Primal thinking

It's my sister's birthday today. She just turned a prime number. And in a few days, I shall turn a prime number also. I was quite surprised a few years ago to discover that my sister thinks in these terms too. Somehow, I thought I was the only one who noticed.

I've just been reading (perhaps inhaling would be a better term) Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs. I've been laughing a lot and reading random bits to Robert, that is, when I can breathe long enough to get words out. It's poignant and disturbing and deeply funny. I love the way the author announces -out of the blue- that he was raised in a cult by a psychiatrist to whom his mother gave him, and that he befriended a pedophile who lived in the back yard (and yes, I've already ordered that book too). Or that when he's confronted by a reader/fan who wants to confess her ugliest secrets, he wishes she'd be run over by a bus or slip under the wheels of a garbage truck. But he's also touching, especially when he talks about his brother, who has Asperger's, or his dogs, or especially about his partner. I'm inspired by the good life that AB has formed out of early tragedy, confusion, and abandonment.

Today, I had lunch with a friend who's on the edge of something great in her life. She's woken up after a long, painful sleep, and has prepared herself for something. She's in that oh-so-familiar place, knowing that change is coming, that it's unstoppable, but not knowing what will happen when she takes the next step, nor what the next step will be. I am inspired by her, though I think she'd be surprised to hear me say that. (Funny moment -- I had bought a roundish loaf of bread, which was sitting on our table. I started to tell her that in the next few months, I imagined her blossoming in unimaginable ways. Suddenly, she moved the bread right in front of me and asked me to look deep inside and tell her what was in her future. I said "I see raisins.")

Because I was not here during the winter of 1978, I've rarely seen a snow like we had this weekend. It's so cold that the snow has packed onto the roadways rather than disappearing and drying up. It's sloppy, but not wet and sloppy, just slippery at surprising moments. The roadways are narrowed, so that it's sometimes hard for two opposing lanes to get past each other. A neighboring town had signs up today saying "No parking after 7pm tonight -- snow removal"; I assume that the big trucks will come in and cart away all the snow. And we're getting more, starting RSN (real soon now) -- only 3-6 inches, but I imagine that on top of the last storm, things will be difficult tomorrow.

In January of 1977, I arrived in Grenoble to spend a semester there. It was stunning. It's the flattest city in Europe, and it has two rivers running through it and is surrounded by three stunning Alpen mountain ranges (one of those mountains was an Olympic site a while back). I couldn't believe how pretty it was, nor could I understand the quote I heard from Victor Hugo that Grenoble was like a prison -- how could it be? It was invigorating, filled with beauty. By the end of February, when we hadn't seen the sun or even the mountains for 30 days, I got it.

Perhaps that's why I am so delighted by New England weather -- it's unpredictable and weird and it's always beautiful here. It's hard for me to be depressed by the cold, the wind, the rain, the heat, the snow, the dark, the light, though I will admit to being mildly annoyed by people who complain about same.