Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Honesty Policy

I sit tonight waiting for the second major snow of the winter, even as soot-crusted remnants remain of the last one--a storm I place now, chronologically, in the mental file folder of "right after," meaning right after a man on a bicycle did his best to relieve me of the burden of my handbag. I also refer to that event as Christmas Eve, which when combined with the attempted larceny gives both events a certain gravitas, as if the parting gift of a broken clavicle was not enough.
In the telling, it never fails to deepen the despair for humanity and where we are all headed, when a woman can't go out and do some last-minute getting without ending up at St. Luke's talking to detectives instead of making her 7:30 dinner rez at Bar Baloud. And, in fact, there is some sense of naive surprise that there is not, actually, a cease-thieving called at noon on December 24th. It would seem it's actually its busy season, with my mugger and I both waiting until the last minute to do our shopping, giving us something else in common besides  coveting my Prada bag.
Since it happened, I find my already well- entrenched insouciance has magnified. It may be the pain killers, or may just be a normal response to being slammed to the ground, but I find detachment from human nonsense easier than ever these days. The bald act of robbery has, perversely, a kind of honesty at its center--if not morally, certainly in its purpose. The man who tried to grab my handbag was not pretending to do otherwise. In that way, my responding by not letting go was a direct and unambiguous exchange between us. It had an almost Zen-like clarity. While I do not wish to repeat it, it served to heighten my insistence that all attempts at passive-aggressive behavior directed toward me in the new year be immediately met with aggressive-aggressive behavior. Unless I don't care enough, which will then turn quickly in to passive-passive, and may involve a very dry martini.
See. I feel better already.