I am so thankful…

for coffee. But I am not thankful for the bitter daughter-in-laws that sat at the next table next to me and spoke so loudly about how unfair their relationships with their mother-in-laws are. One daughter-in-law gets a 400.00 shot gun from her mother-in-law (who ARE these people?) But she herself (her mother-in-law’s second daughter-in-law apparently) gets only a bouquet of flowers and coffee mug (sounds nice to me) instead of a 500.00 shot gun (wasn’t it just a 400.00 shotgun?).

All this shouted very loudly to her sympathetic companions and sprinkled through and through with expletives and assurances that, “its not like I need the money. We’re doing very well financially.” These statements are met by statements from her friends about each friend’s financial self sufficiency as if they must convince not only each other but themselves that yes in fact they are doing fine and can really afford these Starbucks drinks they just bought. (But do they really need the caffeine is what I wanted to shout at them…shout because that seemed to be the only language they knew.)

“Of course, I don’t need the money or the expensive things but I want more.” This statement was said with such a sour intonation my lips puckered and I wasn’t even at the same table as this woman….I can’t imagine having been in full force range of such a statement. More? She wants more? Maybe she won’t ever get more simply because she is so very unpleasant.

I don’t know these women and most likely never will. They may be wonderful people. I don’t know. But honestly, sitting there invaded by their conversation I felt absolutely nothing for them. Not a smidge of sorrow for their affliction.

I did however feel for their husbands, children and most assuredly their mother-in-laws. I also made a mental note to always be ready to tell a friend I am talking with in a coffee shop that they ought to turn the volume down a bit. I would hope that my friends would do the same for me.

In between their total thought barrage I was reading. “Going on Faith.” Which is an awesome collection of essays on what it means to write “spiritually.” I know…that sounds a little unorthodox…and it IS! And I love it.

I scribbled down quotes in my notebook feverishly as if they thoughts they invoked might just float away if I didn’t get them pi(e)nned down!

Such gems as:

“The orthodox have no need of consolation and a closed world has no need of descriptions of itself.” Mary Gordon on why there are so few Catholics represented in the arts.

“There is no there there.” Gertrude Stein on the city of Oakland (but oh the myriads of truths those five small words slapped me with!…none of them having anything to do with Oakland.)
And larger gems…more like geodes…which I am going to have to crack open with much effort in order to get to the good stuff and be able to share it here.

I also finished reading Perlman’s Ordeal by Brooks Hansen (who is an amazing storyteller). The book deals with music, hypnotism, spiritualism and Jewish assimilation, in early 1900’s Europe…its all interwoven without making a choice about any of it for the reader. The books says, here’s what happened. What do you make of that?

At one point the Jewish doctor, who uses Hypnotism to positively influence the mental health of physically ill patients by creating a new “reality” for his patients within their subconscious through the power of suggestion has just learned that they woman he has been falling in love with believes in the possibility of Atlantis and also that a young girl who is his patient may be experiencing a past life regression to Atlantis.

She says, “I’m not sure we can pick and choose our sources, do you know? I mean if we just dismissed the ideas of every person we didn’t completely trust or who harbored, shall we say a renegade opinion, we’d still be drawing on cave walls.

He responds, “My point Madame is that these people are not harboring ‘renegade’ opinions. They are knowingly perpetrating falsehoods….in certain cases for clearly nefarious purposes. That would be bad enough, but that their efforts should go and trample the work of the really well-intentioned people …I’m speaking here of historians, scientists, and archeologists…That may be what disturbs me most of all. Madame, we are very fortunate to be children of an age when so much time and effort has gone into determining what we know, what may be held as true on account of good things, like reason and evidence and scientific understanding. I should think you’d agree we are very lucky.

This idea of what may be called a renegade opinion fascinated me. How many once renegade opinions are commonplace and mundane now? What is renegade today that may be mundane tomorrow?

Oh…I have been thinking this weekend…thinking and reading and writing and observing and working and being….I have been this weekend. There is more….so much more….but I will save it for another post.