there is absolutely nothing seriously wrong. there is nothing wrong, in fact, at least not as far as i know. actually there is nothing that i know. it's just the hint of something and i am all over the place with worry. a hat on the table, we all know what that means. and worse, certain words that cannot sound good no matter what. even benign has in it a note of evil, an assonant hint of the evil it does not (ostensibly) possess.
we smile, we joke, he admires my socks, they are splendid socks. that's something i know, see, is that i have a splendid pair of socks. they are lucky socks, i washed them last night so i could wear them on the plane, so i could give the poor security guards something splendid to look at when i have to take off my shoes. so he admires my socks and we talk about where we were ten years ago: he had more hair and i had fewer wrinkles. but we are the same, i am nervous and he is reassuring and we talk about his typewriter, which i tell him we would find maybe in an antique store in america, and about his funky little television, which you don't see a lot of televisions this fancy in offices. what politics and money hath wrought. i am almost comfortable, see, between the socks and the jokes about technology.
look, i'm okay, it's nothing, i'm fine. people have awful things happen to them all the time and this is not awful. some people don't have time for the luxury of dread, the hours of wondering and the overplayed scenarios, the eyes peeled open in the dark. what if what if. and that is all this is, the luxury of overthought. except that: this is nothing. you lose your rabbit's foot and you walk across the street with more caution but you should have been cautious in the first place. or maybe caution itself is what gets you into trouble. maybe you're looking for the wrong thing. six percent of americans they say, maybe even twenty-five percent, and they don't even know; and what i do not know could fill a vaccum.
and afterwards i step into the street and cross at the green and walk downtown and buy some new CDs, new to me. my ideas of what is unlucky are ridiculous cliches that even i don't take quite seriously, but my ideas of luck have always been personal and it's easy to turn it around. in the evening i make spinach and pasta and Squire Tuck eats the spinach and even doesn't flinch, it's good because it's good for me, he says, and this is surely a sign of good things to come, of right decisions made. right? of course it is.
Now you have me worried about you. I don't really buy that 'it's not bad enough' thing in some cases--we have to pay attention in our own lives, right?
Posted by: ozma | January 28, 2007 at 12:20 AM