We had Chinese late last week, and late last night I ate the last of the fortune cookies. For one thing, they don’t keep very long. The plastic doesn’t seal in the freshness. You’d think, for people that purport to tell you the future, they’d be on to that little problem. For another thing, the cookies that I had last week, two of them, had no fortunes. They were just … cookies.
This happened to my great aunt one time and the family members she was dining with convinced her that this was an ominous way to end her meal. No fortune, no future, and all that. It was very upsetting and they all laughed.
Well, I wanted fortunes. And to get these cookies out of the rice drawer.
We have a rice drawer. We also have a tea cabinet, what about it?
Anyway, we had three cookies remaining, and these all had the important little paper bits inside. One of these is more important than the other.
The solution is my philtrum? Then what is the problem? The fortune says “a problem.” Not “the problem” or “all of your problems” or “your most recent problem,” just “a problem.” What is the problem!?
Maybe I was better off not having those fortunes the other day. I was certainly better off with the other cookies. Less than a week later and these were already going stale.
I wonder how that works. They all came from the same box. (I’ve seen the backstage magic at our local restaurant. You used to think there was someone back there hammering out these fortunes for each person, somehow they knew what you need. But, no. It’s just a guy reaching into a big box, knowing the fortune you need, and pulling it from the middle or, for special, hard luck cases, the back left corner. “This is definitely a back left corner sort,” is probably a thing that guy thinks once or twice a shift. I am forever jaded and ruined by the mysticism of the fortune cookie process.)
Let’s turn to the Poplars Building.
Yes, please turn to the Poplars Building, said the peanut gallery.
Not sure that was necessary …
Anyway, the failed dorm turned failed sorority house turned failed hotel turned longtime administrative building for the university is coming down. Eventually. The big crane hasn’t done much in a few days now, as you can tell.
I wonder how long that small piece can hang on so precariously. Of course, it’s probably eight feet tall, and securely held in place by the best adhesives the 1960s could muster … (Back when men were men and who knew what was really in the chemicals!)
Anyway, Elvis stayed there one night. He did two nights worth of concerts and skipped town on the hotel on his second night. It was not fit for a king.
And, today, yes, a carrion bird was circling overhead.
I watered the flowers this evening, just to show you some flowers. These are things my lovely bride has planted in the yard. These are in the front. I did not photograph the side yard, for they were in the shade of the evening by then. Photography is all about timing.
Look at those delicate little water drops on those delicate little flowers. I even kept the water on low, so the mists would fall delicately.
I suppose I was just so with them, because annuals already have a curious mix of the next few months. First, the trim of beauty! Then, the grim reality of their demise.
This wasn’t intentional, but just now I discovered in the final third of May Sarton’s “Plant Dreaming Deep” she is discussing mortality, and toiling in her gardens, and the two are at once alike, and dissimilar.
That is what the gardener often forgets. To the flowers, we never have to say good-bye forever. We grow older every year, but not the garden; it is reborn every spring.
That overstates the case for annuals, anyway. Some of the things in our little flower beds will grow back. Some will bring extra weeds from far away lands we know not how. But those little flowers, well, it’s hard to think about frost in August, but this is how I annoy myself and it’s been a mild August, besides.
Those little petals don’t know it, but they’ll flash their brilliance until the browning edges become all I can see and even the water droplets — when you remove all the books or training or years of experience or directions on the seed packet, it so often comes down to just good, simple water — won’t be able to distract my eye.
It is an odd thing to contemplate mid-August, I’ll grant you, but sometimes the moment is overlooked. This moment, being fleeting, winter always being on the horizon. Sure, the grass was cut just the other day, and I’m a little warm even as I type this, but it is in my mind, winter, even if it wasn’t in my fortune cookie.
Especially because it wasn’t in my fortune cookie. Those things are never accurate. They just grabbed by the handful from a box.
But that one in the middle, though …
