Tuesday, March 10, 2015

right place, right time, or just place, time

you know when you forget to show up to something and serendipity steps in and places right where you were supposed to be?  this has happened to us twice now with community meetings.  we're on a cooking team and an outdoor work group in our co-housing neighborhood.  in the past three months we've just happened to stumble upon work-group meetings just getting started.  meetings that were on our calendar but that somehow slipped our attention.  greg's at one now.  he'd gone to lock up the common house after our neighbor stopped by to pass the key on to us.  every week a different household is responsible for locking it each night, so we only have this task about once every 27 weeks.  tonight just so happened to be the first night of our week and greg just happened to decide to turn off the lights and lock it now, rather than waiting until bed.  i sat here trying to decide why it was taking him so long and if i needed to organize a search party when i suddenly remembered about the meeting (which was taking place in the common house).  a few minutes after that he came back in to let me know about it (in case i was still considering that search party) and to tell me he'd pretended to need to run back to the house for something.  now he's back over there.

oh the things you'll do.  or at least we'll do.

and for some strange reason, it makes me think about something i read tonight.  henry is all about his thomas the tank engine collection of stories.  it's a big, blue hardcover book with all the original stories in it. this is what he wants to listen to every night.  we read them in no particular order.  tonight he wanted to know if the author-- rev. w. awdry (wilbert awdry)-- was dead, because he usually wants to know if particular people are alive or dead.  i told him the author had died and he wanted to know how.  i said i didn't know but that we could read about him in the back of the book if he was interested.  he was, at least for awhile, so we read some of the essay included in the collection about him.  one thing i noticed was that the author created the first of these stories as a way to entertain his son while he was confined to his bed with the measles.  now, this is not intended to start a debate about vaccines, but it just struck me as interesting that all that is thomas the tank engine and the love of so many four-year olds out there, may never have existed if his son weren't sick in bed with the measles.  that's it.  just interesting.  not sure how it relates to greg and the meeting.  but it also reminds me of this.. maybe you've heard it... (it's written in many forms all over the internet.  i'm not sure now from what site i got this specific version)

"...an old Chinese farmer lost his best stallion one day and his neighbor came around to express his regrets, but the farmer just said, "Who knows what is good and what is bad." The next day the stallion returned bringing with him 3 wild mares. The neighbor rushed back to celebrate with the farmer, but the old farmer simply said, "Who knows what is good and what is bad." The following day, the farmer's son fell from one of the wild mares while trying to break her in and broke his arm and injured his leg. The neighbor came by to check on the son and give his condolences, but the old farmer just said, "Who knows what is good and what is bad." The next day the army came to the farm to conscript the farmer's son for the war, but found him invalid and left him with his father. The neighbor thought to himself, "Who knows what is good and what is bad."

here is my picture for the day...



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In your next post you need to tell us what this is a picture of... the location is a puzzle to me, but I feel like I should recognize it! Kathy

greg|regan said...

it's from a station on one of the s-train lines. you haven't been there, but you've been close when we went to lyngby. =)