I'm just gonna start a list and keep adding to it, cause I think these are just freakin' cool.
06/30/09: My cousin's friend Mike, who's a journalist/reporter, had written a column in which he'd mentioned J. Seward Johnson, an artist and sculptor. (I had never heard the name before, and didn't realize that I had seen his work.) Later that same afternoon, I was talking with a family friend and his son, and he mentioned the same artist, and the only pieces of his that I'm familiar with, which happens to be on an off-the-beaten-track road in New Jersey.
07/11/09: I was staying at a cottage in Maryland for the weekend with some friends-of-family, and one of them mentioned a lake in the Adirondacks that I'd only vaguely heard of years before [and have now forgotten again] - and the day after I got home, my step-mother brought up the same lake in conversation.
07/24/09: After my cousin asked people for advice about whether or not to detour onto the Blue Ridge Parkway during an extended roadtrip with his family, the next day I was organizing old bills and paperwork in my living room, and came across a brochure for the Blue Ridge Parkway.
07/25/09: I couldn't remember my cousin Jamie's word for these little coincidences, so I looked at his blog (where I knew he'd posted about them) to find the word - and saw that his latest post was about how he likes to read about guys living to 113 years, because then he doesn't feel middle-aged. -Which is exactly what my friends and I were talking about over dinner 2 hours before.
07/29/09: on the way to my sister's house, I was driving along I-81 towards Philly, remembering the previous visit to my Philly cousins' house - just then I looked up and saw that the truck in front of me was painted with a huge logo for Black Horse trucking.
07/29/09: on the same trip, I was listening to my iPod on shuffle; a DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince song came on; at the same instant I saw the first sign for Philadelphia, they sang the lyrics "Philadelphia, Pennsylvania".
08/04/09: Playing Yahtzee with my friend Sylvie, I was dismayed when she rolled her third Yahtzee, while I had none. She suggested that I go again, and I said, "What, you want to give me an extra turn to see if I can get a Yahtzee?!" I rolled, and got one. (this sorta doesn't really count, but it was still weird. ;-))
08/20/09 Bob Dylan has come up in 3 separate contexts today.
09/03/09 The Director of Financial Aid came to my office door to discuss a student's situtation. I had been entering information in an Excel sheet that contained names of all the 1400+ students on campus. As I looked down at my computer screen, I realized that my cursor was one space above the name of the student she'd been talking about.
09/06/09 I spent the weekend with my aunt and uncle, and discussed with them whether or not they could fit their dog into their new kayak for a paddle on the lake. The next morning at work, I opened an email from my co-worker - she'd sent me a photo of her husband and their dog taking a ride in a kayak.
01/18/10 Last week, my cousin posted on Facebook that she'd had to recite the Declaration of Independence for class, which got me thinking about the Gettysburg Address; the only other historical text I'd memorized in high school - and I was remembering the trip I took to that battlefield a few years ago. That same night, I had my dad over for dinner, and he brought up a book he's reading called "Lincoln's Melancholy" -and in the course of telling me about the book, he brought up Gettysburg and talked for quite awhile about the battle.
02/23/10 Yesterday, for some reason, a line from Lorca's play Blood Wedding came into my head "Good esparto harvest." Tonight I had dinner with my father, and mentioned the play and the line. He said he'd just looked the word "esparto" up today, because he was researching the etymology of "spire" and the two words are related.
07/13/10 (I've missed quite a few, but here's another) I was just going through old tuition promissory notes at work, and had a pile ready to shred sitting on my desk. Then the day's mail came, which included returned mail sent to a student - I updated the address and set the returned envelope on top of the pile of promissory notes, reminding myself to file it. When I got up to do so, I realized that the student whose promissory note was topmost in the pile, was the same student whose address I had just updated.
7/16/09
virtual pack-rat
The odd and wonderful thing about computers is that they allow to you to keep everything, if you want. Multiple copies, versions, years and years of accumulated clutter, all in one tidy cube. They're the ultimate in closet organizers.
I've started taking photos of stuff I'm getting rid of; stuff I hate to part with, but can't justify keeping. And so there it all is now, still visually accessible and nostalgia-ready - yet reduced to a tiny pile of data, neatly stacked in a small folder on my hard drive.
Amazing.
Too bad I can't do the same with all the condiments clogging up my refrigerator.
I've started taking photos of stuff I'm getting rid of; stuff I hate to part with, but can't justify keeping. And so there it all is now, still visually accessible and nostalgia-ready - yet reduced to a tiny pile of data, neatly stacked in a small folder on my hard drive.
Amazing.
Too bad I can't do the same with all the condiments clogging up my refrigerator.
elementary school
...was when we were taught to stay to the right on wide stairways, to allow others to descend freely on the opposite side. It was when we were told that we should smile at and greet anyone we met in passing; when they taught us to move over and walk single file to let people pass on the sidewalk. In those years, I learned about the importance of having a firm handshake, and of looking the other person in the eyes when we were introduced. I learned how to eat with a fork in my left hand, and a knife in my right. I learned that it was best to keep my elbows off the table, to cover my mouth when I coughed, and to make sure to thank anyone who had done anything nice for me; both verbally on the spot, and by sending a follow-up card.
I'm not sure kids are taught many of those things anymore, and I wonder why? Are they unimportant; scattered vestigial pieces of a repressed society? Are we freer and more spontaneous now, more ‘ourselves’? Or are we losing out; are the elements of kindness and courtesy (and self-discipline) in our culture slowly crumbling into the rising seas?
It's hard to tell.
I'm not sure kids are taught many of those things anymore, and I wonder why? Are they unimportant; scattered vestigial pieces of a repressed society? Are we freer and more spontaneous now, more ‘ourselves’? Or are we losing out; are the elements of kindness and courtesy (and self-discipline) in our culture slowly crumbling into the rising seas?
It's hard to tell.
7/13/09
an alternative to eating dinner this evening-
I was indulging in a spot of teenage-style melancholy tonight, and walked aimlessly around Oneonta for a few hours listening to a Duncan Sheik album on repeat.
Pretty satisfying, really.
And it got me thinking about two things - one, being my elementary school, and the other - the odd human microcosms that exist in our lives: in a small town that goes not much more than a mile in any direction, there are places I may not see for years, streets I'll seldom walk down. Seems remiss on my part, to neglect them; they're perfectly good streets.
One of those streets that I haven't been on in at least... I'd say at least three years... is Central Ave. And I walked up it tonight.
It passes the side doors to my elementary school; the ones I used to use when I was in third grade and my classroom was in the old building; the other years my classes were in the 'new' building and I used the main entrance.
There was something that drew me about those doors - I walked up to see if they were the same as in the old days; I could almost feel the cold, slightly-slimy metal of their smooth handles on my palms, and I had an urge to touch them again and find out if my memory was accurate - but the doors had been replaced and had new black handles, so I touched the old stone of the building instead, for a moment, and then turned to walk away.
Which is when I noticed that the gate to the schoolyard was open, behind the school. I'd last set foot in it during one of the final lunch recess periods of sixth grade, 26 years ago. To break that record, I walked in.
It was exactly the same; the same broken asphalt, the same black-painted metal railing dividing the upper and lower playground areas; the concrete wall had been patched but not replaced. And there was where I'd sat on the ground reading a Nancy Drew mystery; there's where I'd wandered on my own, far away from the other students, so that I could sing to myself without being teased. Over there was where Judith and I used to stand and play one-two-three-SWITCH! with the red kickball. -I could almost see the aides Mrs. Lent and Mrs. Ross standing there, watching me walk in the dusk, watching my friends and me digging excitedly in the snow under that tree, pulling out little colored plastic beads; they must have been from someone's cheap broken necklace, but to us they were magic; strange bright offerings from the winter landscape. Down there was where I scraped my knee that day, and had to go to the nurse's office; over on the side was where Mary and I would hang out in later years to get away from Mark, a pudgy kid who had a crush on me. (Boys -uggh!) And right there, right in the middle, was where we danced and shrieked and threw our hands in the air, amidst the conflicting clamor from all the local church bells, the day they released the Iranian hostages.
I walked around the schoolyard for awhile, seeing ghosts in every square inch of blacktop. And then I came home, walking past the trees where a sixth-grader named Kenny used to lie in wait and scare us by brandishing his jackknife, making our kindergarten commute fraught with fear; past the driveway where I ran into a car the same year, and mashed my ankle and had to be on crutches; all the while listening to Duncan Sheik on my iPod.
All of which leads me to conclude (as I conclude every day) - that life just doesn’t make any freakin’ sense.
Pretty satisfying, really.
And it got me thinking about two things - one, being my elementary school, and the other - the odd human microcosms that exist in our lives: in a small town that goes not much more than a mile in any direction, there are places I may not see for years, streets I'll seldom walk down. Seems remiss on my part, to neglect them; they're perfectly good streets.
One of those streets that I haven't been on in at least... I'd say at least three years... is Central Ave. And I walked up it tonight.
It passes the side doors to my elementary school; the ones I used to use when I was in third grade and my classroom was in the old building; the other years my classes were in the 'new' building and I used the main entrance.
There was something that drew me about those doors - I walked up to see if they were the same as in the old days; I could almost feel the cold, slightly-slimy metal of their smooth handles on my palms, and I had an urge to touch them again and find out if my memory was accurate - but the doors had been replaced and had new black handles, so I touched the old stone of the building instead, for a moment, and then turned to walk away.
Which is when I noticed that the gate to the schoolyard was open, behind the school. I'd last set foot in it during one of the final lunch recess periods of sixth grade, 26 years ago. To break that record, I walked in.
It was exactly the same; the same broken asphalt, the same black-painted metal railing dividing the upper and lower playground areas; the concrete wall had been patched but not replaced. And there was where I'd sat on the ground reading a Nancy Drew mystery; there's where I'd wandered on my own, far away from the other students, so that I could sing to myself without being teased. Over there was where Judith and I used to stand and play one-two-three-SWITCH! with the red kickball. -I could almost see the aides Mrs. Lent and Mrs. Ross standing there, watching me walk in the dusk, watching my friends and me digging excitedly in the snow under that tree, pulling out little colored plastic beads; they must have been from someone's cheap broken necklace, but to us they were magic; strange bright offerings from the winter landscape. Down there was where I scraped my knee that day, and had to go to the nurse's office; over on the side was where Mary and I would hang out in later years to get away from Mark, a pudgy kid who had a crush on me. (Boys -uggh!) And right there, right in the middle, was where we danced and shrieked and threw our hands in the air, amidst the conflicting clamor from all the local church bells, the day they released the Iranian hostages.
I walked around the schoolyard for awhile, seeing ghosts in every square inch of blacktop. And then I came home, walking past the trees where a sixth-grader named Kenny used to lie in wait and scare us by brandishing his jackknife, making our kindergarten commute fraught with fear; past the driveway where I ran into a car the same year, and mashed my ankle and had to be on crutches; all the while listening to Duncan Sheik on my iPod.
All of which leads me to conclude (as I conclude every day) - that life just doesn’t make any freakin’ sense.
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