Done

It's over.  School is out.  My commute is finished.

Crab Legs

6:50 am, I'm walking down the sidewalk on 108th Street toward my car.  Beside a man and his three sons, all under 4 years old, are discussing garbage on the street.

"What's that?" one of his sons asks.

"Crab legs.  Someone must have had crab legs for dinner."

"What's that?"

"Divinus profundo frofui profusum"


"What's that?"

"The divine pouring fourth from the sea."


The father continued:  A crab swims in the ocean, a fisherman catches it, he brings it to shore, a fishmonger buys it and sells it, a chef cooks it, and man eats it -- and discards it.  And that's the cycle of life."

The boys were clearly perplexed.  I was amused.

And continued toward my car, past the dog poop, the candy wrappers, the garbage spilling from torn bags, and brown beer bottles still standing on a stoop.

Brain Lapse II

I lose my job and lose the ability to remember things.

The day I lost my job, I lost my glasses.  

A few days later, I forget to take my purse with me into the market -- and have to leave my collected items in the basket while I go out for my purse.

I leave the charger for my computer at our house in CT, not once, but twice.  The first time I drive up (120 miles round-trip) after my teaching is over for the day and get back in time for a faculty meeting.  The second time, I lug my computer down by subway to my daughter's office on 42nd Street, and she recharges it for me -- and then I'm very careful about using my computer for the rest of the week.

And last weekend I left my gradebook and folders of student papers up at the house, and had to leave home before 5 a.m. (was up at 4:30) to drive 90 miles up to our house in CT, retrieve the student papers and my gradebook, and drive 60 miles more to get to school by 7:45 -- but because of traffic coming down 684, I arrive just before 8.

Brain Lapse

Tuesday morning, the day after Memorial Day, I woke at 4:22 (somehow, that seems to be when I am waking on school mornings), got out of bed finally at 5:30, and was on my way by 6:15, thinking I'll get to school early and start grading papers.  I have at least a hundred papers to grade.

I opened the sunroof on the Volvo to let in the early morning smells:  pine, grass, foggy mist.  Every thing had a sheen of gray-green as I shot up the Sawmill River Parkway.  I was absorbed in the news of the Turkish ship commandeered by Israeli soldiers, the deaths of civilians, the videos made that showed both sides in the right.  I did not like that Israel had used live ammunition.  I did not like that a non-violent protester had sunk a knife into an Israeli soldier.  I did not like that Gazans are not getting in enough to live well.  I did not like rockets sent from Gaza into Israel.

And before I knew it, the road looked somewhat unfamiliar.  I looked for a sign -- and I was about to breeze past Katonah.  Katonah?  Exit 42?  That meant I'd driven 9 miles past my exit.  And not just past my exit, but past the exit for Mt. Kisco that followed my exit at Roaring Brook.  And another Mt. Kisco exit.  And the exit at Bedford Hills.  How did that happen?  Where was I?

I got off the parkway onto unfamiliar roads, and wended my way to Route 117 which wound its way past shopping malls and through Mt. Kisco's downtown to Chappaqua -- getting me to school about 20 minutes later than I had hoped to arrive.

I wondered -- was it that the news usually came on when I was about 10 miles south of exit 33 -- meaning that I still had 10 miles to go before my exit?  Was my mind just not on where I was and I was lost in the news and in my dreamy early morning thoughts, in particular -- how I dreaded going to work these days since I'd been "let go"?  My psychiatrist would have voted for the later -- saying there are no accidents.  Our brains do what they do because that is what we will -- consciously or not.