blu’s curse

Posted on January 2, 2003 in Routine

Despite my skeptical outlook, superstitions sometimes lodge themselves in my head, particularly after periods of stress such as the one I’ve just gone through.

A throwaway comment by the Queen of the Throwaway Comment, blu iguana, was my haunting for New Year’s: “remember… whatever you are doing tomorrow, you’ll be doing all year… make it good!”

Uh-oh. I was up until 5 am, distracting myself with solitaire games and working out the images in a short story. I slept through most of the day. When I got up, I worked a bit on City of the Silent and checked my Amazon.com sales through that site: abysmal. I spent the evening pacing and thinking some more. I took a nap and one minute before midnight, I sat down at the computer again to blog. I did strive for and mostly attain a happy attitude.

The rest of America goofed off, the male half drinking itself into a stupor as they watched sub-professional football games on television and bought the dream that the money for the commercials they endured somehow went to promote education. I think I have just explained the problem with America today.

I don’t know what the female half did, except for Lynn, who went off into the afternoon to visit a sick member of her Quaker meeting and to chat with her Aunt Pat.

Shortly after midnight, I went through the email for the day and the comments for my New Year’s entry. One email entry told me to pray about my hardships: God would fix them. Aside from that was the usual junk mail and a few kind notes from friends left over from the previous days, mostly on the topic of Ambrose.

In other words, I slept through most of New Year’s, not associating with anyone at all. The big event of the day was at the beginning when I lugged the lead organ pipe outside and blew it for the mystification of the neighbors. It didn’t work right the first time, but Lynn assured me that that was good luck. I smiled and changed my imood to “cautious”, acknowledging the hopefulness which had seized me with the deep breath of knowing that 2002 was gone but not ignoring the burn of despair that I laid upon like a holy man demonstrating his ability to take it all.

Trouble is, I can’t. But maybe I won’t have to.