Walking the talk

Ramble 1 a: to move aimlessly from place to place b: to explore idly 2: to talk or write in a desultory or long-winded wandering fashion 3: to grow or extend irregularly

Sunday was catch-all day, roaming from one commitment to another while paying attention to whatever was in the way. At church people filled the smallish worship space to overflowing; worthwhile things were said and sung. I put the last of last year's pledge in the basket, then I choked on the words of the closing hymn and couldn't sing even a line of it. "It's important," said the woman next to me, a friend of my wife's. I talked briefly with Gaylord from RE class and Mary Ann from drum circle and then lit out for the territories.

Outside it was a crisp, bright January day to take a walk at the reservoir. The ground was a little damp, but I found a sunny spot sheltered from the wind to face the water and do qigong for half an hour. Walking back up the hill with beach stones in my pockets, I wondered aloud how that little exercise takes the pain out of the knees and hips and mind, but the best I could do was something about oxygenated blood bathing constricted, enflamed tissues in fluid to dilate, nourish, and purge all at once. Unable to really explain anything, I am left with a mystical belief in a phenomenon I don't understand but still invest with authority by returning to it every day.

"Anything you would recommend?" he asked the waitperson at Soulless Chain Coffee Shop. "Actually I kind of like the crumbcake, it's pretty good," she said. "I'll have a piece of that." She took his money and gave him his crumbcake on a little plate and made his French-press coffee, which he took upstairs to a little round table on the mezzanine to write about whatever happens next.

It seems like everybody here has dark hair. Two Japanese women at a table in the corner talk quietly. Next to them a young man alone with headphones smiles broadly as he reads. An older couple face each other across a little table in animated conversation, looking very professional in their khakis, sweaters, haircuts, and glasses. A big square table downstairs appears to be the faculty hangout, three or four old dudes unafraid and unimpressed, with white hair and beards, jeans and sweatshirts, knitted brows and plenty to talk about.

Under the ceiling lamp a pretty young woman with short hair and glasses sips water with knees together supporting her book, looking none too sure of herself in this drafty, attic-like space. Finally her friend comes up the stairs, long blond hair and pointed heels with a camelhair sweater and gestures cutting the air, and dark-eyed girl is captivated in her sweater-vest, jeans, and brown shoes. They met in their women's studies class and are learning to explore their otherness: "...civil liberties...in the professional world...I was thinking about...not really, no...I ended up working on...yeah, that's a pretty...how you find a...she just really likes him, so she figures out ways of...so I was thinking about...were you there? No, I just saw it...that would be wierd...I have absolutely no interest in it, but it's natural for a company to...yeah, for about thirty seconds, yeah exactly...oh, this is exciting...I'm allowed to..."

My coffee and crumbcake gone and my time officially up, I drove up route 43 to the interstate and home, listening to whatever was on WKSU, which happened to be "Folk Alley" with the veteran DJ Dan Bloom, who plays Allison Krauss, Kate Bush, Sam Bush, and talks about a yellow lab mix at the pound that needs a good home. Somewhere in Richland County, I start to lose the signal on the far side of each hill, hearing a mysterious fusion of bluegrass and baroque instruments for a minute, then pick it up again on the near side of the next hill, as topography interrupts the transmission from the northeast with another one from the south. As Folk Alley fades out, Angela Mariani and "Harmonia" fade in, the Blue Ridge Boys become the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and it turns out the mandolin is featured in both.