If I managed to blog every day as I intended these would show the difference a day makes as well as that life perspective thing I keep coming back to.
Sunday If you've read my blog you know my car has been dying. We gave up on it last week. On Saturday we went and bought a Toyota Yaris--brand new car, brand new in the US. Not as bad as I expected. Couldn't sign for it then--Saturday and they only had stick and I want automatic though my husband test drove the stick. Then when I got home I found out that my beloved Hyde is doing a show in San Francisco in July (thank you, thank you, MUSING WOMAN!). I missed the tickets but there is another chance next week. It was just such a week of highs and lows. I was looking forward to an easy week this week.
Monday On Monday a scaffold collapsed on Boylston Street in Boston killing 3 people. It's about 3 blocks from where I work on Fridays. I used to walk along there on my way to work when the weather was fair. Life is so fragile. There's a line in the play I was rehearsing said by the girlfriend of a cop, "You can't promise (nothing's going to happen). You can't promise that. Go work for the post office and you can't promise that. Not even then." I worry about death, mine, my husbands, my friends, death, disease, accident. So fragile.
Wednesday Couldn't get the car and now looks like it won't get here until Saturday--feel lied to. Simultaneously was promised a replacement fax ink cartridge from WB Mason before noon and it didn't arrive by the end of the day--already a date late because of Mason's error. Spent half the day rebuilding my computer at work because of a glitch IT was completely unable to fix and which I and the Branch Manager solved in ten minutes when we realized it was probably mechanical and not software oriented. There's a amazing short story (I'll have to get the name of the author from my husband) called "The Marching Morons" from the 1950's. The title comes from an idea that if all the Chinese were lined up and made to march past a point the line would never end because people would have babies and put them in the line before it could ever finish (disclaimer--he's not implying that the Chinese are morons, read on). A man who is frozen wakes up in the future and discovers that while everything looks slick it's actually on the verge of falling apart and about 12 intelligent people are frantically holding everything together behind the scenes. The morons have become so numerous they will never end. Is that what we are coming to? Accepting poor customer service because there is no one offering anything better? Realizing that no one can be adequately trained because technology is moving too fast? I am too young to feel this bitter. Driving home my frustration causes me to honk at the car in front of me when the light turns green only to realize that it's a turning green and doesn't apply to us. Feel like a heel. Try to remember yesterday's lesson of the important things in life. Try not to take the world's glitches personally. Steal wi-fi.
And since we are speaking of excellent science fiction I end with a link regarding the death of Polish writer Stanislaw Lem. My husband lent me some of his books when we were first dating. Unbelievable. What true science fiction/futurist fiction should be. Funny and fantastic and staggeringly intelligent (kudos to the translators as well). He is only known in this country for having written Solaris, made into a movie in Russia and then into a movie with George Clooney, directed by Stephen Soderbergh. Since I intended to list more authors of note with this blog I will start with this. I will try to add an excerpt soon--particularly the love poem written in trigonometry.
http://www.wbur.org/arts/2006/56980_20060330.asp#lem
Sunday If you've read my blog you know my car has been dying. We gave up on it last week. On Saturday we went and bought a Toyota Yaris--brand new car, brand new in the US. Not as bad as I expected. Couldn't sign for it then--Saturday and they only had stick and I want automatic though my husband test drove the stick. Then when I got home I found out that my beloved Hyde is doing a show in San Francisco in July (thank you, thank you, MUSING WOMAN!). I missed the tickets but there is another chance next week. It was just such a week of highs and lows. I was looking forward to an easy week this week.
Monday On Monday a scaffold collapsed on Boylston Street in Boston killing 3 people. It's about 3 blocks from where I work on Fridays. I used to walk along there on my way to work when the weather was fair. Life is so fragile. There's a line in the play I was rehearsing said by the girlfriend of a cop, "You can't promise (nothing's going to happen). You can't promise that. Go work for the post office and you can't promise that. Not even then." I worry about death, mine, my husbands, my friends, death, disease, accident. So fragile.
Wednesday Couldn't get the car and now looks like it won't get here until Saturday--feel lied to. Simultaneously was promised a replacement fax ink cartridge from WB Mason before noon and it didn't arrive by the end of the day--already a date late because of Mason's error. Spent half the day rebuilding my computer at work because of a glitch IT was completely unable to fix and which I and the Branch Manager solved in ten minutes when we realized it was probably mechanical and not software oriented. There's a amazing short story (I'll have to get the name of the author from my husband) called "The Marching Morons" from the 1950's. The title comes from an idea that if all the Chinese were lined up and made to march past a point the line would never end because people would have babies and put them in the line before it could ever finish (disclaimer--he's not implying that the Chinese are morons, read on). A man who is frozen wakes up in the future and discovers that while everything looks slick it's actually on the verge of falling apart and about 12 intelligent people are frantically holding everything together behind the scenes. The morons have become so numerous they will never end. Is that what we are coming to? Accepting poor customer service because there is no one offering anything better? Realizing that no one can be adequately trained because technology is moving too fast? I am too young to feel this bitter. Driving home my frustration causes me to honk at the car in front of me when the light turns green only to realize that it's a turning green and doesn't apply to us. Feel like a heel. Try to remember yesterday's lesson of the important things in life. Try not to take the world's glitches personally. Steal wi-fi.
And since we are speaking of excellent science fiction I end with a link regarding the death of Polish writer Stanislaw Lem. My husband lent me some of his books when we were first dating. Unbelievable. What true science fiction/futurist fiction should be. Funny and fantastic and staggeringly intelligent (kudos to the translators as well). He is only known in this country for having written Solaris, made into a movie in Russia and then into a movie with George Clooney, directed by Stephen Soderbergh. Since I intended to list more authors of note with this blog I will start with this. I will try to add an excerpt soon--particularly the love poem written in trigonometry.
http://www.wbur.org/arts/2006/56980_20060330.asp#lem
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