[lit-ideas] Re: Sunday Wotsit
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:45:50 -0800
How normal can any week be which contains armistice/veteran's day? I
drove to Seattle and back, cleaned the fish tanks, ate a multi-course
meal made entirely from mushrooms, coped with absent students who
wanted reprieves from deadlines and a reprise of what they missed,
was firm but kind to those who turned up but hadn't done the work,
suggested to others how they might abstract shape from a written
draft, invented a new term--sacrificial words--to explain the prose
that comes then goes, dies or is killed, before the prose you keep
can sizzle or live, flew the flag.
I read that there is a memorial in France to the last American killed
in W.W.1., caught by machine gun fire at 10.59 a.m. on November 11,
1918.
In the wet weather our dog's bowl becomes a kind of holiday camp for
slugs, which invites mayhem on the part of me, something of which I
am not proud, but which in dark moments seems defensible. On
Tuesday, walking away from work I did not think the night "dreich" --
which is that great Scottish word for how November expresses itself,
with wind coming off the North Sea and rain near horizontal and
cold-- that night was only lightly wet. As I rounded a corner,
coming from the other end of the block was a couple in their early
twenties. I noticed little about him simply because she was tall and
thin and skipping; she took my whole attention. Back when I first
knew my wife, her parents once skipped across a green behind the
colleges in Cambridge. They were headed towards the b and b, where
they then took a bath together. I remember asking who got the tap
end, but alas I cannot now recall the answer.
Like Jeeves, my mind cleared its throat and suggested I might
possibly look into skipping more often.
On Thursday the sun re-emerged. In that day's paper I saw an ad,
headlined "Warrior Bride Awaken; a Woman's Conference to Spark her
Destiny." It will be led by Joanne Meckstroth of "Women of Impact
Ministries," which can be found in Soldontna, Arkansas. The graphic
in the ad is a photo showing in silhouette a long-haired woman in a
mini-kilt, with a fantasy sword cocked on her shoulder. The meeting
will be held at GodSong church, 1025 Industrial Parkway, somewhere.
The same paper says a group of Russians has been in our county. On
an exchange to encourage peace, they've been shown fish ladders in
Washington County and Mexican chip dishes. Beaverton traffic court
judge Les Rink received a pay raise. At fifty you are thirty times
less likely to die, my reading of Lloyd's of London's pricing says,
than our college is to suffer a sexual harassment lawsuit. There has
never been a complaint, but last week's Orwellian form, was an
attempt to comply with requirements of the secondary insurance
market. Making no promises, lawyers and managers are currently
looking into re-wording the document. A former student e mailed baby
photos, "Mommy and Daddy are doing well after an exciting and
efficient water birth."
It's all normal.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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