i lost my phone

we live in fascinating times. here i am, my phone left in the backseat of a friend's car, able to jump online and check to see if anyone has called my phone from my computer. there was a time not that long ago where an extended trip like the one i'm preparing to take meant expecting to be away from your phone for a while. now i'm driving up to mason tomorrow morning to make sure that doesn't happen. how swiftly time changes. the strange thing is, i had hoped to make a couple of phone calls tonight. and though no one ever calls, i'm afraid i'm going to miss a call tonight. don't know what you've got 'til it's gone, right?

i sat down this afternoon at moe's to try and write down some thoughts following the visitation for susan's husband, but nothing came. i have no words for a situation like this, for two little girls left wondering what happened to their father and if it means their cat and dog might leave them as well. i have no words for the swirl of emotions on susan's face as we methodically made our way through the line to where she stood, just in front of the casket. my feelings on visitations are well-documented and i won't go into them again. i only wish i had words that would help, or the power to take the pain away. but i do not. and quote woody all you want, but showing up for things like this rarely feels like success. it feels like the absolute least i can do.

the clouds have been following me all day, stealing my thoughts and distracting me from the thoughts still lingering about. right now they're shadowed against a dimming sky. this afternoon they were brilliant white in an impossibly blue sky. no ducks or figures or mythical creatures, just a reminder that life is filled with unimaginable beauty we miss every day because we're too busy staring into the abyss.

we're moving on.

blood work tomorrow morning. trip to mason to pick up my phone after that. home to probably mow my lawn, unless rain intervenes, which looks unlikely, dagnabit. do some laundry. start laying out what i need to pack. then back to the exact same building from the blood test for a meeting with my sleep doctor about my future with the damned bipap machine. then more prep for the trip. hard to believe it's coming so soon. it's times like this i wish i were a list maker, but i'm not, as it was at the beginning, so it is now and so it shall ever be, world without end. need to begin throwing stuff i want to take into a centralized location as i think of it so i don't leave stuff behind. which i will.

the museum has an exhibit going on now of photographs by gregory crewdson. you can do a google search to see some of his work. if you're in the cincy area or are going to be in the cincy area before oct. 5, check it out. huge prints of staged scenes that feel like captured moments from a david lynch film or a real-life version of a hopper painting. make sure you stop by the gift shop to look at the book beneath the roses before you leave. haven't been this taken with a photographer since peter lik.

enough for tonight. want to try and finish west wing season four before i leave tuesday. seems doable, especially since i don't sleep anymore. night. Æ

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