Wintry Weekend

So, my Saturday night plans were canceled due to the winter weather event we're experiencing. It's nothing like Snowpocoplyse was, but this is still DC, and here we cancel everything once the white stuff starts to stick to the roads. Now, we've got decently good reasons for doing so: our governments are terrible at snow removal, our residents are even worse at driving in the snow and our public transportation system is completely unpredictable and unreliable under the BEST of circumstances. All of this makes travel a little difficult.

So the planned dinner party in Arlington was canceled, and then I got an email that the piano bar also decided to close tonight (I think because of transportation issues for the pianist, which I can really understand) so my two plans (or one plan and one "if things end early" plan) were a wash. I stayed home and slept and watched most of the last season of LOST pretty much all day and evening, venturing out to get pho and chocolate. King Street was lively and packed, and I'm sure the bars were hopping. I just was very much not in the mood for the non-piano bar scene today.

I want to write up about the strange and interesting happenings of Friday, but that will take a while and I don't even know where to begin. But basically, lots of small world/small town coincidences (four, to be precise) happened and even though it was a sad day (the funeral of our friend Jim), it kind of made me happy--I just love feeling that I've got a community. And I do, a wonderful community, in an equally wonderful town.

So I think I'll leave off with a poem of sorts. It comes from the end of "The World According to Bertie", the fourth in Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street series. Both Rebecca and I read the series which is about the inhabitants of a small apartment building in Edinburgh, and (eventually) their wider social circle. The characters are of all different ages (from school-aged to elderly), and all different backgrounds, and are (mostly) all friends across the age and occupation spectrum. It really is uncannily like our little group (and the building uncannily like my old building, which I used to refer to as "44 Scotland Street). At the end of each installment, the friends gather for a dinner party and Angus makes up a poem on the spot. The one from "The World According to Bertie" is particularly nice, and Rebecca emailed it out to a number of us shortly after Jim's death. With no further ado....

Dear friends, we are the inhabitants of a city which can be loved
As any place may be in so many different and particular ways
But who amongst us can predict for which reasons and along which fault lines will the heart of each  of us be broken?
I cannot, for I am moved by so many different and unexpected things.
By our sky, which at any moment may change its mood at whim with clouds in such a hurry to be somewhere else
By our lingering hours, by our eccentric skyline
All crags and spires and angular promises by the way we feel in Scotland, simply that.
These are the things that break my heart, in a way for which I am never quite prepared.
The surprises of a love affair that lasts a lifetime.

But what breaks the heart the most, I think, is the knowledge that what we have, we all must lose.
I don’t care much for denial, but, if pressed to say goodbye, that final word on which even the strongest can stumble,
I am not above pretending that the party continues elsewhere, with a guest list thats mostly the same, and every bit as satisfactory that what we think are ends are really adjournments, an entr’acte, an interval, not real goodbyes.
And perhaps they are, dear friends.
Perhaps they are.

Comments

[Jennifer]

I love this. I was living in Melbourne when I read this series of books (devoured rather) and the books made me long to be back in my home city of Edinburgh.

[Catherine]

Ah, Melbourne and Edinburgh...lucky girl! I have had a lifelong desire to live in Scotland, particularly Edinburgh (I've never been there and don't remember how it started, I just have always wanted to), and part of the reason I love his books so much is because they're set there. (Also, oddly, I spent some time living in Botswana, which is where another of his series is set, so I'm a big fan!). I've heard nothing but great things about Melbourne, but have never been.

[Jennifer]

That's so cool that you want to live in Edinburgh! I recommend coming over during the annual book festival. Melbourne is also a lovely city - great cafes and friendly people.

[Catherine]

That's when I've always wanted to go! I've heard that's a lovely time of year, a good festival and I'm a librarian and all around book-nut. I wanted to go this summer because of the "Homecoming Scotland" thing that was going on for Burns' 250th birthday, but it wasn't meant to be (I'd just started a new job and therefore hadn't earned any vacation days).

I really think that I would just pick up and move, but for the whole work visa issue. Know any Scotsmen looking for a wife? ;)