It dawned on me the other day – life is a load of pipe. I remembered this teacher in high school, not much older than we students, looking at this medallion a girlfriend had given me. It was inscribed (pardon my French) “Vie et soi libre” or something like that, which was supposed to mean Live and be free.
The teacher took it in her hand and read it. She had to stand pretty close to me to do that. Live and be a book? she asked.
I was a bit uncomfortable, because she was pretty. She probably thought I was, too. It only takes me thirty years to figure stuff like this out.
Anyway, my metaphor: there I am, as that kid, one pipe on the truck; and here I am, remembering him, another pipe. And it’s a big load.

Earlier this week I went out to the pool to empty a dish of water. I put the dish by the filter, because it leaks, slowly, but fast enough to make everything pretty wet if you don’t do that. I bent over to pick up the dish and my cell phone jumped in.

My life had been seeming sort of empty and pointless until that moment.

Then, you know, you have the epiphany. “My entire life has been leading up to this.”

The nice thing about that particular epiphany is, you can have it over and over. Every single moment, if you’re bored or OCD.

And THIS moment. And now THIS moment.

That little split second of slapstick was all it took.

I felt like giving all my stuff away and starting a commune.

Everything but the electric cello, at least. I haven’t seen that fucker yet.

My wife and I were walking around last night. The kids are in the United States this month. We leave day after tomorrow, on the 4th of July, to join them for 10 days.

So we were walking around because, that’s what we parents do when the kids are on another continent. We had dinner in a new place by the river. It was nice. Then we looked at the town square, which is all dug up because before they can build underground parking there they have to let the archaeologists look for stuff.

They found some old dice, for example.

We walked around and there was this guy on a bench waving at us. When I made eye contact he blew us a kiss. He was giving off pretty heavy crazy vibes.

We made a big circle around him. The problem was, there are ads hanging on the wall right behind where he was sitting, and my wife likes to read the ads. Houses for sale, cars. Stuff like that. The house we live in now, I found it there.

So we circled around. The guy was gone when we got there. Ever since they moved the mental hospital to town, there are more people like that around, because the mental hospital includes a halfway house type of thing.

Then, BOO!, sort of, he comes out of the restroom, right next to where we’re standing.

I AM THE WORST MAN IN THE WORLD! he said.

We hightailed it out of there, in a relaxed, strolling way. He obviously doesn’t know our employers, I joked.