Bay Window (Part V)

There's nothing else to write about but what's outside my window. That is fortunate, because yesterday an umbrella blew into the middle of the street, and then the neighbourhood black cat (who we had named Nola after a bout of drinking, in memory of those in New Orleans who were carried away by the oily sludge of Lake Ponchartrain--but I digress) came and began circling around it. They were like two elementary particles, these objects, so improbable each in their own right, so dependent on historical contingency stretching back to before this planet was formed: so improbable, yest stable. Each had carried on in its own function through as much time as was allotted to it and managed to do so stably and consistently. (The umbrella was on its dying gasps, I should mention: its spokes were bent and the covering was all but detached from the main skeleton.) So the cat pawed at the umbrella, knocked it around a bit, and then left to other non-heoric adventures, probably because a van was coming down the street. The van swerved to avoid the umbrella. (Why is it that this last sentence reads like something that has already been written in an advanced ESL book somewhere. Oh, my individuality is falling apart all around me...) And then the van carried on. At which point I probably went back to my desk and either read something or aimlessly resomed wandering the internet, looking for software or musis to steal, being the information-banshee that I am.

We'll leave it at that. I'd like to go out for a walk, but the Inuit Goddess of cold fronts and low pressure areas has different plans for me.

Consider: "The human race will begin solving its problems on the day that it ceases taking itself so seriously."