Friday, September 14, 2007

what I don't know could fill many post-it notes

Over a year ago, Grant had started noticing so many little yellow notes stuck up all over the house. That was not entirely new. Fiona had always written things down—the title of a book she’d heard mentioned on the radio or the jobs she wanted to make sure she got done that day. Even her morning schedule was written down. He found it mystifying and touching in its precision: “7 a.m. yoga. 7:30–7:45 teeth face hair. 7:45– 8:15 walk. 8:15 Grant and breakfast.”

The new notes were different. Stuck onto the kitchen drawers—Cutlery, Dishtowels, Knives. Couldn’t she just open the drawers and see what was inside?

Worse things were coming. She went to town and phoned Grant from a booth to ask him how to drive home. She went for her usual walk across the field into the woods and came home by the fence line—a very long way round. She said that she’d counted on fences always taking you somewhere.

It was hard to figure out. She’d said that about fences as if it were a joke, and she had remembered the phone number without any trouble.

“I don’t think it’s anything to worry about,” she said. “I expect I’m just losing my mind.”

- from "The Bear Came Over the Mountain", by Alice Munro, online at The New Yorker website

Wow, that's exactly how I feel today - like I'm losing my mind. Better not to go into all the details here; maybe it's enough to say that I messed things up royally, and when my colossal error was pointed out to me, I had no clue how it could have happened. Actually, I still don't. I sort of felt like Oedipus, in that scene where he realizes he's been completely blind, not solving the world's problems but causing them.

No, I didn't kill anyone or commit incest or anything like that. But I might try using those little yellow notes in the future. And being much, much more careful.

6 comments:

Jeff said...

Perhaps overreacting a little? You're not the first person to make the error you made, even within your own section. You unwittingly carried out a tradition, that's all.

Anonymous said...

Did you forget to go to a rehearsal? Come in during a really quiet moment at a concert?
I'm sure it's not too bad, and probably a hundred of us have done it before )

Anonymous said...

meant to be a :)

Stan Haskins said...

Wow, you're really going to just leave us hanging with this, huh? should we assume you just did something really unimportant, like arcoing when you should have pizzed, or are we talking prosecutable offense here?

You can fit lots of things on those post-it notes, you know . . .

Matt Heller said...

I am probably breaking a cardinal rule of blogging with this, huh? I seem to still have my job, which is a good sign and means things aren't quite as bad as I thought.

At some point I suppose I'll have to tell the whole story - but right now it still creeps me out just thinking about it, so I'd rather not. Sorry Stan!

Stan Haskins said...

Then I'll have to make up an ending - you forgot to take a WC break before the concert and wet your tux on stage.

I'll go and edit your Wikipedia entry now ;)