Existential Crisis

Clock Face ~ Omni Shoreham ~ Washington DC

This really happened: At the Post Office, the line is long but only two cashiers are open, and both clerks have disappeared into the back room, so all the customers are just standing idly / oddly looking around. It's like a Bunuel film -- are we in charge now? Should I step behind the register and start helping people? How long will we all stand here with nothing happening? Existential Crisis!

Speaking of the Post Office, why not take a few moments to reread Eudora Welty's droll little story "Why I Live at the P.O."? [also, see earlier post]

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from The Journals of Andre Gide: "One should want only one thing and want it constantly. Then one is sure of getting it. But I desire everything and consequently get nothing. Each time I discover, and too late, that one thing had come to me while I was running after another."

Stephane Moses [writing about Kafka's Parables]: "Certain situations are so desperate that the only way to escape them is through total ingenuousness."

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Uh - oh, I've done it again, written down the passage but not the source. Does anyone recognize? If only I could remember who wrote these words . . .

"I devoted myself to my business to the best of my ability -- not taking much pleasure in it, but hoping by this semblance of work to give some stability to my disintegrated life.

Perhaps it was because the day had begun so badly that I felt so anguished. Oh, I thought, without doubt, everything in my life is falling to pieces. Nothing that my hand grasps can my hand hold."

Clock Face ~ Darling Harbor ~ Sydney, Australia
[And More!]

P.S.
Closing thought from Margaret Atwood:
" . . . The year
isn't a circle or some
dream of a clock but one shadowy
moment after the next. . . . "
~ see True Stories, p 31 ~