The little things

"Meditation on Ruin"
by Jay Hopler

It’s not the lost lover that brings us to ruin, or the barroom brawl,
         or the con game gone bad, or the beating
Taken in the alleyway. But the lost car keys,
The broken shoelace,
The overcharge at the gas pump
Which we broach without comment—these are the things that
         eat away at life, these constant vibrations
In the web of the unremarkable.
The death of a father—the death of the mother—
The sudden loss shocks the living flesh alive! But the broken
         pair of glasses,
The tear in the trousers,
These begin an ache behind the eyes.
And it’s this ache to which we will ourselves
Oblivious. We are oblivious. Then, one morning—there’s a
         crack in the water glass—we wake to find ourselves undone.


That's a good poem. How the little frustrations in life eat away at our time and energy! I just spent two weeks going back and forth on email with eBay, about an order I didn't receive.  Not a huge deal, but the niggling issue in the back of my mind all that time.  The end result?  Zero, zip, nada.  Since the package tracking showed it was delivered here, they refused to give me a refund or replacement. You have just been warned, fellow eBay shoppers.

Our mail delivery seems to be getting more haphazard in the Urban Village. The old 1960's style post office is overwhelmed by the population density. I suspect the mailman accidentally left my package at the wrong house. Someone in the neighborhood is probably enjoying my new "hand-held garden fertilizer spreader."

Well, if that's all I have to complain about today, I'm a lucky dog.  So, it's cold this morning, as in scraping ice off the windshield cold.  But the sun will be out later in a glorious way. And a nice crisp fall day tomorrow too, for our drive over the mountains.