April 2,
2019 – GVAàAMS
A day trip
to the office in Amsterdam, originally planned for a bunch of meetings which
several people now can’t attend, so I will fly to the Netherlands mainly to
participate in videoconferences that I could have done from home.
Lent
reading this morning was the parable of the prodigal son, and a bit from 2
Corinthians about regarding no one according to the flesh. This, coupled with some of Laurence’s sermon from
last Sunday, led me to a tidy summary of God’s message to man via Christ:
“You’re all fucked up, but it’s okay.”
(also lends itself well to repeated chanting)
April 6,
2019 – GVA B gates
One of
those early spring days in Geneva when there’s still a slight chill in the air,
but some of the trees (I want to say alders but that’s probably completely
wrong) are sporting precocious leaves, and you know that by the time you return
from a week in Boston (where it will still be cold and grey) all the leaves in
Geneva will have come out.
Flying
transatlantic on a Saturday feels like the definition of “free time,” since you
have a whole non-workday after you land.
This is an illusion, of course.
The same amount of work which will be waiting for me on Sunday night is
waiting for me now. But I will have the
chance to sleep in a little tomorrow before going to the MS Walk and, and then
I’ll get to see Mia play soccer at 6.
Part of me wants to have a few drinks on the flight over, but there’s
really no point.
Through the
glass barrier to my left, people are getting off the plane that I’ll soon be getting
onto. Tired parents dragging children
with zoomorphic roller bags. Young girls
in leggings and neck pillows, clutching mobile phones.
April 7,
2019 – Cambridge, MA
My flight last
night arrived a little early, and I wasn’t feeling too tired, so I drove to the
Plough and Stars in Central
Square to see a band. I kind of knew the
guitar player, who was in a band with someone else whom I was in a different
band with years ago, so we were connected through the Transitive Property of
Rock Bands. I was pleasantly surprised
to see that I didn’t stand out as the oldest person in the room: there were
certainly a lot of student-aged types there, as one would expect in Cambridge,
but also a lot of what I probably would have called “aging rocker” types, a
category to which I probably belong myself.
Several men with grey beards and ample guts and horned-rim glasses. Also a few of those deadpan record store
types, one of whom, with long, straight hair and numb affect, sidled up next to
me.
I realize
that this is not really my scene: the music was fun, but I don’t feel
super-drawn to the loudness and the booziness and the ringing skull the morning
after. There’s a certain romanticism to
driving all over the US in a van (as this band does), but late nights in divey
bars with rotating sets of mostly drunken people is something I would get very
tired of very quickly. At the same time,
there was something beautiful about the scene: people who were not 20-something
making music, and smiling while doing so.
Lent
reading this week focuses on parenthood.
There’s a strong pro-adoption angle on the CTBI website, and it is nice
to see so much space given here to people in “nontraditional” family
situations: for instance, those who might be uncomfortable during “Mothering
Sunday” service (which is evidently a thing, although my church didn’t do
anything with it). The Bible readings
cover this as well: on the cross (Jn 19:25), Jesus bestows a mother/son
relationship upon Mary and “the disciple whom he loved” (probably John). And there is a mysterious passage in Luke (Lk
2:33), in which Simeon the quasi-mystic tells Joseph and Mary that their son is
a big deal, but also that “…a sword will pierce through your own soul.” This probably refers to the crucifixion, but
part of my wants to read it also as a more general statement about that feeling
when your children grow up and become their own people and you become less
important to them. I may be projecting.
April 9,
2019 – Cambridge, MA
I left the
office after 7pm and took the red line to Harvard Square, where I walked around
in the drizzly chill, picking up some things at Lush for the twins’
birthday. I poked around the Harvard Book Store for a while, but emerged with only a used collection of E.B.
White essays. I gave a dollar to the
homeless guy sitting outside. I recall
how it used to be acceptable to refer to people like this as “bums.”
April 13,
2019 – British Airways Lounge, Terminal E, Boston Logan Airport
I felt a
curtain of sadness fall when I was leaving my apartment in Cambridge for the
airport tonight. I’m not sure why: I will
be extremely happy to be back home after a long and trying week. I won’t be back in Cambridge again for more
than a month, and as I turned the thermostats down, I imagined the empty
apartment, with a few of my second-tier suits hanging in the closet, and some
stray dirty laundry in the hamper. Like
a dead person’s house before the next of kin can get in there and clean things
out.
Jose, who
works at the BA lounge in Boston, always says hello and shakes my hand when he
sees me here. We don’t have much to say
to each other, but it’s nice to say hello, and I’m always impressed at his
friendliness, which seems genuine. And out
of place in a transient place like an airport lounge. But every place is transient, in a certain
sense. I watch the Masters on TV in the
window reflection. Everyone swings
left-handed except for Phil Mickelson.
Like I said
it was a difficult week at work, but I found myself comforted by Philippians
3:12 (“Not that I…am already perfect, but I press on to make it [the
resurrection] my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”). I feel my heart warmed especially by the
“press on” line, even though what Paul is writing about has absolutely nothing
to do with pharmaceuticals. People look
for encouragement wherever they can find it, even if the context is all wrong. The Bible is a target-rich environment for
this. I believe this is what one
would call cognitive bias.
