The Meaning of Life

Last summer I was having one of those what's-the-meaning-of-life?-moments. (A delicious, moonbeam-drenched man was the catalyst for my mood.) I went for a walk alone, in a pretty neighborhood near my house. As I strolled down tree-shaded, quiet streets and ambled past clapboard houses and silent dogs, I heard distant voices and the clatter of crockery. People were having dinner on their screened-in porches.

Suddenly a cat sidled up to me.

"Hello," I said to the cat. I crouched down and looked it in the eyes.  "Could you please tell me the meaning of life?"

The cat said nothing, but a voice wafted from a nearby porch. "Stanley eats a pound of vegetables every day."

And that, apparently, is the meaning of life, my friend.

Photo by Nancy Robinson

Cleanliness is Next to Godliness

A busy and important friend of mine employs two cleaning ladies to keep her gargantuan house clean and neat. I don't use the term "cleaning lady" lightly. These two women (60-something sisters) are bona fide cleaning ladies of the old school variety. They even dress like cleaning ladies, in flowered house dresses and run-down sneakers. Their pudgy bodies look like flour sacks tied in the middle. Sometimes I suspect they're actually actresses rehearsing for a play, but if that's the case they've been in rehearsal for 45 years.

I can alway use cleaning tips, so the other day I sneaked up and hid behind a couch, listening to their cleaning-lady chatter. 

"He's so good-looking," one of the cleaning ladies said. 

"Yah, " the second cleaning lady said. "I don't know what he sees in her."

"Me neither" the first cleaning lady said. "She's plain as a shrub."

Satisfied with their own omniscience,  they went back to scrubbing the floors.

Dammit!

Photo by Nancy Robinson

Several artist friends of mine have recently died. I hate this cycle-of-life stuff. But what did I expect, that  I could freeze time in a moment when everything in life was perfect? I don't remember any time when life was perfect. Do you?

So Many Questions, So Little Time

I was asked two questions within 20 minutes the other day by two different men I don't know very well. The questions were: "Did you paint today?"  and "Do you want to make love?"

Apparently my audience has a wide range of interests.

Journaling

Writing in my journal is always an adventure.

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Photo by Nancy Robinson

Weirdness

The other day I was in a restaurant with a man I don't know  very well. As I looked around at all the pretty, happy people having dinner with their pretty, happy families I said to the man, "Sometimes I wish I was more normal."

"There's no such thing as normal," the man said. 

"These people are all normal," I said. "Look at them. There's not a weird one in the bunch."

He scrutinized the pretty, happy people and their pretty, happy families. As I watched him I realized he also might be normal. 

Eventually he turned back to me and gazed into my nut-brown eyes with his celadon-blue peepers. 

"Normal is about stooping to the mean," he said. 

He seemed to think his observation put the matter to rest, and we moved on to discussing the weather.