where the wind takes you, it takes me too...

Tonight, after my massage and haircut, I went and had a lavish supper by myself at The Sugarbowl. I sat at the bar because there were no tables. I read my book, for over two hours. Eating pan-fried salmon and bernard callebaut chocolate souffle with 10 year port, I was thoroughly enjoying myself. The bartender asked what I was up to tonight and I couldn't bring myself to admit I was celebrating by myself, because although I was completely content and happy with the evening, I thought it might be a point of pity for someone else. I ended up telling him I was reading because I was teaching an English Lit course at a University in town. As the words came out of my mouth though, I started to think about how that revelation about myself would allow him to make generalizations about me. And then I thought about the other things I could have said in reply to him and how it would have totally changed his perspective of me.

A.

Bartender: "What do you do?"
Bri: "I'm celebrating tonight because I'm done a busy season of landscaping. I've been a foreman for a local landscaping company for the past 6 months and now things are settling down for winter"


B.

Bartender: "What do you do?"
Bri: "I'm planning the photos I'll be using in my upcoming show at the cafe across the street. I'm currently setting up a photography business and thinking over what to call myself"


but tonight I chose option C.

Bartender: "What do you do?"
Bri: "Well, I'm an instructor for a first year English Lit course at the university, so I'm doing some reading for that because I teach again tomorrow and we're just getting into our novel studies."


Its so strange to me how people's views of me would change with any of those replies. It also makes me wonder, when they first see me, what they imagine my life to be. Certainly not an English Lit instructor, I'm too young for that. Not a landscaper, I look to girly and un-muscled for that. A photographer? maybe, but I'm not sure my outward appearance would naturally be ascribed such creativity.

In the book I was reading tonight, a phrase jumped out at me:

"Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable - which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we all struggle to live." (Marilynne Robinson, "Gilead")


....

Also, tonight I managed to stumble across many beautifully written phrases in Gilead that made me think of something else I had found recently. My roommate owns this book called "Misfits" by Jon Rosen. One of my favorites that has been popping up in my head constantly this past week...



the caption reads: Suddenly he felt happy. He did not know why. He tried to capture the feeling in a net."

As I sat there by myself sipping my port, i felt this way. And then I read these words from Gilead - "There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient" - It was beautiful, and I'll stop writing now because my eloquence looks weak in the face of these thoughts.




***postscript***

my roommate just came home, and upon hearing what I did tonight said "oh, thats such a 'bri' night"

I'm still deciding if thats a good thing or not.