Day 128

GT has given me his memory of the Avignon episode, so the reconstruction now runs something like this: I started writing the poem after seeing her, got three verses done, and then stumbled over the gender of “glass” (“verre” in French), and asked him what it was (his French then was already better than mine, probably because his father was my French teacher), and she overheard us, and told us it was “le verre.” I probably got very embarrassed and thanked her, finished poem and meal, and then gave her the poem. GT says he, GA, and MW just let me get on with it. I have a vague memory of them getting out of the restaurant as quickly as possible while I followed my plan. What exactly happened is beyond my recollection, but at least my fear that it might have been a #MeToo moment has been assuaged. And now let’s leave that where it sits – another junction where different choices would have created different things, and where that particular choice created new possibilities, and I came into this life that’s perfect in its own way, too.

I woke up this morning with Glamboy’s Regular Sin in my head. Go search for it on whatever streaming platform you use. It’s a great song. And while you’re doing that, search for NiallTheUrchin’s Bleak Street, and The Invisible Kind by The Choco-La’s (their apostrophe, I hasten to add). My top three songs of the year so far.

The new varifocals are taking some getting used to. My eyes are doing their usual flibbertigibbety thing they do when I get new specs, searching for new focal length, roaming around the whole lens until they find the right spot. It can take well over a week for this to settle down, and it’s a bit disconcerting, and hard work on the eye muscles and my brain.

Back stretches done. Coffee taken. I used a bigger cup this morning, and put water through the same pod twice instead of just the once. It still tasted nice, but it didn’t have that feeling of velvety luxury to it that the tiny espresso cup and single portion of water has. Not an unsuccessful experiment, but one which diminishes what I want – and I don’t want to go down the path of having a double espresso using two pods, not yet. Funny how this week back on coffee after 14 years without has made these daily notes so focused on coffee and memory. Perhaps not so surprising.

The sun is out. The door to the study is wide open so it doesn’t get too hot in here. I started tidying a little in here yesterday and changed the fuse on the drill so it works again now. Menial banalities. That’s real life.

AGGIE’S ART OF HAPPINESS – CHAPTER 84