Got to be birds flying higher

Quiet couple of days. (One might, of course, say every day is quiet.) I dashed off 500 new words on the Work in Progress. I have no idea whether the words are any good, but they are out there, at least. They have an existence apart from my imagination.

Ichabod annoyed me slightly a few weeks back by remarking (words to the effect) that it wasn't as though I could be writing with any idea that my writing was going to go anywhere, right? I wasn't thinking of publication and an audience, was I? I was writing because it was fun!

This miffed me, but I let it pass.

But when the subject came up again in yesterday's phone call, I interrupted him: "Writing is not a pastime the same way teaching yourself how to play the guitar is. It's not particularly fun unless you're writing well. And if you're doing it well, of course, you're thinking about publication and an audience."

I mean, Ichabod knows I published a lot of nonfiction back in the day, some of it in fairly reputable venues. He's even read selected pieces. I was—well... not offended. But disappointed that all he thinks I'm doing is playing air guitar.

Although it's quite true that neither of my children have ever been deeply interested in anything I write.

I suspect they may feel threatened by it in some way.

###

Shawangunk Dems' semiannual roadside trash pickup was yesterday. Scary how many empty vodka flasks I picked up—in a relatively residential neighborhood, too. I began to think it isn't such a bad deal after all, that I can't won't drive after dark.

First time I'd done any Shawangunk Dems-related activities in quite a while. Adrienne reassigned the website administration. She didn't think I was updating it often enough. Well, you can't update a website if you don't have content to update it with, and despite numerous cheery email requests—Send me your photos of the St. Patrick's Day Parade!—nobody was sending me any pix. Less scut work for me is always a good thing, but Adrienne's dictatorialness was annoying, so when she sent me an email beseeching me to join her campaign for Shawanagunk legislative representative, I ignored it.

Picking up trash, though. Always a good thing. So, I showed up. I partnered with Marge, who is an awfully nice person, one of those rare people who actually listens to what other people say without interposing irrelevant asides from her own resume.

We had to make a detour to Marge's house, an honest-to-God log cabin in the middle of a dank forest. Very dark. I met her husband! Very dour. And I felt a deep wave of sympathy for Marge: Wait! You spent 40 years having to live here & having to be married to him? Maybe I'm better off than I think I am.

After trash picking up, I did a bunch of errands, and then dropped by Stephen W's garage sale. He and his wife are leaving the quaint & scenic Hudson Valley for a senior citizen facility in Cleveland.

Stephen W. was the coordinator for one of the TaxBwana sites I volunteered at last year. Nicest guy in the world. We made several long car rides together during my tenure during which we had conversations intimate enough to give me the complete 360° on his life—the little boy who grew up in Brooklyn dreaming of being an aviator, the astigmatism that prevented him from flying, the subsequent military reassignment to logistics, the subsequent career in logistics with the City of New York, the disastrous first marriage, the son who essentially committed suicide by eating himself to death, the drug-addled granddaughter who desperately wants him to save her but whom he can't save because the second wife would object—

At the time of those car rides, I distinctly remember thinking, He & I were close in some previous life.

I suppose that's why I felt compelled to say goodbye to him in this life.

And I think he felt it, too.

Because he reached out very awkwardly and hugged me.

Now, Stephen W. is not a hugging type of guy, and there was nothing in our previous interactions that might seem to warrant casual hugging.

But those past-life connections are impossible not to acknowledge.