May 7: Off Your Stride, Difficult Thing to Maintain, Circus

Zaphod and Arthur and Ford are making introductions . . .

When you're cruising down the road in the fast lane and you lazily sail past a few hard-driving cars and are feeling pretty pleased with yourself and then accidentally change down from fourth to first instead of third thus making your engine leap out of your hood in a rather ugly mess, it tends to throw you off your stride in much the same way that this remark threw Ford Prefect off his.

Being thrown off your stride.  I get it.

Happiness is a difficult thing to maintain.  I have found that out recently.  Things come along that throw you off your stride.  Two months ago, it was the place where I've worked for close to 20 years closing.  Forever.  A month ago, it was starting a new job.  These last few days, it was stacks of final papers and exams to grade.  (That last one is also why I've been absent from this blog for the last two days.)

I submitted my final grades late last night.  I thought I would feel happier, freer, relaxed-er.  Instead, happiness fled again, threw me off my stride.  Darkness is sitting on my shoulders.  Just before I sat down to type this post, I tried to eat some cheese curds, which I normally love.  They tasted like oily, deep-fried rubber.  I'm tempted to try to some chocolate, but I have a feeling that I would experience similar results.

As I said, happiness has fled me.

If you've gotten this far, I know you're probably wondering the cause of this current bout of the blues.  You're also probably wondering where I got those cheese curds.  (For the record, it was Culver's.)  I am not ready to dissect and examine this depression I'm in.  So, please just accept this explanation . . . 

Happiness has fled me.

I struggled all day at work.  I went to the circus this evening with my family.  I struggled there, as well.  (Do NOT send me angry comments about the treatment of circus animals.  I don't have the energy to respond to them.)  As I sit here typing this post, I'm still struggling, because . . .

Happiness has fled me.

I will be taking things one day at a time.  May one hour or one minute at a time.  Whatever is required.  Despair seems like it's moved into my neighborhood, probably in the abandoned meth house on the corner.  I plan to keep myself locked away, and I don't plan to answer any knocks on the front door or rings on my home phone.

Depression is becoming a very familiar creature to me.  It sort of looks like a big, black, hairy elephant.

Happiness has fled Saint Marty.

Some joyful pics from the circus tonight . . . 

August 22: Here Was Fun, Ice Cream Truck, Circus

So out of the gate of the railroad and into the streets of Dresden marched the light opera.  Billy Pilgrim was the star.  He led the parade.  Thousands of people were on the sidewalks, going home from work.  They were watery and putty-colored, having eaten mostly potatoes during the past two years.  They had expected no blessing beyond the mildness of the day.  Suddenly--here was fun.

Billy did not meet many of the eyes that found him so entertaining.  He was enchanted by the architecture of the city.  Merry amoretti wove garlands above windows.  Roguish fauns and naked nymphs peeked down at Billy from festooned cornices.  Stone monkeys frisked among scrolls and seashells and bamboo.

Billy, with his memories of the future, knew that the city would be smashed to smithereens and then burned--in about thirty more days.  He knew, too, that most of the people watching him would soon be dead.  So it goes.  

And Billy worked his hands in his muff as he marched.  His fingertips, working there in the hot darkness of the muff, wanted to know what the two lumps in the lining of the little impresario's coat were.  The fingertips got inside the lining.  They palpated the lumps, the pea-shaped thing and the horseshoe -shaped thing.  The parade had to halt by a busy corner.  The traffic light was red.

This whole passage is filled with comedy and tragedy.  Billy is marching through the streets of Dresden in silver boots, his hands crammed into a muff.  The Dresdeners are pulled out of their dull lives for a few seconds because of this spectacle, the way I was pulled out of my daily drudge yesterday by a solar eclipse.  The slightest shift in routine, and suddenly a day can transform into a circus.

My day was pretty humdrum.  Got up at the same time.  Took too much time in the bathroom before I left for work, thereby forcing me to run up the stairs to the time clock when I got to the medical center, as usual.  Patients and phone calls and medical records all day.  Same thing I do every day, Monday through Friday.

Let me tell you what turned my day into a circus this evening:  the sound of the ice cream truck.  As I got out of my car, I could hear its bells in the distance.  I couldn't tell the direction the music was coming from.  So, I ran into the house, yelled "Ice cream truck!" to my son, and he came barreling down the stairs, pulling his shoes on.

We jumped in my car, and started circling streets in search of our quarry.  It took about seven minutes and one phone call (I know the guy who drives the truck) to track down a Sno Cone and an M&M ice cream sandwich.  But it was worth it.  It made me feel like a kid again for a few minutes, waving my money in the air, running after the ice cream truck on July days.  And just like that, my day was a circus.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for his son and ice cream trucks.