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mallorys_cameraWhole covey of robins this morning, three or four or five of them, doing their little one-legged jigs on the jagged ledges of filthy ice that line Church Street outside the Purple House. Harbingers, yes? Though that seems almost impossible to imagine. It was three degrees when I walked to work this morning, so cold that I actually developed a sinus headache by the time I got into the office. And there's supposed to be another big snowstorm on Sunday.
I dreamed of Erica last night. She was giving me advice. Something, by the way, she would never deign to do in Real Life because advice, in the Erica-verse, is gratuitous: You either learn by example or not at all.
Erica, I see now, was a strategist from Day 1. She parlayed her beauty and intelligence far more successfully than I was ever able to parlay mine -- I suspect because we had different goals. Erica always knew she wanted a particular level of material affluence that would allow her to be in control; whereas "control" is kind of a dirty word for me: On some very deep level, I prefer to float in the currents. I've never really aspired to a life more luxurious than the one I had as a graduate student.
In other words, I'm a fatalist. Erica's not.
In the dream, Erica was counseling me about a situation I'm now in that I could probably manipulate to considerable advantage -- except I hate manipulating things.
"You've been in retrograde long enough, Patrizia," Erica said -- not unkindly. "Time to start moving forward again."
"Well, yeah," I said. "Totally. I need to move forward. I just don't know whether I want to move forward in that particular direction."
"But that's the direction this one-up goes," Erica told me. We were sitting upstairs in the balcony at the Cafe Med, and she was peering downstairs at people in the coffee line. Losing interest in me.
When I woke up, I had to look up the term "one-up" since I don't actually know what it means. Turns out to be that totem object in a video game that increases a player's lives by one.
Right
I dreamed of Erica last night. She was giving me advice. Something, by the way, she would never deign to do in Real Life because advice, in the Erica-verse, is gratuitous: You either learn by example or not at all.
Erica, I see now, was a strategist from Day 1. She parlayed her beauty and intelligence far more successfully than I was ever able to parlay mine -- I suspect because we had different goals. Erica always knew she wanted a particular level of material affluence that would allow her to be in control; whereas "control" is kind of a dirty word for me: On some very deep level, I prefer to float in the currents. I've never really aspired to a life more luxurious than the one I had as a graduate student.
In other words, I'm a fatalist. Erica's not.
In the dream, Erica was counseling me about a situation I'm now in that I could probably manipulate to considerable advantage -- except I hate manipulating things.
"You've been in retrograde long enough, Patrizia," Erica said -- not unkindly. "Time to start moving forward again."
"Well, yeah," I said. "Totally. I need to move forward. I just don't know whether I want to move forward in that particular direction."
"But that's the direction this one-up goes," Erica told me. We were sitting upstairs in the balcony at the Cafe Med, and she was peering downstairs at people in the coffee line. Losing interest in me.
When I woke up, I had to look up the term "one-up" since I don't actually know what it means. Turns out to be that totem object in a video game that increases a player's lives by one.
Right
