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Saturday, April 7, 2007

Timing and simple pleasures. . .

Easter and springtime greetings! I found these adorable buns at IKEA for the unheard of price of $.33 each. I brought them home in honor of our daughters, Audrey and Erica who are 28 and 26 respectively and who are missed a lot, especially when a holiday rolls around.
Like comedians playing off one another, life seems to teeter on a delicate balance of happy/sad, glory/tragedy, simple/complex and so on. This fine, rich balancing act has been on my mind this week in many subtle circumstances. For instance, as I was walking up the hall of our apartment building I passed the door of a neighbor with a toddler named Tasha. I slowed when I heard a funny noise like her mommy doing horsey whinnies. I knew what would come next: the incredible sound of a baby's uninhibited laughter, starting slowly and raising to cathedral heights. It was a stand-still moment for me and the sound of Tasha's giggling followed me to my door with a smile on my face. Today when I bleary-eyed took my dog outside, I looked up and saw the Big Dipper against a clear black sky and off to the left the north star. It doesn't get much better than that constant. Sun shining through tulips leaves while the temperature might hit 15 degrees is an remarkable example of perseverance as are the lilac buds on slender bare branches, or ducks' rumps sitting on the thin skin of ice on the newly melted lake, not to mention the incredible blue of the many lakes here when the sun shines.
Riding my Zamboni today, cup of coffee in hand, I heard four older gentlemen at a table head to head in conversation, while finishing their breakfast. The talk meandered from who the Republicans will offer in the '08 election to gas prices, the Middle East and the prevailing languages in that part of the world. One old guy asked if the others had seen the television program JAG because the one female lawyer is Farsi. Then another said, "She's not Farsi, Bob, that's a language. You can't be Farsi!" "Well," he replied, "she's from Lebanon and can speak Lebanese also she's been in Iraq, so I guess that's how she knows Farsi." I took another swipe around the ice with the Zamboni to honor these wiseguys.
And, so, all's well and as Harvey Pekar would say, "my life is still total chaos."

2 comments:

Christine Neale said...

We love Harvey Pekar and his profound observations!

nonizamboni said...

And his wife is pretty cool too; actually in the comic underground so is Robert Crumm's wife. Anyway, another nice connection between you and me :O)