my watch back, but it’s no longer water resistant. Crazy.
Oh, absolutely. But it was enough of a shake up to make me remember little blessings, to take time to look at them. Which is what I thought of after your post.
No more telling time in the shower, I suppose.
I hate accidents. I’ve totaled two cars—my parents’ when I was sixteen, and my own when I was twenty-five. Horrible, both times. But you are so aware, from the moment that you realize the accident is inevitable, and it takes quite a while for that awareness to slip away again.
Exactly. It’s good for me — as much as totaling a car can be good — to get the shit knocked out of my assumptions. Being reintroduced to the chaos we ignore is a cathartic thing. And, if I can walk away from that, maybe a transatlantic flight is cake.
Sorry about the award, by the way. Of course, who needs that pressure your first time out?