|
| Recent Journal Entries |
|
|
 |
Photo by Gail Harvey, no reproduction without permission
STUCK There are angels everywhere you turn. You need only to widen your eyes to spy them.
My roommate in the City, whom I have known forever, brings me the new Vanity Fair featuring Ms Meryl Streep on the cover. This is an event for many reasons: so many I don’t even feel the need to get into them. I see the face of the Acting Goddess on the floor beneath my door and screech. That is love.
Earlier today I walked up Dovercourt in an ear-wrenching wind and felt so happy, happier than I have felt in a long long time. I walked past my first apartment as a grown-up, a shared house with talented if not always desirable housemates. I walked right past it and laughed out loud as the wind battered my 1/18th Metis and one third Scottish bones and it was good. I was not stuck anymore. I’d had an amazing lunch with a glorious new friend whose talent connected to the talents of older friends and whose spark and funny made me glad to be alive in a coffeeshop across the road from a former bread factory now turned condo development in which the friend mentioned at the top of this blog ought to one day live.
It was that kind of day.
Another friend is about to give birth and frankly, I can hardly think of much else, wondering how it is and what can I do to HELP. Nothing, I know.
So when the magazine with Meryl Streep slid under my office door and for the umpteenth time I fell in love all over again with that FACE, I decided that on such an auspicious day I should finally rent Julia and Julia. And the young woman at Blockbuster [pheh] and I had an awesome funny chat about Meryl and acting and writing. This was thrilling, even as the night wind had gnawed half my hearing away.
And then I was crossing, not Delancey [although mon amour, we did so on your birthday, hooray] but Dupont. And saw a young woman at the bus stop in a wheelchair with some tears and some obvious frustration. I said “Hi can I help you, what’s up?” and she of course being Canadian and stuck in a wheelchair since BIRTH while I walk 8 miles with joy in one day did not want to trouble me. Trouble me, I said, I am here to be troubled. It’s shitty and cold and where is the bus? The equipped for all bus that never comes and when they come apparently some of the TTC drivers refuse wheelchair riders and suggest you call WheelTrans which I know from having a dear friend with one leg, takes 3 hours to access on a good day. So we decided to go in to Faema for a coffee and sort this out by cell and by waitress, whatever might work, and of course the bus comes as soon as we cross so we rush back.
Ashley, thank you. 23 and sweet and you decided to go to a church event tonight and beating yourself up for leaving the house on such a cold night. Me with a Meryl Streep dvd in my backpack and a whole lot to remember about my jaunty walks, my frustrations and my idea of cold.
Cold is not one person stopped to ask someone fighting tears at night in a wind-storm if they needed some help. Fifteen minutes of my life for 45 minutes of sheer hell in hers times how many nights? I’m going to watch Julia and Julie and think about you warm at home, Ashley. You rock. This has been a huge day. Start to finish. Amen. Thank you more than you can know.
Listening to: I Became Awake, Great Lake Swimmers
|
