enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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Using my time wisely, as I sit at work staring dreamily off into space. ;-)

OK. So my last day is starting out kind of interestingly.

When I arrived up the stairs at the office I could hear my crazy uber boss talking at the elevators so I took a bypass on my usual hallway and turned into another. And lo and behold, as I did, I ran into at least the backside of the bald eagle, with another guy, receding down the hallway. My bike helmet was clicking against my knapsack clips, as it does, and so he turned back. No looks were exchanged but I think he caught a glimpse of the ninja economist before she turned the corner!

And then I changed, went out down the main hallway and around the corner thinking of going to get a coffee, realized that I had forgotten my pass, and turned back down another corridor. And lo and behold I ran into the eagle just as he turned one corner and I proceeded down the hallway. Unfortunately he was in an overcoat and clearly heading out to leave the building for some stakeholder meeting downtown, or something�but he smiled! We were too quickly passing by each other so I did not have an opportunity to do a full-on, HELLLLLO0000! kind of a smile, but I think I cranked out a small one in time. (And let me tell you that I am wearing my super-spectacular green DVeeF dress today, so that my figure looks fantastic and my waist teeny tiny, and so that I can sashaaaay!) I do hope that he saw my smile. The minutes are ticking! And the issue is of course that he has no idea about the time pressure. No idea. He will not see me again after 5 p.m. today.

So all of this has me thinking about the book The R3public of L0ve, by Carol Sh!3lds.

I last read that book when I was quite young, sappy, impressionable. I read it after she won the Pulitz3r for the St0ne Diari3s. Both I liked, but the R of L I loved. (Though my goodness there are some moving bits in teh Ston3 D!aries - my favourite being the letter that she reads after her husband dies, in which he says all of the things he could never say when he was alive, such as, "That day, when I was having one of my terrible headaches and you held me in the kitchen, your plastic apron crinkling, pressing your fingers to my temples...I would have liked to have danced with you - danced in the kitchen, through the back door, and out into the garden.")

De3pa Mehta made a not fantastic movie � or at least not mainstream movie - from the book a couple of years ago. I loved it, though few did. Nevermind.

(Apt review from IMDB: �The problem with 'Republic of Love' is that it is a film made because it has a good filmmaker, not a good script. There was totally inadequate attention to detail in the drawing of the lead characters, and the result is a sprawl that is tied together by a good visual sense, not a good narrative one. If you are making a political allegory, that can be fine, but if it is a love story, you are sunk. I kept thinking about all of those publicly funded organisations which had bank-rolled the film and, in spite of my leanings towards the public support of fine filmmakers, found myself thinking that people who were risking their own money would not have jumped with such a weak script (and barely adequate cast...)�)

Anyhow, there�s nothing like the reading experience sometimes to leave us with a lasting impression that no movie and no length of time can quite obliterate.

In my case it was the first few chapters of the book. Sure, as with many books I was disappointed that the romantic leads had tragic fashion sense and jobs and names that might have appealed in a feminist novel in the 1970s.;-) (The female protaganist�s name is Faye; she�s a scholar who studies the symbolism of mermaids in folk culture. Her romantic interest becomes Tom, who works as a deejay or sports caster or host or something at some mainstream radio station. Tom is kind of a funny guy, however, in that he was raised in a convent or something, by a 1000 different girlish hands. )

At the start of the book both Tom and Faye are pretty useless at love. Tom�s been married and divorced three times or so. He loves women but he can�t get it together. Faye is in the latest of her dead end relationships with a cold fish, or at least a man who doesn�t inspire her particular passion. I don�t want to say � it�s been so long since I read the book � that he�s the kind of guy who folds his socks before sex, but that�s the image that comes to mind. I know, that was clich�d, and almost certainly not at all what Sh!elds wrote.

Anyhow. So the point that I am getting to � and there is a point here, really � is that for the first third of the book or so Faye and Tom are living in the same city (Winterpeg), wandering the same streets � and we�re watching them � and just missing each other.

It�s an old idea. But it�s comforting as well as tragic that you can think of someone to whom you might be well matched walking the same streets (or hallways, stairwells, as the case might be ;)), and yet at times so slightly offset that you never meet.

I wish I could draw a map of my day, of the way that the universe arranges itself around me. Wouldn�t it be cool to see in visual terms how your breath intermingled with that of others, how you caught a whiff of their perfume just after they passed through a door, how something else about them was left behind and affected you in a way time and space didn't facilitate you to acknowledge?

10:05 a.m. - 2007-11-16

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