07 March 2008

Neat and Tidy



The dawn is coming just before six these days. Congress is going to change that this Sunday, slipping the earth on its axis like a kid spinning the cylinder on a Smith & Wesson wheel-gun. No good will come of this mischief, mark my words.

There are all sorts of implications. For one, it means I am going to have enough daylight at the end of the day to start walking again. Guilt returns with the warmer temperatures.

Preparing for that, and for St. Patrick's Day, I was on a hunt for the brilliant green cotton sweater I wear once a year. I was not able to find it on the first couples passes through the apartment. There are not that many places to look after all, and the absence caused me to begin to question the evidence of my senses and the natural order of the universe.

It took some meditation, since I have been living resolutely in The Now for so long that events a week out, or a week past, become indistinct and hazy.

I look at the mail as a sort of time-lapse experiment. Thinking of the sweater, I reviewed the supplications and statements that come in some sort of mysterious seasonal rhythm.   One curious item was on rich vanilla paper. It was from the attorney. There was a spare accounting of the month's activity, including $130 expended on my behalf for a conference with opposing counsel, though the bill did not tell me the subject of it, nor the outcome.

I made a resolution to send a note of inquiry, though that will doubtless result in a line entry next month reading “Reviewed plaintive e-mail from client…..ten minutes. Billed same….$100.”

Of course, I exaggerate. At $350 an hour, billed in quarter hours and rounded up, it would be only $85.00.

It is useful to put life's unanswerable questions in that context, and I have concluded that it is better to keep my mouth shut and not ask questions. Meditating on the meaning of things, and their whereabouts, I had a Eurika moment in my brown chair.

I remembered that I had stored some winter clothes in long flat plastic containers and slid them under the bed. I jumped up, knees creaking, and raced back to the bedroom to discover the time capsules. With the spring season at hand, I discovered the winter stuff all ready to go.

I had thought it brilliant at the time, since they were so unobtrusive, yet handy. They allowed me to keep things neat and tidy, a demonstration of human mastery against natural entropy.

The boxes rested neat and tidy there in the darkness, all through last summer, and the fall, and ultimately, all through the winter.

I found all kinds of stuff. Insignia and uniform bits, packed neatly in case the need arises to once more join a large armed gang. Civilian sweaters and long-sleeved shirts. I sighed. I had replaced the most critical apparel anyway, though I have no idea where to put it now that the season is changing again. At least I have the green sweater back, which is a relief. It is a little more formal, and I can wear it with a tie at the office.

Not like the t-shirt with the shamrock that boldly proclaims: “You look like I need a drink.” That would clearly be inappropriate in the workplace, so I may take a floating vacation day and strike out somewhere on foot where they don't know me.

That is in the out-weeks, though, and not something I have time to worry about now. I am determined to stay in the moment and hope that things stay in better equilibrium than the clock and the Congress.

At the moment, the useful workday starts with the light and with the light comes the beeping of the back-up warning signals on the growling trucks.

It is pretty remarkable. Walking through Buckingham early in the morning last week I saw the intricate logistics that go along with a major project. The pit across the street is not complete, though they are pouring concrete on the eastern end of it even as they are still scooping out the red dirt on the west.

The dump trucks are staged up all the side streets, arranged to sequence an orderly procession into the job site. The big orange excavator's bucket scoops up the red dirt, reaching down like an articulated ice-cream scoop to scrape the edges of the pit.

This will not be required much longer, and with rain forecast for later in the day, this might be the last great push to pull the dirt out and make the pit neat and square.

The noise is significant in my aerie at Big Pink, but I am up anyway and don't mind.

I don't know what the residents in the garden apartments that abut the pit think. Many of them are used as dormitories for independent contractors, if that is what the correct term is these days. But there are families in the apartments, too, and it must wake the kids early.

I hope the rents have been adjusted to accommodate the inconvenience. But it could be that the landlord has just told them that the dump truck parade would be over soon, and nothing further will have to be taken out of the hole. Only things arriving from here out: steel bar and concrete at first, and plywood and scaffolding.

The fittings will come later, along with the furniture, and places to put things unobtrusively away, where they will never be found again.

I am tempted to take a load of stuff over to the construction site tonight, with a shovel, and tuck it away in a place where the coming of the concrete will keep it neat and tidy for a very long time.

Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com