Every day we cross HWY One in order to get to the Pacific Ocean. It's the nastiest crossing in Morro Bay because when you are coming down the hill you curve up to a frontage road, Main Street, where there is a stop sign, then wait for your turn to cross to the light on HWY One (three cars can line up). Sometimes you are stuck there on the east side of Main Street through 2 light changes on HWY One. OK. On the return from the beach you wait at HWY One until the light is green and then cross fast (the light is very brief), watching out for crazies in the northbound lane who are not going to stop as they turn right ahead of you then in 20 feet watching out for other crazies who do not stop at the stop signs on Main Street on the south side or the north side and wait for you to cross. It's always iffy, and Adrian, the great senior-citizen driving-refresher-teacher acknowledges it as the most dangerous crossing in town.
Normally heading home is not so dangerous because you can see the crazy right-turner and pause to make sure you can see if someone from the north hidden by cars waiting to cross ONE is not aware that you are crossing.
Normally, I look at what is coming from the north on HWY One. Yesterday I did not. I had been fiddling with the sun roof, and when the light turned green I started across.
A big white car heading south at 65 or 70 miles an hour ran the red light. I slammed on the brake just in time. We were not hit.
All my plans for ORNERY PEOPLE and the last NN volume and the 3rd NCE of Moby-Dick could have been wiped out. I would have been gone, and my less exposed companion might have been gone. Who would have told the cat?
We are always cautious. I always look to the left before I cross, I think, but I know that yesterday I did not.
Then we watched the PBS Christopher Plummer program on KING LEAR in which a man in his 60s or 70s, comparatively juvenile, makes a really bad decision, and I think of a dear friend who died recently after making a catastrophic decision and other dear friends who made horrendous decisions and think about being in my own right mind.
Lately I have been playing at becoming a boy historian, with three pieces online in a good place and another being reviewed.
I had better stop accumulating documents for ORNERY PEOPLE and figure out how to present it.
All this eating of more fruit and vegetables than anyone else in the Middle Kingdom. All this baking less marvelous bread and eating less of it. All this giving up alcohol in the mid-1980s. All this exercising every day, running since 1978 except for the time recovering from surgeries, every day every day with the rarest exceptions. All the physical therapy for knee or shoulder or hip, one after another. All the glory of the new eyes last year, letting me write this without glasses: toric interocular implants smashed by a big white car. All the attempts to stabilize and preserve and nurture and survive a little longer in good health, and one crazy in a big white car blowing through a red light on HWY One trying to get us. I had better plans, a trip to the end of the newly rebuilt Cayucos pier when the time comes.
And then to worry about not making bad decisions like Lear, whom I have known since I read a Pocket Book under a locust tree cow patties all around in a pasture in Red Rock, Oklahoma, in 1952, and other old men I have known and who made bad bad decisions.
Normally heading home is not so dangerous because you can see the crazy right-turner and pause to make sure you can see if someone from the north hidden by cars waiting to cross ONE is not aware that you are crossing.
Normally, I look at what is coming from the north on HWY One. Yesterday I did not. I had been fiddling with the sun roof, and when the light turned green I started across.
A big white car heading south at 65 or 70 miles an hour ran the red light. I slammed on the brake just in time. We were not hit.
All my plans for ORNERY PEOPLE and the last NN volume and the 3rd NCE of Moby-Dick could have been wiped out. I would have been gone, and my less exposed companion might have been gone. Who would have told the cat?
We are always cautious. I always look to the left before I cross, I think, but I know that yesterday I did not.
Then we watched the PBS Christopher Plummer program on KING LEAR in which a man in his 60s or 70s, comparatively juvenile, makes a really bad decision, and I think of a dear friend who died recently after making a catastrophic decision and other dear friends who made horrendous decisions and think about being in my own right mind.
Lately I have been playing at becoming a boy historian, with three pieces online in a good place and another being reviewed.
I had better stop accumulating documents for ORNERY PEOPLE and figure out how to present it.
All this eating of more fruit and vegetables than anyone else in the Middle Kingdom. All this baking less marvelous bread and eating less of it. All this giving up alcohol in the mid-1980s. All this exercising every day, running since 1978 except for the time recovering from surgeries, every day every day with the rarest exceptions. All the physical therapy for knee or shoulder or hip, one after another. All the glory of the new eyes last year, letting me write this without glasses: toric interocular implants smashed by a big white car. All the attempts to stabilize and preserve and nurture and survive a little longer in good health, and one crazy in a big white car blowing through a red light on HWY One trying to get us. I had better plans, a trip to the end of the newly rebuilt Cayucos pier when the time comes.
And then to worry about not making bad decisions like Lear, whom I have known since I read a Pocket Book under a locust tree cow patties all around in a pasture in Red Rock, Oklahoma, in 1952, and other old men I have known and who made bad bad decisions.
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