As I juggled my bags at the front door earlier this evening--the veterans gave me a chance to stay out of the office and do things like go shopping in the rain and wander around a Japanese supermarket--a man in a jumpsuit asked where he could find my building manager. I told him and walked inside, where everything felt darker than it had when I left this afternoon. Things that I had left on were off, and I realized slowly that the power had gone out and the man in the jumpsuit belonged to the truck from the power company.
You know how, in John Cheever's story "The Enormous Radio," the people's marriage looks perfect until some outside object comes in and shakes the cracks to the surface? Well, the first time I wrote about that story it was because I believed that their trouble came from our habit as people to believe that everyone else has everything figured out, and the snapping back when we realize that's not true. But the story has been on my mind lately, and I've decided that the problem really is that we believe that other people hold the keys to our secrets.
That's the same, only different.
I have parsnips that I need to figure out how to cook, and an acorn squash with which to do the same. I'll be cooking and cleaning and knitting, hopefully, before tomorrow night's Broken Social Scene show. I'm not going to tell you about the disturbing dreams I had last night after yesterday's evening with some of the funniest people I know, but rest assured that they were strange. And that you all were there. Occasionally, naked.
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