I am a Merry-Go-Round

posted at 11:01 am
on Nov. 13, 2001

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I am a merry-go-round.

I turn from home to work to play to family to friends to quiet time to home and around again.

I am a finite merry-go-round.

I can only turn so fast, and I can only hold so many people near my center.

If I try to turn faster to do more things, fewer people can stay on.

The people furthest from the center get pulled away more and more strongly, until the ones on the outer edge are flung off, and I do not know where they land.

There are always more people from work, from home, from friends getting on.  They displace ones who are already on, and though I try to slow down, there are always a few people turning me from one angle to another.

So if I say I don’t have time to turn around, now you know why.

* * *

This journal is dedicated to Johan Mathijs Sp…, an old, very close friend who I last saw in 1990 at my high school graduation.  While I came to Los Angeles and discovered I am a journalist, Thijs went off to the University of Toronto, and became a pharmacist specializing in nuclear cardiology.

As kids, we had slightly more in common, i.e. we were both the same age and liked science fiction and blowing up apples with fire crackers.

Thijs was in town today for a conference and called me.  I drove through pouring rain down to Anaheim and had dinner with him at the Disneyland Hotel.

He’s older now, in more than just years.  He seems like the adult I am not.  He wears tweed and it’s not silly.  When we were younger, I think I was the “worldly” one who had been camping overnight and had passed an official babysitting course.  I’d prod him into “living a little.”  Now, he’s lived in Australia, Columbia, Israel, Manhattan, and mentions in passing how he’s renting out his flat in London.

He also was recently married, to a woman he met on a train station platform.  It was a case of almost never was, but he seems happier than I’ve seen him in years (wait…) and I wish him and his bride all the best.

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