food groups

there are some pretty distinct species on facebook: the domestic goddesses, the foodies who eat out, and the ones who drool. i drool.

i saw him too

monumental idiot, var. n. the fellow who sounds his horn at the taxicab with the running engine and the passenger inside, that is occupying the drop-off point in front of his car. [f. E. monumental + idiot] because, well, most people do not choose to dawdle in the taxicab passing the time of day with the driver, they are usually making a payment, and most taxi drivers do not stay at the drop-off point on purpose to offend the driver behind them, they have  a living to make. 

patience, honey.

i saw him

monumental idiot n. a person who demonstrates his intellectual deficiency by removing his face mask in the Great Haze of 2013 in order to drag a puff from his cigarette. [f. E. monumental + idiot, in the context of the singapore smog.] from observation, typically a young adult male walking with a somewhat self-conscious swagger.

anecdotally, at least five of such specimens exist.

deja vu

trying to buy a surgical mask from the pharmacy in the haze of 2013 is like trying to buy a snow shovel from the hardware store in the winter of snowmaggedon back in 2011. it's a similar exercise in hopeful futility.

perspectives

an old man tells me he enjoyed talking to me. sometimes people don't like to listen, he says. they are too busy. i would be busy too except that these days the Lord carries my tears in his bottle, and that has had the strange effect of slowing me down.

bottle of tears

my friend tells me about her special needs son. he is slow, she says. he will always need help. i hope he can learn a useful skill that he can parlay into self-support in time. 

how many broken dreams lie behind those words, i wonder. how many modified designs and arrested hopes are needed to help a mother look past the pain and focus on the need? grain must be ground to make bread, someone reminds me. one does not volunteer to be ground. but if mayhaps one is, the bread is the finer for it. 

kindness

so i get on the bus in my semi-drained state and stumble off a stop too early but the bus stays there for me to run up again to the driver in a realization of my error. you usually get off at the next stop, he tells me. come on back up! 

:)

trudgery

walking home from the train station

smelling the burn in the air

i want to stop and rest

but i do not

because

to stop 

is 

worse.

i don't remember the haze of 1997.

but the haze of 2013 about tops it.

physiology

body lag n. that pernicious combination of wooziness of mind and malaise of form that cyclically assaults you on monday mornings and only begins to clear toward the end of the day. [f. E. body (Gk. σάρξ) + lag (E. jet-lag)]

can meh?

sans updates sans modernization and i'll bet you sans EMR.

with the original folding aluminium gates.

to which all gen-X-ers say, wow.

drama mama

er. really?

petition

dear neighbor who practices mozart on the piano with such uninhibited vigor,

please consider moving your practice to office hours during the workweek, particularly in view of the fact that it is the school vacation time now. if that is not possible, please consider not practicing on sunday evenings because for most of us, sunday evening is our final line of defense before monday strikes, and the sound of mozart played at twice the decibel and thrice the speed he was written to be played can cause much pre-workweek dyspepsia.

thank you.

your neighbor who once liked mozart,

rugs

cautionary tales - murtagh (2011)

there is a pleasure in being mad

that only the madman knows.

i love this book for his generosity and richness of detail.

it is a survival guide from the trenches.

civil discourse, not

here, read this, and have a look at this. news websites of a certain size are now subject to licensing and regulation of their content on pain of a hefty penalty, so that people like me get to read only what is right. 

i guess my current problem is that in order to get to the right things i need to get past the amazement indignation and revulsion swirling around inside me and blurring my vision. 

so, read this too, and be engaged. the way to tell the right from the wrong, the good book tells me, is by constant practice. sheltering and disuse lead to atrophy and loss.

silence in the face of evil is itself evil.

- d. bonhoeffer

lunch time

today i meet an old gentleman tottering on his umbrella, asking for directions from a stout middle aged gentleman who looks as rough and ready as they come. the older man has just stumbled his way off the bus and the younger man was about to board it. i want to go to my friend's thai food place, the old gentleman says, the one in ikea. this is ikea, the middle aged man says, but there's no thai eatery here. there are eating places across the road, we tell him together, is that where you want to go? and so we shuffle up the escalator across the overhead bridge down the steps over the zebra crossing down the elevator and arrive at the thai stall at the food court. take a cab home after lunch, we tell the old man firmly, and say good bye to each other.

today i learn that we build barriers into everyday tasks that only disabled people ever get to appreciate. i learn that help comes in many guises and that God keeps his kernel of goodness alive in man. i also learn that a quick trip to the neighborhood store is full of possibilities for a soul-enriching adventure, if i keep my heart unhardened and open to interruptions.