Now What?

My e-mail is down to zero, no Facebook posts that are getting comments, no current book-writing project (though two whole books written first draft that I hope to get back to). Someone mentioned Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations to me the other day and I spontaneously went out and bought the piano score and then realized I don’t love the music. Plus it’s technically daunting. 

 

I finally located a replacement watch online (after exhausting all S.F. stores) through Fred Myers jewelry and am awaiting its arrival. I got a needed new pair of glasses, a new credit card after mine had been hacked. I went to DMV to finally deal with the totally unnecessary “real ID” so I don’t have to take my passport every time I fly. Got a number in line—G212— and noticed on the board they were serving G060. A nice security guard confirmed that it could be 4 hours before my number came up—and he was right! But instead of sitting with the masses amidst traces of urine smell, I went out for lunch and walked around the Panhandle of G.G. Park, sat on a bench in the sun and read my book The Three Musketeers. (Which is actually pretty good and just found out yesterday that author Alexander Dumas was a mixed-race Frenchman.) Every hour or so, I popped back in to check on the numbers and finally mine arrived.

 

So here I am on a Friday morning, all dressed up and nowhere to go. Well, actually not. I have a Men’s Group meeting this morning, walking out on Crissy Field toward Fort Point, my beloved Jewish Home afternoon piano play, a childhood friend of my wife’s meeting us for dinner at a Burmese restaurant. With the painters in their third day in our house, it’s an extra blessing to have somewhere to go, something to do and people to do it with. 

 

In a little over a week, I’m back on another whirlwind Orff tour, this time in Hong Kong teaching kids and adults in some 12 different venues. My schedule all laid out for me, no need to wonder “What to do today?” But when you’re all caught up with the small stuff (still have taxes to deal with) and you have that moment’s satisfaction of crossing everything off your list, there’s that next daunting moment to face: “Now what?”

 

Well, there’s always dismantling the Patriarchy, tossing out White Supremacy, 

smashing the Capitalist State that puts profits over people. That should keep me busy.