A Certain Kind of Sadness

They say:
bad things come in threes, and the lizard-brain part of me sloshes lazily along with the notion. I don't ask who 'they' are that say these things. I don't ask why they say them. Of course, if I do, I don't have to wonder long. I can google it and read a blog post from a woman who writes: For a long time now, I’ve believed the superstition that things come in threes...I know it’s silly, and the thing is, I’m not a superstitious person. After all, I believe that God is in control, and He has a plan... 

Interesting, the intersection between numbers and beliefs. I hope sometime after I am dead the pattern of our humanity, the logic of our biology, will be revealed.
Did Jesus every say anything directly about numeracy?
No google answers.

Maybe bad things come in googolplexes. That is a number for those too young to recall.

This is the tail end of our first vacation week. I was planning on going to Vietnam, taking a train up the coast and then flying back from Hanoi.
Then I looked at my finances. Not good.

Then my right knee gave a little pop and provided some unfriendly shooting pains each time I stepped just so-  I became convinced that the constant walking that comes with travel would exacerbate the problem. I would be stranded, crippled.

Then my wholly self-indulgently purchased television went black and wouldn't turn on.

So, okay, adapt. Catch up on the blog and sift through the 2000 photos you have taken

Then I worked for five hours editing photos of student work and for my Bright Uprising blog, closed Lightroom without saving the catalogue, and all my photos went somewhere into the software void.

Then, from sitting so much in the heat, I got a rash on my lower ass. Ugh.

Stuck in PP.

I went through other old photos, transferring them to a separate hard drive so I could free up space. Way dangerous, coming across former selves, sons, and siblings while sweating alone in your apartment. And way too heavily fraught with symbolic significance.

I listened to a catchy, sad song by Gotye too many times.
 Somebody That I Used to Know

I went to Howie's Bar, wasted $30, felt even lower, with a headache to boot.

They say:
when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
Not me. Apparently when the going gets tough I revert to a mopey teen.

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness.  Nice line, that.

But then.

Mike, who works at the embassy, called about tennis. The knee withstood two full hours of court play- two days in a row! Tennis!

The TV guys came by in a truck and took away my TV and then brought it back fixed! Free!

My friend Richard e-mailed me with instructions how to recover my photos. So only the edits were lost, not the originals.

They say:
When you find yourself stuck deep in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

The streets were so quiet and calm PP was like a ghost town- and surprisingly marvelous in its desertion. I could walk up and down the normally busiest of streets without a care. In a way it felt mine.

I made a small project of sampling the coffee at every coffee shop in my neighborhood. I found the one I liked the best three doors down from my apartment. By the third visit the wonderful waitresses knew me and my order by name. I was a little bit more somebody, with a smidgeon more of a home.

I met some strangers and had inspiring conversations- First with a funny young Cambodian American who moved to PP and started a cafe and is attempting to start an import export business, then with an older woman newly arrived from LA to volunteer with the Cambodian Children's Fund, and finally with a very educated and passionate Cambodian as we waited for the King Father's casket to pass.


They say:
every cloud has a silver lining.

Had I gone perhaps I would have had a wonderful journey. Yet I wouldn't trade it for the one I took staying here. Next I will post about that historic memorial day.

And yes, thanks to a nice pharmacist my ass rash is mending!