July 1, 1999

Journal of a Sabbatical

July 1, 1999

raining

Today's Reading: Before the Dawn by Shimazaki Toson

1999 Booklist

We got more rain this morning than in the entire month of June. It was so cool to watch it come down in sheets and create white water rapids in the streets of Andover. I sat at Starbucks with Tom and Philosophy Larry and stared out the window at this strange and beautiful phenomenon. Dan & Geri joined us for awhile and told Tom about our weird encounter with a boy whom Dan has taken to calling R2D2.

This kid is some kind of idiot savant or something. He was listening in on our conversation the other day and finally walked over to our table and sat down. Now, this kid is about 15 years old and he started talking about how his father wants him to invest his money in a Roth IRA and how he's going to make millions and explaining compound interest and the per capita GNP of Brunei and ... He kept talking whether we responded or not yet he was in total command of the conversation - we couldn't ignore him and go on with our conversation. Finally George got up to leave. That gave me a cue to leave. Dan & Geri felt like we were abandoning them with the kid. They left and he followed them out onto the sidewalk still talking about Roth IRAs and the per capita GNP of Brunei. They got in their SUV and drove off while he was still talking.

So Dan & Geri told this whole story to Tom and Philosophy Larry and we all brainstormed as to whether R2D2 was autistic or just really smart with no social skills. We came to no agreement except that he's even stranger than the woman who thinks I'm married to QI and cheating on him with Tom.

When the rain let up a little, I headed home again to work on answering tons of e-mail and on trip planning. I promised myself I'd book the flights today. I didn't. I did find my book on birding in eastern Europe - in the trunk of my car - in case I go through a hole in the space-time continuum and end up in Romania or Bulgaria needing to look up a bird? So I read the sections about Hungary to get an idea of what birds I'll be looking for in August at Lake Balaton.

Looks like journaler Dean B had similar problems locating travel guides at Globe Corner Bookstore. Y'know, there ought to be a series of travel guides to obscure places and war zones and stuff for all the reporters, humanitarian workers, business travelers, and nutcases ... So, anyway, my trip planning is coming together now that I've limited the itinerary to Hungary. That there's a guide book for. I'll save Bosnia, Macedonia, and Kosovo for the next century.

I finished Book One of Before the Dawn and the pages promptly fell out. As I said before, this book clearly was not meant to be read more than once. I'm up to page 397. That's 10 pages into Book Two. Book One ended at the resignation of the last Tokugawa shogun and Book Two starts all over again at the arrival of the Black Ships but tells it from the European point of view. So, like on page 383 it's 1867 and then suddenly it's 1854 again. It's an interesting way to handle telling the same story from two radically different viewpoints, but it's still a little unsettling. Maybe like watching the Star Wars prequel from the point of view of the bad guys ... Only 362 pages to go.