The first thing I heard in the dark this morning was my radio turning itself on at its preset time & Carl Kasell saying that John Ritter had died. Later as I was brushing my teeth it occurred to me that it must have been a dream, so I went online to check & that is how I found out about Johnny Cash. Bee & Beck each called me, separately, at work early this morning to make sure I knew.
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:Yesterday was among other things my parents' wedding anniversary, & I forgot to call them. The last time I called them on their anniversary was 2001, when I was not calling to wish them a happy thirty years, I was calling to make sure that they were okay & that no one was trying to crash planes into Ft Knox which is, you know, about ten miles from where I grew up.
All day yesterday I thought about watching the news all that morning, sitting in my scrubs with all my coworkers in their scrubs, & our patients in their hospital gowns, on the floor of my boss's office. I remember that even then I felt weird, knowing that this would be the event of the collective lifetime of this thrown-together group of people, & feeling sad that when these hospital-gowned women would be asked in the future, "where were you? how did you find out? where did you watch tv?" they would have to say, or refrain from saying, "I was wearing a hospital gown, waiting for the doctor to get there so I could have my abortion."
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:Anyway I called Addie to wish her a happy birthday & I would like to take this opportunity to declare that I miss having Girl Friends. My only female friends here are bean & Bee+Beck. It's not the same. It's not the same.
Maybe I just miss Kenyon. Maybe I just miss.
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:I was reading The Best American Poetry 1998 at the bus stop today & an unshaven man standing next to me interrupted me to tell me he likes to read, too, & I should read the Left Behind series. "It's good. Even if you don't, uh, if you don't believe."
Like the other morning at a different bus stop when the Jehovah's Witness was telling me about terrorism & the risks inherent in air travel but that it was all okay because, as she put it, "A time is coming when GOD will get rid of the wicked."
& as I stood there I thought, "Oh, may GOD choose instead to get rid of wickedness."
Anyway I wonder if the Left Behind guy today was noticing that the John Koethe poem I was reading had this really fantastic, intricate, & shifting rhyme scheme to it, really lovely, really.
