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Saturday, June 23, 2007 Lately, for some reason, I've been running into individuals I haven't seen or heard from in a long time -- many, many months, even years. Each one of them friends who blew me off in one way or another -- not all at once, rather with an accumulation of less than wonderful-feeling things and a final, especially less-than-wonderful event -- so that I stopped making contact, which meant contact ceased. Each of whom seemed happy, even excited to see me again. Which is nice, I suppose, except that I had let go of them some time ago, so that each of the recent encounters left me bemused, not exactly sure how I felt about pretty much, er, everything. And I found myself not being cool exactly, not being warm exactly -- somewhere in between. Cordial, not unkind. But restrained. Not effusively friendly. Walking a fine line that some part of me struggled to figure out in the moment. Doing the best I could, meaning it probably could have been handled better on at least one occasion and could have been handled worse on others. So some days that's been percolating in the background. Not today, though. This morning I got a haircut, meaning a half hour spent in the company of T., one of the most enjoyably eccentric individuals I know. A colorful 60-something sprite, with the rebellious spirit of someone way younger. Got married last year, now shares her residence with her guy: a house that sits on a corner at a t-junction of two roads, a corner drivers like to cut, slicing across part of her property, ripping up grass and flower beds in the process. She reached the end of her tether about it, wanted to end the incursions by sinking metal spikes in the ground on her property line at the corner, but the town wouldn't give permission. Which pissed her off so much that she installed piles of old tires along the property line instead, which put a stop to the trouble (though she says drivers still yearn to cut the corner, tire tracks on the shoulder going right up to the tires). A neighbor complained that the tires were ugly, but spoke to T.'s guy, not to Herself. Her response: go out and buy cans of the brightest yellow paint she could find, slap it all over the tires as the primary phase of their redecoration. I suggested filling them with dirt, turning them into planters, which might blunt some of the ugliness complaint. She seemed to consider that, but mused aloud about painting them with happy faces or something equally unpretty. From there, she segued into other tales about living with the traffic at that corner, a lot of it drivers who come and go from what she called rich people's camps down the road, whipping along at speeds well over the limit. She mentioned having called out to one car to slow down, the woman behind the wheel slowed to a stop, looking like she was about to respond by yelling something unwise and unproductive. T. picked up a nearby axe, began walking toward the car. The woman, she said, got the hell out of there. Other stories followed, progressively darker, featuring guns and mentioning the danger of home invasions, citing news stories about that. I tried to soothe her, pointing out that in this part of the world there's probably more chance of being struck by lightning seven days in a row, suggested that watching news programs these days is more likely to cultivate paranoia than levelheadedness or peace of mind. This is in a hair salon, mind you, me the only male on the premises at that time. I had the distinct feeling that T.'s dark conversation was making the other staff and customers uneasy, and much as I enjoy her and care for her, I was happy to step out of there into morning sunlight. (I've never experienced her in such an intense state before, will have to ask what was up next time I'm in for a shearing.) Meanwhile, summer officially slouched in yesterday. I'm told that other parts of the northern hemisphere are actually experiencing warm weather. That's what I'm told anyway. I can't say for sure -- cold weather returned to this part of the world two, three days ago, skies mostly gray and dumping plenty of moisture. When I stepped outside yesterday evening around eight, my breath produced mist, the air feeling autumnal. This has really got to stop. España, te echo de menos. rws 4:10 PM [+]
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