Today I massaged two people, one who cuts my hair and one that colors it.  I should be stunning by tomorrow afternoon.  My colleague next door and I have been working on trade for as long as we’ve known each other.  She rubbed my thigh so hard that the leftover leg lump from February’s bike crash should be gone by the end of the week.  I’ll reciprocate Thursday.

I encountered a young woman at the yoga studio today.  We randomly started talking at each other.  I knew little more than her first name.  As we went about our tasks she told me how she was training for a half marathon, that she has raised thousands of dollars for charity, that she has bad shin splints, that she has spent a small fortune on doctors, and that she is quite disheartened.  What I said to her was “You should come see me”.  What I meant to say was “Listen, I know exactly what you’re going through, and I know how you feel.  I can help you try to feel a little better.  Let me just do this for you; you deserve it for all your efforts.”  As we walked toward my appointment book she starting talking about her blog.  She has 900 million readers (or 90,000 or 90; more than I can comprehend).  She is a professional blogger.  She asked me how much I charged—it was going to be my gift to her—and I told her I charged “blogging lessons”.  She giggled, and told me she could do that.  Well, it took a little convincing.  She’s young.  She’ll get it some day.

Later in the day an old friend called.  I haven’t seen him in a year, and it had been a couple of years prior to that since we had even spoken.  It was, he explained, a completely odd phone call.  Seems he’s been dealing with some “life” stuff  and has decided that he doesn’t really want to live alone for a while.  The thought of taking on roommates as an adult was laughable, but somehow, for some reason, I came to his mind.  So he thought he would call.  “Random”,  he said.  “Crazy?”, he wondered.

Not really.  Not random.  Not crazy.  I have Chinese drywall in my townhouse, which means they’ll tear it down and start from scratch.  It means I’ll have to find someplace to live for three months or so.  I means I should actually be out looking for some place to hang my hat while all my things are in storage.

There are things we are taught and grow to understand conceptually.  What goes around, comes around. There are things we understand.   To everything there is a season. We believe.  We have faith in the perfect balance of it all.

And at some point we just know.

Here we are alone in a desert

Fed dusk to dark, dawn to day.

Every morning we’d wake up

To find just our measure

Of food that we’d need for the way.

Once we would ask

If we could have more

To see that our future survived.

We’ve learned now at last that nothing is sure

‘Cept that at evening the quail will arrive.

The quail came… (MKB)