It was one of those gray (or is it grey??), spitting days — my day-off, as luck would have it. Not only that: my alarm clock failed to operate for some reason this morning, so I awoke just in time to race down the hill to an early appointment (okay, a hair appointment, where I may or may not have been coping with gray of a different sort), which didn't get me off to the greatest start. I say that; I actually like my hair appointments (as my hair guy is a pal). And maybe the rush put me in high gear for the rest of the day; I did manage to catch up on all sorts of things on the home front. Gray, spitting days are like that: they take away the allure of being outside, doing all manner of outward/active things, and force one's inner/inward attention. That's how it works with me, anyway. By the end of the day, though, I was really craving some fresh sea air, however thick with mist/spit/whatever — to breathe some ions (isn't there some healthful argument for that??) — so I raced down to First Beach, i.e., in the opposite direction of my morning venture, before it got dark. The surf was up — not just rushing but roaring — the surfers were out, and I was engaged by the silliest sight: a pair of gray slip-on sneakers tucked beneath a gray car with two gray tailpipes — perfect Os — above the gray pavement. There was just something so cool-ly monochromatic about it. And smart, too, as the shoes were not getting spit/spat upon while their surfer/owner was no doubt out enjoying the waves. Why the shoes weren't simply in the car is another question, one for which I'll never have an answer — how frustrating to know I'll never have an answer (!). Then, back home, around dinner time, an alarm went off. Not a dinner bell or an inner bell (with some sort of answer: "Oh!"), but my alarm clock, which apparently I had set for p.m. rather than a.m. in my rush to get to bed last night (seriously, I couldn't wait). So it went off a half-day late. And having that minor mystery solved did, I must say, bring a measure of satisfaction, if not quite a rush. And tomorrow's forecast is rain ...
You know that rushed feeling??
As in, "Am I coming or going??"
He knows where he's going ...
