There was an old man in the coffee shop this morning, though probably not as old as me. He was skinny, somewhat rumpled, with stringy gray hair, and he danced in his chair to the recorded jazz the coffee shop played. Gotta like a man who dances in his chair.

Then he stood, stretched, and danced on the floor for a few moments. Not so sure about a man who dances in a coffee shop — hot stuff could get spilled — but it gave me a clear view of his table, where he had an open laptop, and (far more interesting) a bright red pamphlet that might have been a zine.

Also, though, he was wearing a scruffy, stained jacket and had another jacket more stained on the seat beside him, and three bags (two paper and one plastic) full of stuff at his feet. I was curious, but he was probably homeless or at least a complicated fellow, and my bus was due in ten minutes. Some other morning, maybe.

Then I pooped, and washed my hands with the coffee shop's lilac soap. Ick. Knew it would leave my hands smelling weirdly sweet all day, but that's a little bit better than smelling like poop.

At home my soap is unscented, and so's my detergent and dishsoap. I believe that things (including me) should smell like what they are, not like the chemically-induced reproduction of some other smell.

When I emerged from the john, the complicated fellow was gone, but when I walked to my bus stop, he was waiting for the same #50 bus as me. I checked the schedule, helpfully posted on the bus stop's post, and announced my finding: "Bus in six minutes."

"Good to know," said Complicated, and then we talked about buses, fares, and how amazing it is, with so many traffic jams in this city, that the buses run reasonably close to their scheduled times. Then he torched some pot in a pipe in the bus shelter, which would've been rebellious when I last lived here, but now it's just Seattle.

When the bus arrived, I sort of intentionally left my bag on the seat next to mine, signaling, no, we're not buddies. He understood, took a seat nearby. And we continued our conversation across the bus's aisle, but only intermittently over the next thirty blocks. When he got off, I said, "So long, dude," and he didn't reply.

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The sign in front of a church near my house:

"Please pray for Ukraine and for peace in Europe."

That's nice, I guess, but utterly meaningless, ain't it? I grow less patient with the falderol as I grow older, and since I'm damned old, that makes me damned impatient.

Do Christians believe that Russia will retreat from Ukraine if they pray hard enough? God allows the killing, the bombs, the suffering, death and destruction, but if Christians on Seattle's south side pray and encourage each other to pray, by golly, God will change his mind and there'll be peace on Earth?

It's a nicer sentiment, at least, than the sign in front of a different church, a mile away:

"Nothing but the blood of Christ."

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Back in Seattle during a spring when the Mariners are doing well, I've found myself starting to give a damn about baseball again. Well, half a damn, maybe.

It's been a long time since I cared about millionaire athletes, and I'm still annoyed at all the stupidity in baseball's management. A lockout in the off-season, Designated Hitter everywhere, they're screwing with the minor leagues, etc, etc, and now they start extra innings with a runner on second base? Jeez, they don't do anything that rinky-dink even in Little League.

And yet… my brother took me to an M's game, and they lost, but it was fun. And the local team's management seems to be waking up — instead of pricing poor people and families out of the ball park, the team has lowered prices to some games, and for some concessions. Now it's possible to take the bus to a ball game ($2.75), buy a ticket ($10), and grab a hot dog and a beer ($3 each), and it adds up to less than twenty bucks, which isn't exactly cheap but wouldn't bankrupt me.

I'm still not spending that money, though. Why would I, when my brother is willing to take me to a game once in a while? But it's a substantial price cut from when I visited Seattle a few years ago, and prices don't usually go down.

Plus, here's a signal no less cosmic than "If you build it, they will come." On my cheap AM/FM radio, if I listen to the M's games on the AM station that carries the play by play, when they break for endless annoying commercials every half-inning, I can simply switch to FM and it instantly clicks over to KEXP, the non-commercial rock'n'roll station. After a few innings I'm mostly listening to KEXP, and switching to AM once in a while to check the score.

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On a route I didn't know, the bus turned down a street with a name not the same but sorta similar to a girl's last name, and — hello, weird memories. Jeez, I haven't even thought of Sharon DiMassi in years, maybe decades. She was damned close to completely forgotten, until the robotic voice on the bus announced something that sounded like her name

Sharon was 19 or 20, and pretty, funny, and often high. We worked together, never dated, but she was on the other half of a double-date a few times. She was white but going steady with a black guy, which was mildly scandalous in the early 1980s. What got the Whisper Richter rattling, though, was that when she and the black guy broke up, she dated another black guy.

Do what you want to do with whoever you want to do it, I said then and will say again now, but when my girlfriend said she "wanted some space" and we should date other people, I thought about asking Sharon out. It made me hesitate, though. I wasn't black (checking now, and I'm still not black) and the general consensus was that Sharon preferred her men tall, dark, and handsome, especially dark.

So Sharon and I never even held hands, which is fine with me. I have no idea where she is now, and very little interest. I don't remember squat about her except her name, that she was cute, a few double-dates, and a few of her wisecracks. I hope she's happy with her life, and found true love with the black man of her dreams.

It makes me think, though, about how the waters flow across our lives. If I'd pursued Sharon, if she'd said yes, if we'd sparked, if, if, if — almost certainly it would *not have led to happily ever after. Some weeks or months or even years of our lives would've been different, though. It would've changed our wave patterns, our drifts across the waters of life.

When I look back, the clearest thing to see is that every moment, every choice leads to the next moment, the next choice. Change anything along the way, and everything might've been different.

For me, life turned out damned well. A much better woman than I deserved came along, and we had a happy marriage till death us do part. But the currents that carried us to each other seem so very fragile and fleeting and fateful in retrospect, that if anything had pulled either of us in a slightly different direction, we never would've met.

It makes me glad for every opportunity missed all along my life — Sharon DiMassi, and a million other people and places and things that went one way, not the other. Every moment, every choice was the river that took me to Stephanie, and I wouldn't change any of it.

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I still smell like lilacs, and still don't like it. The only time I want to smell flowers is when there are flowers.

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From my internet history…

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Santa Claus is running for Congress

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The story of Scrotie, the dick-and-balls hockey mascot

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Harvard sets up $100 million endowment fund for slavery reparations

Harvard owned people until Massachusetts outlawed slavery in 1783, so this is a debt that's seriously past due. A hundred million bucks sounds like serious coin, but you gotta suspect it's a pittance from the university's legendarily huge endowment.

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MAGA dipshits have breached eight elections systems: Reuters

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Biden issues his first round of clemency actions, and none of them are for former business associates or campaign workers

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Conservative warns Trump coup attempt was "dry run" for 2024

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Chase Bank in flames, and it's beautiful

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One-word newscast, because it's the same news every time...

• climate

• cops • cops • cops • cops • cops

• Republicans • Republicans

• Trump

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The End

• Klaus Schulze

4/28/2022
Tip 'o the hat to All Hat No Cattle, Linden Arden, ye olde AVA, BoingBoing, Breakfast at Ralf's, Captain Hampockets, CaptCreate's Log, John the Basket, LiarTownUSA, Meme City, National Zero, Ran Prieur, Voenix Rising, and anyone else whose work I've stolen without saying thanks.
Extra special thanks to Becky Jo, Name Withheld, Dave S., and always Stephanie...