Author’s note: This is from a series based on my journal. Unconventional and idiosyncratic punctuation and formatting are intentional.
Early this morning I dreamed I was trying to get home from a trip but I kept delaying myself in order not to offend the people with whom I had spent the night. The people seemed to be friends or at least acquaintances but no one I know in particular. I was also trying to figure out how to get in some exercise before sitting in the car for nine hours. I tried to run a lap around a soggy soccer field misted in early-morning fog but that disagreed with me. At one point or in maybe another dream I refereed a fight between Robin and Devan at the shelter over one of the washing machines in the laundry room except Robin was Black and Devan was white. It seems that the washing machine was being used to farm fish. Who’s in charge here? I asked. I am! said Devan. She put her hands on her hips and glared at Robin. Okay! It’s your decision then, I said. Robin glared back and left the room. Lent begins today. Every restaurant seems to be offering fish dinners on Fridays.
Before going to fitness class this morning I looked through pictures Gray sent of some wall displays from an aboriginal museum she and Dad were visiting in Melbourne. I did not read the displays. I hardly looked at them. The text was too small and too much and together they were too much like school. I think they are finished with the nature part of their tour and now have a few days in urban areas before they return home next week. The weather here today is the same as it is there. It’s breezy and balmy. The thermostat says 75. But here winter is supposed to return this weekend with freezing rain and a chance for snow. Australia still has some summer to go. At class Tab and Louise asked me about writing. Recently they both talked to someone about keeping a journal and the hazards of other people reading it when they should not. My will directs my journal to be destroyed. I have also always thought that if there is something someone never wants anyone to know don’t ever write it down in the first place or be sure to destroy it right after writing it and that if anyone ever reads my journal without my permission and comes across something that upsets him or her that’s on them, not me.
This afternoon I went to the library to return French Exit and pick up a Lydia Davis short story collection called Can’t and Won’t. I learned about it yesterday from Michelle Ross’ interview with Flash Fiction Institute. At the satellite desk I saw Claudia. She is barely tall enough to see over the monitor there. On a trolley behind the main desk I saw one of Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels. I told the librarian I had just requested the latest. They are such cozy, kind reads, she said, they make you feel good. At fitness class this morning Michelle and I discovered we both enjoy the series. Michelle said she wants to go to Botswana where the series takes place. I told her I’d had the same desire until I’d learned the country is mostly desert. Michelle doesn’t care. She wants to go anyway. I’ll just drink a lot of water, she said.
At the grocery on my way home I crossed paths with a man who wheeled up on a black bike with a low sling seat and fat tires. He pulled a red bike alongside him with his right hand like a phantom sidecar. It had an umbrella and metal rod tied to its top tube. He locked only the black bike to the rack by the door. Inside I checked out with David. Glad I’m not her, he said when he began to scan my order. He nodded toward a pregnant young woman by the Hostess display and motioned over his belly as if he were holding a watermelon there. Same, I said. I mentioned having twins. He mentioned having a son. He said he is 18 and getting ready to graduate high school and then going onto college as a part of a program that’s covering much of the tuition. I mentioned meeting the other David cashier who started working this weekend. We’re the same, David said. I must have missed something. This David has a belly and a red beard. The other David is slender and bald. The man behind me bought a four-pack of red Jell-O. In the parking lot he walked to a gold SUV half way across the area surrounded by empty spaces.
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I love Alexander McCall Smith too.