Good morning!

And other inconsistencies

It was my writer friend, Betsy, who gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever received. It came at a time in my life when I was fretting over all kinds of things, tangled up in my own self, aching about problems that seemingly I could do nothing about. She said to me, “You know what you need to do? You need to go out into the world with your begging basket.” And she was right. I went out into the world with my metaphorical begging basket, and I felt a lot better.

I’ve been going out with my begging basket a lot lately, and the other night I filled it up with the sight of baby birds in a nest, with the far-off sounds of music playing, with the sight of front porches decorated with tiny lights and equipped with full-sized tables for eating outside on, now that summer is in full swing.

Also, I overheard two maybe fourteen-year-old boys discussing how good looking one of them was—the one friend said to the other, “You’re WAY better looking than he is!”-- which I decided, perhaps erroneously, I admit-- had to do with a girl who had told his friend she preferred another boy because he was cuter.

I saw the streetlights blink on, which I had never seen before--them coming on, I mean. It felt like a Disneyesque moment, as though a wand had touched down to banish the darkness. I took in the boulevard gardens, riotous with color, and saw a Monarch butterfly moseying around in one of them and the sight of it made me gasp—its incredible beauty, the way it looked like a flying piece of stained glass, with some whimsical polka dots thrown in.

In the middle of one block, a man outside of his house saw Austin and asked what kind of dog he was. “Wolfhound, Aussie, and Poodle,” I said, and the man nodded as if he had known that all along. And RIGHT AFTER THAT, a car stopped in the middle of the street, and a man rolled down his window and called out, “Beautiful dog!!” I said thank you and then the man smiled and drove off and Austin said why did you say thank you when he was complimenting me? and I said because you can’t talk and Austin said Yes I can, obviously, and I said yes but that’s special talk that only I understand and he said oh yeah. Then he thought for a while and added, “You should have said, ‘My dog thanks you.’” Right, I said. Noted, I said.