Every time I write about the mundane/quotidian/ordinary worries and preoccupations of my life, I feel guilty. I should be addressing the now defunct Pax Americana (replaced by the Eternal War Americana), the loss of civil rights, increasing misogyny, at home and abroad, and other big issues.
But I'm not high enough on the hierarchy of needs to get that far afield. I'm stuck in the self-centered world of a person of slightly less than sufficient needs, and just can reach that far out of myself right now. But there have been some smaller scale external occurrences that have struck me, in a state of sort of fond disinterest.
First of all, I'm definitely attracting all the talkers on Metro. SNV and I, when we were younger (yesterday, maybe?), used to joke about our mutual and incomparable ability to attract absolute and utter weirdos in public. Somehow, we seemed approachable. The lady with the tinfoil in her hair to block out the CIA/Jovian brainwashing waves would sit next to me and start talking. Invariably.
So after weeks of sitting next to the attorney reading his confidential notes or draft memo on the subway, last week I sat directly behind a weedy middle-aged (older than me, anyway) gent who turned out to be a very good artist. He drew other people on the Metro, and I could always see who from his pen. He just sketched for about 10 stops.
Then today, I got to read all about Idaho's state employee pension plan and other state employee benefits. Not confidential, just a bit bizarre. Idaho is a sovereign state, not a territory-like jurisdictionn with built in incompetent and interfering Congressional oversight, like DC. Who was that guy.
Last week, I got the name and address of a seatmate's sister's yarn shop in Philadelphia, despite the fact that it will be a cold day in hell before I travel to Philly to buy wool. Huh?
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2 comments:
I'm a weirdo magnet too. If we got together, every weirdo would be sucked towards us as if we were a giant weirdo black hole.
Laurita: Oh, yeah. Once when visiting Innana in Oxbridge, we had dinner at a Jamaican restaurant and a homeless or demented woman talked to me at length about her son, the world skateboarding champion of the world. At length. With no invitation.
Today, a woman from in Indian subcontinent expounded at length (with some encouragement from me) about how (1) daughters* are better than sons, (2) men have fucked** up the world, and (3) I should date***, but never marry again.
*That's a totally true statement, at least in my world view (raising two daughters).
**No argument there, but I don't think I've ever heard a mid-fifties Indian or Pakistani woman speak so disparagingly of men or use the phrase "fucked up". I also think that if women were in charge, people would be sitting around saying how we had fucked it up, with humans of both sexes being fallible and proving it at every opportunity.
***No argument there either. This woman clearly has seen me with my girls (not in a scary stalkerish way, but a bit disconcerting). I'm not to marry again because stepfathers are statistically bad for the stepdaughters. At this point, I did get a bit of a weird stalkerish vibe, but skillfully changed the topic of conversation to knitting and other middle-aged woman crafty type things and then her bus came.
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