Yes, I realize this may seem a pathetic or desperate stab at the void yet, oddly enough, I'm comfortable with it. I think of a line from a Jann Arden song ("The Sound Of", from Happy?) I'm not lonely I swear to God, I'm just alone.
I do volunteer work with a number of people twenty or thirty years older than I am. Sometimes it gets a bit depressing when someone is having a bad day. I appreciate their company and they appreciate mine. The day may not be any more stimulating than a few games of pinochle, on a really good day I can read a recent letter aloud to them and just sense the warmth they get from even the briefest of messages. And even if it triggers a remembrance I've heard so many times before there's something so special in those few moments where time seems meaningless, it doesn't seem possible that anything was ever so new or shiny as in those shared recollections when I suddenly feel older and duller than they do.
I lost my grandparents before I ever got to know them, and I guess we've all had the neighborhood curmudgeon whose sole purpose seemed to be nothing more than to scowl with disapproval whenever we displayed a bit of happiness.
Old people used to really creep me out, now I tend to envy them the tranquility they seem to find in the most mundane of times.
On a totally unrelated topic, I talked to my younger sister in Virginia today, the area is experiencing the worst blizzard of record in 77 years, I heard on the National news a little later they'd already had over 1800 car accidents, and that was still this afternoon. I didn't have the heart to tell her we'd had about a tablespoon of accumulation almost two weeks ago, huge for here in the Houston area, where it's snowed twice in the 18 years I've been here now.
I do volunteer work with a number of people twenty or thirty years older than I am. Sometimes it gets a bit depressing when someone is having a bad day. I appreciate their company and they appreciate mine. The day may not be any more stimulating than a few games of pinochle, on a really good day I can read a recent letter aloud to them and just sense the warmth they get from even the briefest of messages. And even if it triggers a remembrance I've heard so many times before there's something so special in those few moments where time seems meaningless, it doesn't seem possible that anything was ever so new or shiny as in those shared recollections when I suddenly feel older and duller than they do.
I lost my grandparents before I ever got to know them, and I guess we've all had the neighborhood curmudgeon whose sole purpose seemed to be nothing more than to scowl with disapproval whenever we displayed a bit of happiness.
Old people used to really creep me out, now I tend to envy them the tranquility they seem to find in the most mundane of times.
On a totally unrelated topic, I talked to my younger sister in Virginia today, the area is experiencing the worst blizzard of record in 77 years, I heard on the National news a little later they'd already had over 1800 car accidents, and that was still this afternoon. I didn't have the heart to tell her we'd had about a tablespoon of accumulation almost two weeks ago, huge for here in the Houston area, where it's snowed twice in the 18 years I've been here now.