Ever notice how people have kids and some switch gets flipped? I mean, come on, your kid screaming at the top of his lungs in the library is NOT charming.
Bush is concerned about gas prices, but does nothing to reduce our dependence on oil. General Electric may now sue the EPA, the budget’s out of control, and using painkillers is about to become a federal offense.
But on the positive side, the lowly nickel’s about to get a facelift.
Had third interview with the president of the company on Monday–haven’t heard back yet. Hmmm. When he asked me what I thought of Bush, I probably should have referred him to this blog.
How green are you? Find out.
And how green is the current administration? How honest? Not very, as it happens …
The astrologer slipped through the bougainvillea into the hushed stillness of the courtyard. He had nothing to do; the charts had been drawn up, every possibility written down. Now, he just had to wait to deliver the proclamation for a long and happy life. The peacocks screeched their dusty protests against the dying of the day, and the astrologer absentmindedly reached up to rub a papery bougainvillea rasps between his fingers. Except for the peacocks, no movement; in the zenana, the women hushed the sultana with words of comfort and rosewater as she strained and pushed; in Bangalore, the sultan waged a bloody battle with clanging swords and shrieking horses. But here, in the silent indigo light, he was uneasy with expectation and its enveloping hush.
He surveyed the dusty courtyard, and suddenly constricted by its walls, opened the small wooden door leading out to the river. He kicked at one of the peacocks as it ambled across his path, and the bird jumped back, squawked and fixed his persecutor with a beady glare. Ignoring it, he pushed past the walls onto the banks of the Yamuna River.
It, too, was silent. The lazy current wafted by, swirling up packets of mud from the shallows. He sank to his knees. The coolness of the water was clammy, and made him shiver. Leaning forward on his hands, he searched in the water, though he knew it wasn’t just mud clouding his vision. The truth was that he wasn’t sure what he was looking for, and knew that he wouldn’t have been able to see anything in the deepening light anyway. He was an astrologer not because he read the stars (in this he was a fraud), but because he knew things, as surely and inexplicably as others knew the sun would rise or that the moon would wane. He knew that a large carp swam in the waters directly beneath his nose, jealously guarding his watery terrain and chasing off any finned interlopers. He knew a woman would weight her clothes with stones and throw herself into the river a long time in the future. He saw her face, wide-nosed and dark, the terror in her black eyes.
But these visions were mute and still, filled with neither sorrow nor happiness, and his present remained closed to him. Surely, if he looked deeper, if he opened his eyes wider, he would see something. Because when he closed his eyes, he saw death. And what was worse, he saw his own soul’s uneasy march on its path.
But he saw nothing. Nor did he hear it. In the zenana, at that moment, a baby began to wail.
Rafiq Zakaria’s book on Razia is perfectly dreadful. Even though it’s a good source of information, it’s a letdown.
Yesterday, after visiting the Chittenden Locks, wandering around Pike Place Market and sundry other places downtown and seating ourselves at an Italian restaurant in Pioneer Square, Steve and I decided that we should try our respective hands at writing a guidebook.
Another project, you groan. I admit, I’m full of them, but we’d be great at it. As he says, we DO get out and see all sorts of stuff. Our own Seattle guidebook is starting to get a little tattered, and we have check marks on all the bars and restaurants we’ve been to. For the length of time we’ve been here, it’s an impressive list. (On the other hand, our girths are impressive as well.)