[lit-ideas] Sunday Twofer (with more letters in)
- From: David Ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 11:42:22 -0700
> Sometimes one simply needs an excuse to sit still and look. On Christmas Day
> 2012 I slipped on lava on Maui and slit my shin. The cut was both long and
> deep. When my wife was done piecing the sides together, I faced days of
> sitting with one leg raised. Casting about for diversion, I ran across a
> book in a second hand store, "Watercolors from the Heart," and thought, "How
> about 'from the shin?'" The book's paper pad had pages remaining, Lahaina's
> hardware store sold me three brushes, a color picked for each inch of gash, a
> second and smaller pad. (Also a Hawaiian flag, just because). Though the
> wound developed an infection, it eventually closed, and while I'll do no
> further international sock modeling, I'm fine with the color of the scar, and
> the paintings remaining.
>
> I finished a day's writing and made some telephone calls. One daughter asked
> if I wanted to join a trip to happy hour and a movie. This was a nice, but
> with the other one gone and my wife committed to something, I glimpsed the
> prospect of solitude and beer, maybe a DVD with dinner. I watched the
> evening light on our trees. A memory from the week came to mind: when I
> asked my best friend from primary school (who has moved to Lima) whether he
> would be a voice at the other end of the phone if something were troubling
> the daughter of a friend who will leave on Monday to pursue postgraduate
> study in northern Peru, he mentioned that his second son...follow me now...
> who is studying Economics at Edinburgh, had recently spent a year at the same
> Canadian university from which this young woman just graduated. Since she
> studied Economics, I asked her if they'd maybe run into one another,
> expecting the answer "no, of course not; it's a big department." But in fact
> she knows two guys who went to high school with the son of my friend. Small
> world. Deciding this would be the right moment for a beer, I pulled an
> unknown ale from the fridge and left it to warm a little on the counter while
> I search through the stacks of books on my office floor for some appropriate
> reading. I thought I'd like to try something new there too. An unread Nick
> Hornby popped up. I took the book and the beer out to my chair in the yard
> and poured a little before checking the contents of the label. It had a
> quotation from Nick Hornby. Is this the week for a planetary twofer on
> coincidence?
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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