Queen for the Weekend

It is definitely odd to see the changes in traffic patterns that result from the time of year. To all those of you who regularly drive on the freeway systems, I'm sure you noticed this years ago and have completely stopped noticing it now. But for me, who has always avoided driving during rush hour, and driving on freeways when overland will do, and has had a terror of being in a large traffic jam, especially on a hot evening with pitiless sunshine pouring in the windshield and the engine slowly getting hotter and hotter and...AARRGGHH!


Pant, pant. Okay. What was I saying?


Oh, yes! I have always avoided driving on the Banfield particularly, since it is the sole East-West freeway in a city which is constantly increasing in size, and seems to be nearly always crawling along, if moving at all. It is also walled in on both sides, with no way to escape a wreck that happened ahead of one, so venturing oneself onto it with a great many other drivers, tired, irritable and more-or-less stupid, and all in a hurry, has always seemed to verge on the suicidal.


So, early on weekend mornings, when I have been very nearly the only driver -- between three and ten other cars, and most of them headed for the airport -- on the Banfield, I have actively enjoyed its use. I feel as though it is all mine, that I am the Queen of it, the Conqueror of the Freeway, and I graciously wave to the crowds of cheering people as I pass by -- at least, inside my head I do. I can go as fast or as slowly as I like and am not impeded by anyone. It is MINE!

So I have not liked these past few bright and sunny mornings, when the lanes are full of cars. All the way full, so that I have to be constantly aware of them and drive like an ordinary person and not Queen of All She Surveys, has been disappointing and frustrating to me. They are mostly SUVs, and a lot of them have bicycles or windsurfing boards or other outdoor gear on them, and I am entirely sympathetic to the desire to get out and play in the sun that occasions these trips. And I also understand that for a lot of people, especially those born elsewhere, the Banfield is the only way to get across town. But still! My kingdom!

Jo-Jo's Bizarre Adventures

So I was with one of my clients this morning -- she is very intelligent, but has Asperger's which makes her interesting to have a conversation with.  She was in a very good mood this morning, however, and was telling me, in her spectrum-y way, the whole history of a manga story called (something like) "Jo-Jo's Bizarre Adventures."  (We got onto this from a monologue on Gundams, of which I had heard, {thank you, Ernest Cline!} but about which I knew very nearly nothing.)  I, in the meantime, was trying to gently ease her into getting showered and dressed (yes, still in her pajamas) while I tidied up, since her job coach was coming that morning to discuss her employment.  It somehow seemed important to me.  But Nameless Client merely sat on the floor, wearing a big smile, and kept talking about the various Jo-Jos, starting from the first one, whose name was (something like) Jonathan Jostar and who was the protagonist for the whole first series.   And then the second series was his grandson, whose name was (something like) Joseph Jostar, and then the third series, was his grandson whose name was Joseph Cujo, and so on.  And on.  

Her mind constantly edits and revises her thoughts, as do we all, but she does her edits and revisions out loud.   So it goes like this:

"In the fourth series, Jolene Cujo was accused of a crime which she did not -- was charged with a crime -- was innocent of the crime she was accused of -- was charged and convicted of a crime which she did not in fact commit, and was sentenced to a -- was temporarily -- was briefly incarcerated in a women's prison."

Ordinarily, I really enjoy it when she does this, since it means she is feeling good and enjoying my company, and I just put in the occasional monosyllables to indicate my fascination.  Not that she needs this, let me add, since she just barrels right on regardless.  But I feel better about it, more involved, and like I'm helping in some small way.  But this time, there was the job coach arriving, and the pajamas, and the unwashed hair, and there she still sat on the floor, beaming at me, and talking away.  What is a body to do?

Easter and Sudden Death

So, it's Easter Sunday. And it's a beautiful day in Portland, by anyone's standards. It was cool and grey this morning, which made me happy, and now it is blue-and-gold and warm, which makes All The Rest Of You happy. I hope everyone has found their Easter eggs, loved their Easter baskets, enjoyed their Easter church service, and is now eating their Easter ham and deviled eggs. I am doing none of those things, but I am enjoying the fact that I am done with work for the day, and in a short while, will be eating my Easter bean burrito, hot and crispy. Yum!

So those of you who are not on Facebook, may not know that my friend Shannah, the first friend I made at Prairie Bible College, died suddenly this past week. I'm still in the can't-really-believe-it stage of grieving -- it just does not seem possible. Absolutely typically, I feel certain, I am thinking about suddenly dropping dead myself, and wondering how that would work -- who would find my lifeless body? How would they find it? Who would tell my people? How would they know whom to tell? Should I make up a list of Important People To Tell If I Suddenly Die? And where would that list be posted?

So, just in case I do die suddenly, and you get missed by the poor person to whose lot it falls to call all my Near and Dear, let me tell you that I love you. Yes, I truly do. You are someone whose memories make me smile (and sometimes cry), whose invitations delight me, even if I'm working that day, and whose face makes me happy to see. You are my Dear Friend! And I promise your name will be prominently displayed on my IPTTIISD list!

Water, light and air

So I am at the Retirement Home -- my folks' place in Ocean Park -- and I had a sudden eye-opener about the quality of light and the nature of rain.  It's been raining since I arrived yesterday morning, but the cloud cover is not dark -- there's quite a bright light outside, illuminating the wet green. ( The birds are just as vocal and active, too, so they don't mind a little dampness!) 

The brightness of the cloud cover is different from the cloud cover I admire so frequently in town, though -- there is a translucent quality to it -- as though the light were right there, close behind the clouds, a ragged, wateriness to it as though the cover was going to shred apart at any moment (even though it does not!)  The light is purer up here on the comparatively uninhabited coastline -- far fewer cars, no factories, nothing like as many people. No constant layer of smog between us and the source of light (or at least, less) Light is coming directly at us, inhibited only by the rainclouds.

Anyway, I was standing in the kitchen looking out the window as I waited for the kettle to boil, and feeling vaguely nostalgic about childhood rain, and my young sensations of looking out a window and not being certain it was raining, and the telltale signs I would look for.  Up at the edge of the gutter to see if tiny drops were falling from the split place, over at the wild rose hedge to see if the light thin leaves were stirring with the percussion of beats of water.

Both of these places -- my childhood home and this one -- are rural. I am surrounded by fields of grass, and forests.  There is no cement, only tarmac on the road, which is at the other end of the house.  Anyway, tarmac receives water in a way that cement paving does not -- sort of muffled and multi-directional -- so that steady drumming you hear, from acres of roof tops and yards of flat smooth cement, does not exist out here.

But now I live in Portland, right in the heart of the city, and all you need to do if you want to know if its raining, is listen.  You can hear every drop bouncing off some flat surface, a window, a rooftop, a sidewalk, the tops of cars and trucks. Everything is paved!   Everywhere the sound of falling drops is met with the sound of rushing water from gutters and downspouts.  It's a whole different thing!

Anyway.  Such are my maunderings on this lovely morning.  Good coffee, too.

....that men still call Tyre...

Such a beautiful Sunday morning!  Warm and soft, with a pretty steady breeze, and occasional flurries of tiny drops.  I've been turning my windshield wipers off and on all morning.  The sky is palest grey and looks like a fresh duvet.  I'm looking at the grass through the library window, and it is vivid green -- partly because it is new growth, and partly because this is the perfect weather to see colors in. 

Many of the trees have tiny brilliant green leaves, and those that don't have pink and white and lavender blossoms.  Even the deep forest green of the conifer trees looks brighter and greener -- less Grimm-fairy-tale-forest, more men's-club-smoking-lounge.

This morning before my shift started, I was reading a travel book by Lawrence Durrell (note to self: read Gerald Durrell, not Lawrence!) and getting melancholy as it talked knowledgeably and casually about all the places I have never been, in a time, when all you needed to travel was some cash and the desire to go -- if you wanted to live in Greece, you just went there and rented a house.  Sigh... 

Anyway, I was trying to convince myself that I should be glad those who had traveled had written about it, so those of us (me) who had been too cowardly and procrastinatory (I've just made that word up) and generally frozen, could experience it vicariously, after a fashion.  Instead, I set the book down, and decided not to read any further about the "old ships (which) sail like swans asleep/Beyond the village which men still call Tyre/ With leaden age o'ercargoed, dipping deep/ For Famagusta and the hidden sun that rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire."

That poem has always made me long for something -- something.

Ah, well!  I will make a physical effort and wrench my mind back to the happy state I was enjoying just moments ago!  Green, grey, soft warm air!  Sunday morning in Portland in the gentle rain! 

TV Memories

I had to be at work by eight am today, but I still had time to watch an episode of The Mod Squad before work.  Probably since I washed my hair yesterday -- I wore my purple shower cap this morning, and saved myself nearly an hour.

I haven't watched Mod Squad before this, I only know of its existence from a short period in my childhood when we were watching the Brady Bunch on Friday nights, and we would see ads for it.  I was in maybe the second grade.  Although as I think back to that time period, I realize that I am conflating it with a show called -- I think -- Room 222, which was about high school, or maybe college.  They occupy the same drawer in my memory chest of drawers, since they both had similar characters, clothes, colors, music and intros.  Hawaii Five-O is in that same drawer.  Lots of long straight hair for girls, strange sideways partings for guys, lots of "solid" and "square" and "Daddy-O," lots of mini dresses and Nehru jackets.  I don't think I actually saw any of The Mod Squad,  back in those days -- never saw any of Room  222, either, except for its into -- it must have followed a show that we were watching -- but I can almost hear the theme song from Room 222 playing in my inner ear.   Guitars and flute!

In any case, I was unpleasantly surprised, this morning, while watching this cutting-edge drama, showing young and with-it people, both black and white, male and female, very forward-thinking -- to hear the young female lead say, when asked if she would like Chinese food, "Ah, so!" in a ridiculously phony Chinese accent, protruding her teeth like a Japanese general in WWII propaganda. 

It is always surprising -- jarring, really -- to see the places where people's awareness has not yet reached.  You have to wonder --what's mine going to turn out to be? 

I was thinking this same thought just recently, while re-reading a paper I wrote for Humanities class at Warner Pacific -- this is back in the mid-nineties sometime -- about philosophers attempting to break down their awareness of the world to its very basic state.  "I think, therefore I am," type of thing.  And still being unaware that they were discriminating completely against women.  What must that degree of blindness be like?  What is it going to be, for me?  Scary.

Ham and Cheese

So -- yesterday I stopped in at St Honore's, the bakery on my corner.  I haven't been there for awhile -- been poor and fat, you know -- but I had just been paid and I realized I hadn't eaten any food that day, so I thought I would whip in and get a ham and cheese sandwich.  They do them quite well, on tough little baguettes so that they require some firm chewing, with sharp little mini gherkins all through.  Yum.  

So when my turn came, I stepped up to the counter and smiled at the young girl behind it -- someone I had not seen before. 

"Hi,"  I said.  "I'd like a ham-and-cheese, and one of the chocolate gateaux, please.  To go."

She replied, "I don't know what you mean by ham and cheese.  Are you referring to the jambon parisienne sur une baguette?"