I always enjoy the way life mirrors art. Or the opposite. In the beginning of Kinky Friedman’s most recent novel (Spanking Watson: NY, Simon & Schuster, 1999), in the opening pages, along with some dated curmudgeon humor, bad puns, and a Republican cat, the protagonist (I wonder if the main character isn’t really an antagonist?) is waiting for repairmen to show up in order to fix a household problem. Art reflects life, as I spent a large part of the last two days, waiting for my handy repair guy to come back with all the parts. “I’ll be back in a hour,” he said two days ago. I saw him briefly, but then he disappeared again. I finally fixed the damn sink myself. It still leaks a little, but I guess that’s what a bucket is for. And the two day time for a twenty minute job just illustrates the point: the first 90% a job takes 90% of the time, and the last 10% takes 90% of the time.
I stopped by the coffee warehouse to get a drink, on a late afternoon walk, and I was delayed while I was listened to a couple of poets get up and read their stuff. Three poets, a couple of poems, wonderful stuff. It was serendipitous way to lift my spirits, the spoken word was amazingly good, what little bit I caught. I need to remember that for next Tuesday night.
