where we find ourselves

from fretting about t-fare to 14-hour days, my schedule has gone from zero to 80 in a blink. yesterday at last entirely free, i refused to heed to the hounding calls of projects and salespeople. bah. it can all wait. at least a day.

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in spike heels and a power suit, obviously pressed for time, she scolded and pulled. he twisted in his collar and backpedaled fiercely. one more painful yank and he finally surrendered. he tried to show her he wasn't ready to come home, so he had to now plop, plop, plop three big turds on the marble floor. she cooed and comforted. a magnificent husky, his evacuation mid-stride would have been admirable if he'd been at his proper latitude, leashed to a moving sled team, but was hardly acceptable in an urban lobby. her actions and reactions were so backward and bad, i wanted to kidnap the dog then and there. why did she have the quintessential team/work dog who must spend all day alone, cooped up and purposeless? hasn't she read or watched anything about training him? he couldn't choose in whose home he wound up, but shouldn't she have ethically considered a dog more suited for her lifestyle? or perhaps no dog at all?

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a walk in the sun and then an australian movie based on a carver story. quietly intense performances burned with the author's familiar theme of love, its absence burdening lives and marriages and the consequent eroding of self and identity. a person who suddenly realizes him- or herself in a thoroughly unsuitable situation or companionship -- unfit as mother, wife, workaday dad, small-town neighbor. how sudden tragedy affects change, but not really. people and place remain the same at their centers. yes. they do. the puzzle pieces do not always fit. no matter how much we thought they would and wish it so.

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when the movie broke, i needed room to breathe. the sun was clear and friendly, the air bright, the river shiny. i meandered along the charles and let the same breeze that powered all those sails carry me home at last. i'm a piece of just one. always?