Week in ReviewSo Tuesday was the big kahuna day and I was rather relieved it was over so soon: “If it twere done, let it be done quickly.” Ohio ended it for McCain, proving wrong some blognosticator who thought the polls incorrect. (I thought they were wrong but in the other direction – I thought more young people would vote.)
On Wednesday came the welcome distraction of water aerobics and given the two week interval I felt like a knife through butter. No more Humphrey Bogart in the “African Queen”, the resistance of the water seemed slight as I sluiced and churned. The clock burned slow only during the first 15 minutes while I still lived in the mind. Words having such power over me that I half-memorized the pool rules over the repetitive laps: “No open wounds,” it declared memorably.
Both Wednesday and Thursday were Indian summer days and had a “last possible” aspect to them. The street afire with fall colors, I spent some time on the back porch reading a biography of Flannery O’Connor while our gallant fence held back winter like a castle wall in Eire. She’s just getting sick now, with the lupus that would eventually kill her. It seemed she had the strong character capable of enduring sickness before she'd gotten sick, in the tradition of the maxim that God never gives us more than we can handle, though I also wondered if it was because she had a strong character that she'd gotten sick, in "only the good die young" fashion. In other words, did God make her strong to endure the sickness or was the sickness brought on because she was strong?
It’s hard to properly appreciate these warm days since they feel like such anomalies. They feel somehow false in their non-seasonal temperatures, or at least profoundly temporal. Like "Fool's Gold".
Thursday after work I had an appointment to get the picture for what I call the parish yearbook but is officially known as the parish directory. The lady administrating it is about my age though still having what looked to me an ‘80s haircut. It might've been nostalgic.
I was irritated that I was irritated about this errand, such a minor thing to get your picture taken and yet it felt like an inconvenience. It was inconvenient because it was optional. That which is not optional is rarely inconvenient. The ‘80s gal said I didn’t have to wait around to choose a picture, so I gladly jumped bail and headed out, telling her jokingly that I would hold her responsible if I didn’t like the picture she chose. The next day I would learn that my signature was required to allow publication and I would have to come back. Ay-yi-yi. Bureaucracy we shall always have with us.
Later watched an old episode of ‘Sixty Minutes’ that reported on two brothers intent on suicide. They are bullfighters in Spain aching towards self-knowledge, that is a knowledge of their limits, where the final limit is death in the ring. Despite numerous gores and close calls the elder brother put off his planned retirement for at least another year.
Because their father died in a bullfight their mother had tried to protect them by sending them to the U.S. for school. It backfired; eventually the baptism in their blood proved too strong. The elder brother said that the draw of bullfighting is that he learns more about himself and that it was in drawing close to death that he feels most alive.
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