The Traffic Circle of Life

The Fabulous Ex-Husband(tm) rings me up. His brother, with the assistance of a willing woman, had a baby girl yesterday. I'm a former auntie! While genealogists everywhere ponder the improbability of my taking the child for tattoos when she's 18 and what relationship we'll put on field trip emergency forms, births bring into sharp focus one's relationship with time.

In theory, my life expectancy probably limits me to 30 more years on this rock if I quit shining my karma with abrasive polish. Mamie and I have a retirement plan: we buy a go-go bar, dye our hair Easter egg pinks and blues and spend our declining years fluffing our girls' feather boas and drinking scotch with mobsters. Could I contribute more to world peace than hair color hilarity and facilitating thirdhand erections? I doubt it. With a plan like that, I can't wait to be me.

In the here and now, I still cannot find an apartment. My high school dance partner had open heart surgery on Tuesday. In my little henhouse, one of the boyfriends is suddenly being treated at Sloan-Kettering for an extremely rare cancer. My life has come to a complete stop while I wait and wait for...what? I think an omen I understand.

A zillion years ago, I was sitting on a bench outside the library I purport to work in when a white-hot grad student sat down at the other end. Yes, I was young enough then that it wasn't creepy. Anyway, we were sitting there, not talking, when the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile drove by. I said, "Should we just get a room?"

Omens that clear rarely float across one's field of vision. Mostly, I listen to people talk and have no idea what they mean. I see things and think 'That should mean something, but what?' If there's a God, he/she/it could talk riddles all day long and I might give that tune a 75 even though I can't dance to it. Hinting, subtlety and silence never work and leave me staring like dogs stare at ceiling fans. Skip to clarity and bold truthtelling: life is short and time spent trying to figure out what something might mean is time wasted.

Let's not waste time, you and me. Out with it! What are you doing, why are you doing it, and what's on your mind?