Quiet Time

After the excitement of yesterday, I took a quiet day. I never quit marveling at my good fortune, to have lived long enough to retire and to find my way to low-income housing. I am grateful every moment of the day and night. Even while I'm asleep, I'm grateful.

With my SNAP card, which makes me officially poor by American standards, I can sometimes buy a ticket to the symphony for $5 by showing up two hours before show time. This only works if there are unsold tickets, and you can't find out ahead of time. Today they were doing Beethoven's 9th. I went, knowing they were probably sold out; I waited in line, they told me there were no SNAP tickets available, and I didn't really mind. It would have been a thrill to hear it, but it gave me an excuse to get gussied up and go downtown after dark, and it was a mild evening--no rain, not too cold.

I took the opportunity to stop at the Directors Park, where the Rising is going to happen on Thursday. It's a very small park, just one city block square, all cement, hung with steel cables and dotted with pillars and walls that will make staging the dance a real challenge. That's where I took this shot, which I almost didn't post. But the young woman in her chef's tunic absorbed in her iPhone, sitting alone in the park, reflects just how I'm feeling. Alone, and glad to be alone and quiet. Nothing much going on. A nice change of pace.

I came home and played the Beethoven on my CD player and nuked a frozen Saag Paneer to eat while I listened. My CD has Georg Solti directing and Jessye Norman singing the soprano parts. Hard to beat that.

Thanks to Grazingllama for telling me about JOIN services for houseless people. I called them to find out what services might be available for my young man. Indeed, if I find him, and if he's interested in getting off the street, they have counselors who can help him and support him, and they have showers and job interview outfits, phones and computers, so he can get a good wash and some clean clothing and prepare a job resumé. All this will be useless if he's not ready. But I am ready for him, and that's all I can control. Now I just need to find him.

And for those of you who are concerned, old Taiga, my aged feline companion, is doing wonderfully. He's eating again. He's awake as much as two half-hours a day, he's taking a bit of an interest in what's around him, and he seems very happy to continue living peacefully. He's on my lap, purring as I write this. The world is full of surprises.

P.S. The colorful mural in the background here was created by "homeless teens" in a program called New Avenues for Youth.