Friday, April 08, 2005

Errata

Well, yesterday's blog entry disappeared into the ether like a fart in the wind. I suppose it doesn't matter, but I did have several paragraphs of stuff that I wanted to say that I didn't even manage to copy to a text document. I tried, but all of it flashed the message, "This document contains no data." Of course we all know what my reply to that was. So all that I had to say ended up being distilled into a single gesture with one finger, and what insight there may have been was lost.

Today all I can do is marvel at the perversity of the weather; when we should be sunbathing, we're maintaining a fire in the wood stove and wearing sweaters. When we should be metering our watering systems to three times a week, we're trying to rescue plants from drowning. Oh, good, the several-years-worth of alleged drought have ended, but enough is enough. What is this, Oregon?

I wore my watch again today, while we went to a very shitty lunch at the local Applebee's. Their current kitchen maven (or their main supplier, I don't know which) douses almost everything in some spice mixture that burns my tongue and gives me heartburn. Most of what I ordered was only semi-edible. They ought to offer a side of Maalox with the seasoned food ... or maybe they're just trying to discourage older folk like me. Anyway, I kept an eye on the time so that Bernie wouldn't be late getting to work.

At four in the afternoon, I realized I'd checked my watch almost every five minutes for the past couple hours, and took it off again. I was sketching, and then doing final inking on a project. Once I took my watch off, I sunk into the savory sensation of seeing a shape come alive from a line drawing to a picture, and suddenly two hours had passed in delight, without some inner dictator saying that at such-and-such time, all this drawing stuff has to be done.

The picture was done when it was done. No deadline. No worries.

This morning at 3:30 am (mebbe) Bernie woke me so that I could watch part of the Pope's funeral. I didn't think I would be moved, as I had known that he was dying for weeks. But I was moved. He was such a cool Pope -- I remember when he still took skiiing vacations and his shoulders were straight and broad, and his grin infectious and uninhibited. The weight of the world's sin and waywardness broke him down, and getting shot in the guts didn't help him any, either. His body buckled and curved under the heavy load, but somehow, the strength was still there, still evident. At the end of his funeral, when his casket was taken through the veiled doors to be interred in the crypt with St. Peter (Oh, I know St. Peter will have a lot to talk about with him!) I remembered a World Youth Day long ago when the chant was born, "John Paul II -- we love you!"

And I was finally able to grieve.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was touched by your observations of the Pope...I'm not Catholic, but it is hard not to notice the hugeness of this man; the way he drew people in; the aura that surrounded him.

Cheryl said...

Not to be a sycophant, but Me Too on JPII. I saw some pictures of him skiing, early in his papacy, in normal ski clothes and he just looked like a regular middle-aged guy...who just happened to be the spiritual leader of a billion people. Over and over I read comments about way he touched common people. His successor has some big shoes to fill.

Ase, does your cell phone have an alarm function that you can use to remind you of important things like getting Bernie to work? Seriously, I haven't worn a watch in at least 10 years. The cell phone or the pda show the time if I really need to know and am not near a clock, and I can set alarms on both of them.

I haven't had a decent meal at Applebee's in years. They are now in my category of "If we are traveling and the only other restaurants are Long John Silver's and WalMart, we can go there."