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January 2, 1997
This morning I started out with good intentions. I made a list of things to do. I did one of them.
I called a friend I've been neglecting since, like I dunno, August. We reconnected at length. With the time difference and the radical difference in our life situations (she works cleaning retreat cabins at a Buddhist center in the mountains of California and I loaf the soul, clean litter boxes, and take care of kids in Massachusetts) it has gotten very hard to keep the same kind of connection we once had. It was truly a pleasure to have time for a long relaxed deep conversation with her. We don't do that enough anymore.
I spent the rest of the morning rearranging my web pages. Not that you could tell.
At noon I went to Starbucks and lingered over my coffee with my head in a book: Wild America, which I've been reading since November 1. The narrators are now in the Canyon de Chelly and Chaco Canyon areas of the southwest, places that I visited with the very friend I spoke with this morning. Eerie. What's even eerier is that when I called her this morning, she thought I was calling in response to e-mail she'd sent yesterday. I wasn't. I haven't been able to connect to my Internet Service Provider since Monday. I was calling because I felt a)guilty for not keeping up with friends (not just her) and b)lonely after all the intensive interactions of the holidays and "Nancy birthday festival week". One of those newage synchronicities I guess - if I believed in that.
Just as I was about to leave Starbucks after an hour and a half, Tom arrived. He had a stack of clippings for me about birds, Antarctica, and environmental studies masters degree programs. So I ordered another coffee and sat with Tom for awhile. Julie came over from researching her book on child labor at the library. She showed me, hot off the presses, her book about labor union history. I could smell the ink. The book looks good. I asked if she was done with my Joe Hill CD, which I had loaned her months ago for research for that book. Not that I'm in a hurry for it. I just happened to remember it when looking at a Joe Hill quote in her book.
At some point during this conversation, Ned came into the coffee shop, ordered his coffee and left without saying hi. Julie didn't notice him. I think Tom had already left to go to the post office. When Tom came back from the post office, he reported speaking to Ned there and wondered how it was we hadn't seen him. I answered that I had seen him and I thought it was after Tom had left. Tom allowed as to how that was impossible because Ned was in front of him in the line at the PO. Julie's opinion is that Ned simply moves a lot faster than Tom. I'm beginning to believe Ned has magic powers :-) One day last week, the three of us (me, Tom, Ned) were sitting at Starbucks talking about the Koran for 2 hours. Tom and I were both parked legally at meters we had dutifully fed quarters to. Ned was parked illegally in the 15 minute space next to the post office. Tom and I both got tickets. Ned didn't. I rest my case.
I came home and tried vainly to connect to world.std.com for awhile, then did chores.
As I was leaving Starbucks I had said to Tom & Julie: "well I've killed the better part of another day". Tom said that wasn't in the spirit of haiku and Basho. Killing time. I don't usually speak of time that way. I really try to live in the present moment, be present for my life. For so many years, for so many reasons, I wasn't. I was distracted, preoccupied, living too much inside my head. I don't want to miss my own life anymore. Yesterday at the cat shelter, a volunteer I'd never met before asked me what I "do". I said I'm a lazy bum. I knew right away I didn't mean that, but I was at a loss for how to explain what I'm working at. Nancy came up with the term "psychosocial moratorium" from some social work tome she's read. I kind of like that. Maybe I'll change the title of this thing to Journal of a Psychosocial Moratorium. :-)
So, no, I wasn't killing time. I was, in the words of Walt Whitman, loafing the soul.
On a completely other note, like I said I have been having trouble connecting to the net. Some of the previous entries got truncated or corrupted when I tried to transfer them. I'll upload today's entry before I go to my meeting (assuming I can connect) and I'll fix up the missing December/January entries when I get back later tonight. The pundits lauding the internet revolution have obviously not used it on a daily basis.