20 July 2011
Seattle
I was thinking that our time back home has been moving rather fast, it being hard to keep up with the To Do Lists of this partial re-entry, the lists that undoubtedly are thought by some to be Whatever Lists, in that vein of Whatever, You People Who Aren’t Working, but lists that nonetheless have been keeping us on track with re-establishing a home and mailing addresses and bank accounts and taxes and a car to drive and a desktop on which to transfer our 2,428 photos and still counting and all that other stuff that comes with not having alighted in one place for too long over the past 15 months, those lists that some days get checked off at the speed of light leaving little time for reflection kind of lists. And then the cure to this list-driven overdrive presented itself today: a trip to the local DMV (aka, Department of Motor Vehicles or, based on my observations, what could more aptly be referred to as the Department of Minimal Velocity).
Nothing moves quickly at the DMV. Time, in fact, appears to stand completely still and yet at the same time you oddly feel as though you are aging faster than the hairs on Obama’s head. When you look at the reader board and see it’s only on number 331 and in your hand you’re holding number 354 and then 30 minutes later you tear your eyes away from all of the fascinating people watching to be had here at the DMV to look up at that number on the board to see that it has advanced by only 3, well, then you know it’s a small but no so subtle message from the universe that it’s time to slow down a moment, even if your lists don’t want you to. Clearly the DMV has some kind of in with the universe, a vortex to another world in which nothing need go faster than a tortoise on temazzies. It would be cool if it weren’t so frustrating. Better chairs might help.
While not working on our lists and not waiting in the endless line at the DMV, we’ve been spending time out on the bicycles, toughening up our bums for our upcoming tour. The headlines around here may read that we’ve only had 78 minutes of summer but from our point of view, the weather hasn’t been all that bad.
