Behind the Beautiful Door in Everyday Ramblings

Is this not a lovely door? I like the whole picture, the reflections and the shapes but mostly I like the door.

My cohort at work St. Joe went to school for a time at the college in Southern Oregon that experienced yet another senseless tragedy yesterday. He took the same writing class in that building (maybe even from the same teacher) about 7 years ago. He is the same age as the shooter. He talked to his sister last night, she still lives there, and she said it is a sad and solemn day for the community.

It is a challenge to watch young people experience the difficulties of becoming a mature adult and he feels things deeply. He does have lots of support and we are busy during the day at work so that is wholesome distraction.

When are we going to address the reality of this matrix of mental illness, isolation and deadly weapons? I mean really address it? Not just shake our heads and talk about how sad it is.

It makes me wonder what I can do. What am I willing to do? What is safe for me to do about this issue? Many of the people I work with own guns. Most of them are relatively sane. We like our guns here in Oregon.

Speaking of work. The Director of our department is retiring in two weeks and as a result of that there has been yet another management shift. Nimrod is now reporting to someone else, a smart smart guy who reports directly in many ways to the head money guy for the whole institution.

My guess is that my new boss has been with us for about 18 months. He heads up the number geeks team, analytics, but also is very personable and travels a fair amount. His office is a pretty close to where I sit when I am in the office but until he showed up at my elbow yesterday asking for numbers I had never spoken to him.

This will be interesting.

To go from basically being ignored, which Nimrod defaulted into doing because we make it easy to do that, to having a spotlight beaming at us…we work hard and have lots to be proud of, it is just now I need to prove that with numbers. I am actually looking forward to this challenge but it is also an unexpected stressor. And my skin condition started to fritz today for the first time in a few months.

Tomorrow night is the neighborhood pizza party potluck and I am nervous about it. Tonight I went and bought a bottle of what I hope is nice Oregon wine; it came very well reviewed. I’ll take that, some sparkling water and a warm beet and carrot dish that I enjoy. I’ll get the veggies at the farmers market in the morning.

I did go out Wednesday night for happy hour at a traditional Italian restaurant in NW Portland with a couple of my yoga students and we had fun. I shared with them characters in a poem I am working on about the flu epidemic here in 1918 and they enjoyed seeing if they could finish the story for me. The main character is an Italian girl who works in her father’s store at the rail stop after the trestle and her infatuation with one of the boarders…

At one point I had to admonish them that I was writing a poem and not a novel and it makes me smile to remember that.

Our lives are so full of sadness and sorrow and difficulty but also moments of easy warm connection and laughter and in this case a killer chocolate gelato that we all shared.

If more of us had more moments of companionship and laughter and good food in whatever way is culturally appropriate we might go a long way to solving the problems we face now.

Happy people don’t go on shooting rampages…

Last updated October 04, 2015