Not so much the fear of seeing rocks, feeling them, petting them nor even being pelted or crushed by them, but walking across them, as we saw this morning: I was part of a team that seemed to consist of co-workers from both current and previous jobs wrapping up an onsite client visit to a warehouse. The manager there offered me one of their uniforms for me to wear next time, so I waited for him to fetch it for me while my party left for the car, and surprisingly through all the commotion at the end of day (as well as typical disappointment from my dreams), he came back with a new green/navy reversible down vest. It was cold outside and I put it on over my own coat, which was probably the hooded Uniqlo one I’ve been wearing around the house this month. My wallet and phone were in my back pockets, too, also unexpected since I usually lose them. The parking lot was way off in the distance from the building exit, past a ravine-like field which had to be crossed by rock formations along the edges. People were still coming and going, and to avoid one oncoming fellow I opted for a lower path to his left that I soon realized wasn’t going to get me to the other side as all the jagged boulders ran out and sank into the dark pool below. I leaped to an abutment to the side but it wasn’t stable enough to support my weight, gave way like rock shouldn’t and I had to grab hold of one flimsy attachment after another. Onlookers gasped while I relied on my pull-up strength to stay above water, but as I inevitably felt my butt submerge—no wonder I was left with my things—the lesson of this short segment dawned upon me, always to take the high road.
After the bathroom break, I was driving the XTerra again and exited off a freeway intersection into an elongated entrance to one of our gated communities. (Last I swear I saw Sylvilagus was along this path to CPE on an early lockdown run before the Asics mask, but surely my two signature bandanas was a giveaway…?) I asked John Chen if he wanted to be picked up, but he wasn’t interested, no surprise.
Update: Rained like it does here once a year today and during whatever is the opposite of sleight of hand that happens getting into the car (namely, the transfer of the contents of my back pockets to my front rather than sit on them, hindered by anything I’m already carrying, in this case a wet umbrella mid-collapse), my wallet fell into a puddle as premonitioned earlier. I picked it up out of the water quickly enough that the last of the paper inside would be unscathed, maybe because I knew I was better off it dropping than my phone, there was no pause for misery. It was almost comical, too, the first time ever in the drought-stricken Southland when I remember driving through Texas torrents that made the windshield look like aquarium glass, like the surfeit of silly storylines on this season of Curb that required suspension of disbelief in our annual precipitation.
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