Connections Like I Wouldn't Believe

Henry James, yes, a smart man, said: "Genius is the act of perceiving similarity among disparate things," but he's got to be wrong on that one. Disparate things are coming together in my life in alarming frequency, and I have absolutely nothing to do with it. Who's the genius behind these coincidences? Are you there God, it's me, Megan? First of all, pirates came up. AGAIN. (to backtrack: One night in New Orleans, Ashley and Kate and I were driving around, and for some reason, pirates came up, and I said, "Wait, you guys, pirates are real," and never heard the end of it). But they are. I knew it then and I know it now. There are books on them, and my first reading assignment for my graduate program is called "The Pirate Story" by Ron Carlson, and the first line is: "First hear this: we are pirates," and it's all about the ways pirates are misconceived. Boo yah, mateys.

Also, I'm sitting in the library, and I look over, and there's Marty, from Kent High School, from Denver, Colorado, with the Sitka Sound behind him and a book in front of him. I love when the world becomes so small you could throw a rock, underhand, and hit someone in the same room whom you kind of know but have never really talked to, and then you'd have explaining to do and you could just say, "Small world, huh Marty?"

The world is not small. We just gravitate to similar places with similar people.

Another connection: my aunt and uncle are going to be on a huge boat with bells, whistles, and people who talk funny about the world (aka: a cruise ship) and it just so happens their first stop is this little town where I'm living my humble life. We will fish, we will walk through Totem Park, we will go visit baby raptors (of the eagle, not veloci variety) at the Raptor Center, we will eat halibut and onion rings, we will buy wood-carved Alaskan gadgets, and they will go on to ingest the rest of the great cold outdoors while also being at leisure to play basketball on the boat's rooftop, gamble, lay by a constantly-heated pool, whale watch, or dine in rooms that don't feel like boatrooms at all. Cruises. Wierd. Not for me.

Other things are:

I had HORRIBLE dreams two nights ago, about ghost ships (this was BEFORE the piracy theme started its recurrence in my life), infidelity, falling, and the appearance of dead faces of people I know. I couldn't get them out of my brain, and then I was reading All the Pretty Horses (I know I'm coming along way late in the Cormac McCarthy craze, but I've joined, and I think he's fantastic, although he's become, reputation-wise, a little pop-py for me) and anyways, the nasty grandma character tells John Grady Cole:

"Dreams have an odd durability for something not quite real."

And I was thinking: damn right, they do. Take it from someone who used to have night terrors and wake her mom up with a pointed-finger-poke to the cheek, whisper-yelling, "I know you're trying to kill me." Dreams are more real than we'll probably ever know.

I am reminded, in a stretch of time during which I feel like the hub on a hundred-spoke wheel, of Twyla Tharp (creative, productive, insipirational 100-pound dancing beast that she is) and her movement mantra:

Continuity in all I do.

Incidentally, meaning: with incidents attached, the pool opened at the Old SJ Gym, (true story: the elder lifeguard has also had multiple ACL surgeries) and I feel the fluidity of being able to swim again in my very veins.

Continuity. In all I do.