The Kindness of Strangers

By Cornelia



I’m sitting here this morning in my laundry-strewn living room at the Chateau Ultra-Trashy, listening to a very fine iTunes playlist—Vince Guaraldi’s “Linus and Lucy,” and the Allman Brothers’ “One Way Out”, and Jerry G crooning “Truckin’,” and Bo Diddley doing “You Can’t Judge a Book by Looking at the Cover” (“I look like a farmer, but… I’m a lover…”), with Brubeck’s “Take Five” and Manhattan Transfer’s “Operator” now on deck.

The place has kind of gone to hell over the last week or so. In addition to all the clean-but-unfolded laundry, there’s a set of jumper cables under the dining room table, and there’s the pile of crap I took out of my older-by-eleven-minutes daughter’s school backpack after I returned home from the road Sunday, having used the pack for luggage.

Yes, it’s Wednesday. Yes, the pile of crap is still sitting on the floor next to my chair, here. It includes a copy of the most recent New York Times Book Review (in which Marilyn Stasio very kindly says that I have a “spellbinding narrative voice”), and my pair of gold Tony Lama cowboy boots, and the copy of Ace Atkins’ brilliant White Shadow that I bought in Houston. There is also a lot of other detritus crowding every horizontal surface in this room, but I don’t want to scare you.

Not without reason does my Intrepid Spouse call me “the lightning rod for entropy in the universe.” My excuse is that I’m still decompressing from the bestest weekend I’ve ever, ever had.

What I’ve mostly been thinking about since I came home from the road, around midnight three days ago, is the kindness of strangers, and the kindness of dear friends.

And now I have to drive my younger-by-eleven-minutes daughter down to school, but will finish these thoughts upon my return…