愛, not

Last night, walking back from a store with Gatorade for my daughter, a car drove past with mismatched headlights -- one whitish and one yellowish.

Walking to the grocery market last week, I passed two women helping a disabled woman walk near KQED. The woman they were helping could only make one sound over and over, which resembled a cat's meow.

The homeless man on my corner was sweeping up today, asking whether Christmas was nice this year. It's cold, very cold here.

A deep fog fell over the city last night. My daughter and I watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on TV. After a good night's sleep, she started feeling better this morning and ate some cereal with milk.

It's the details, day in and out, that perplex me most. How time slows down and speeds up -- why does it act that way?

I gave myself a Christmas present -- the Japanese film Norwegian Wood, based on Murakami's novel. I watched it last night after my child was asleep, and again today. It's a tragic, haunting film, with a life-affirming ending.

It's all about the nature of love.

I've been eliminating foods from my refrigerator and cupboards lately -- lots of old items placed there by others, not me. As I discard each package, I examine it closely, wondering what the person who bought it saw in it.

Most of them are strange (to me) pastes, noodles, and sauces. They are perfectly good still, I'm sure, but since their purchaser(s) no longer visit this space, there is no reason for them to remain either.

As I recycle them, they join other ghosts to leave this place.

Since the latest water cooler disaster, I've relocated dozens of boxes of papers and files to the small bedroom, where no one sleeps. Slowly, I've opened some of the ancient yellow envelopes to examine what's inside.

Invariably, I'm amused to see what the younger me thought worthy of saving. So much paper! So much evidence of life lived! But probably no longer relevant to anyone or anything.

By far the trickiest stuff is all of my unpublished writing. I've already thrown some of it away, but I'm not sure if that was wise. There is plenty of it, some quite crummy, I'm sure; other drafts seem quite promising, even through my aged eyes.

When I was young, I wrote tons of poetry. I don't think any of it was ever published. Most of it I never showed anybody.

It is not good, I think, but it is an authentic representation of the feelings I was struggling to release as a young man. Maybe I should finally publish some of it here?

Other writings, fantasies, essays, unpromising novels -- all should perhaps be discarded. Except for a few of the essays -- it would be good to preserve my idealism from 40 years ago, I think.

There's a song playing in the background. What was thought to be the right way, turns out to be the wrong way after all.

What was that from?

Why do things become confusing at times? And then, all of a sudden, such clarity that it burns your eyes?

Where is the adjective that captures this, among all of the words available to me. Where is it? Or maybe it's a noun.

What is that word I am grasping for and why is it absent from my life?

Ah yes, now I remember: 愛

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