Everyday Stupidities

Something which I could not have predicted and never believed would happen transpired between There and Here. After I posted that last Stupidities entry, I checked my email and there was a fifteen-line poem from Karen, which was enough to seize my breathing. And the poem made oblique reference to something she'd told me in a letter nearly twenty-two years ago, which was enough to stop me dead in my tracks. Not only had she remembered me, she'd remembered what she'd said to me when we were seventeen. Never in my wildest. I wrote her eighteen lines in return, then described what had happened in my life since the summer of 1986. She wrote back a summary of her last two decades, and the conversation was established. Yesterday I drove a 290 mile round-trip to spend the day with her, talking on parkbenches and laughing in little restaurants. (And I now have the first facial tan of 2007.) It was nothing like what I'd pictured it would be over the years; it was good. To be fair, she wondered why I'd ever think it wouldn't be, other than how when we parted company long ago it wasn't on happy terms, and I guess I never pondered that particular question before... for the sake of self-preservation I didn't want to be optimistic and was self-critical, perhaps. She looks as good as she did back in the day, perhaps better, and definitely exudes more positiveness because she's found some peace and place in her life. My theory is that she's at version 4 of herself (1 is child, 2 is teen, 3 is adult adrift, 4 is adult grounded), and when I ran the notion past her she liked that description. Just like how you can't count sheep without wolves, you can't find yourself until you've been lost, and contrary to every hope I'd had for her since graduation she did find herself on the steep learning curve searching for her Happily Ever After a few times. We had a very good time together, asking those nagging questions and getting those closure-granting answers, and I took a lot of photos around town plus some of this pioneer cemetary I've seen a hundred times along the highway but never had the ability to visit.

So how do I feel, having looked into the eyes I've not seen in so long? For the longest time, on those rare occasions I'd let myself give the matter any thought, I feared the worst. (to qualify: I mean internally. It's hard to hear over your own mental dialogs.) I was quite happily wrong when it happened. I feel very good, though I'm still putting together some pieces. It's the moment I've been waiting for, and always mindful of the statement "be careful what you wish for, you might get it" I was not disappointed. I mean, my day was filled with all kinds of great serandipities -- I parked in a 2 hour zone and the ticket in the green jacket on my windshield said it was merely a warning with a $0 fine; when I was doing 82 miles per hour down the highway someone was coming up to pass so I got into the other lane to let them, and it slowed down once past me because there was a cop hanging out his door with a radar gun half a mile ahead, so I was saved from getting busted. I could not have asked for a better day, other than making it longer (which was an option, actually, because she invited me to her place for dinner with her family). I left town while it was still light out because I'd had about four hours of sleep prior to leaving home, so questioned my ability to drive after dark and after a meal (I like driving at night when I'm conscious!). Thank you, Karen, for surprising me all over again. Attached to this paragraph is another electric car, a ZENN Motors [ZENN = Zero Emissions No Noise] neighborhood vehicle, which passed me when I was walking down the street to my car and had parked next to me when I finally got to my car. It looks great but it seems to be a $12,500 car-shaped golf cart: it goes 35 miles on a charge and has a federally mandated top speed of 25 mile per hour. I want something like that but distance- and highway-capable... heck, update those government regulations to make that thing Pacific-Avenue-capable (where the speed limit is 35 mph) and I'd give it some thought.

Postscript: I got the 1950's-1960's advertisements DVD yesterday and have put two Bill Ding TV ads up on his pimpin' webpage [see previous entry]. They're 50 seconds each and 2.2 megabytes per file.