I woke up at 6:20 groggy, but ready to go. At 6:25, I was downstairs waiting for Duncan, Henrike, Selina, and Luis. We were supposed to leave promptly at 6:30, but there was a lot of milling about and tiredness and we didn’t get into the car until 6:45.
Duncan started speeding on those narrow twisting back roads with their high hedges on either side. He was pushing it up to 60mph on the straight parts and riding the brake on the curves, slowing us down to about 50mph.
It was a quiet and very tense ride. Henrike asked Duncan to slow down and he started yelling at us all for making him late. Selina asked him to slow down as well and Duncan started defending his driving.
“I know these roads so well, I could practically drive them blindfolded.” “I am in control.” “I’ve got excellent reflexes.” You may recognize these defences from speaking to a drunk driver.
Anyhow, I felt embarrassed that he was arguing with them, and angry. I asked him what good his reflexes and control would be if we were to run into anything unexpected- like a tourist driver hurtling down the wrong side of the road. He did not answer that question nor did he slow down. Around this time we made it to the main road where these speeds would be acceptable anyway.
He dropped the other three off at Temple Bar and then brought me to the Co-op, where we were to help Bryan set up. This was a very similar set up to Temple Bar, only we were given folding tables and we were in a gymnasium/auditorium in a church.
Bryan warned me that the market was “The Twilight Zone” and that people would be coming up to him and commenting on the state of his chakras. But after Duncan left us there to run the market, nothing like that happened. It was certainly a stereotipical affluent liberal anti-war pro-yoga scared of brown skinned people but would never admit that kind of vibe, but no one gave any readings or anything.
We had a very busy day. We’d gotten no price list that morning, so we had to remember as best we could what to charge. We found that out just as we were finishing setting up in the moments before the market opened for business. That, and the fact that this was a much talkier customer base, made for an extremely busy and fast paced day.
Riding high on the buzz of a busy, talkative, flirtatious day, I’d forgotten all about this morning until Duncan came to pick me up.
“Did you think my driving was crazy this morning?” he said to me instead of ‘hello.’
I paused shortly yet dramatically.
“If you’re still dwelling on it, maybe you think it was crazy.”
“No I” blah blah blah something something something all very similar to the things he was saying this morning. No intellectual development or refinement of the ideas whatsoever- exactly the same.
I put my hand up and interrupted him gently. “Honest opinion: I didn’t mind your driving, but I thought it was very rude to ignore the requests to slow down.”
“I slowed down.”
Had he forgotten I had been sitting next to him, with a clear view of the speedometer? Was he hoping I had a bad memory, was extremely gullible, or that I was otherwise stupid? Were his eyes begging me from behind thick glasses to let him save face just this once? I couldn’t answer any of these questions nor could I figure out which questions were smart to ask. So I said “oh” to him in such a way that he would leave me and not talk about it anymore, but which also showed him I wasn’t on his side- you know the intonation.
I rode home with Luis in the back of a refrigerated truck. This made me feel like a real illegal immigrant (which I technically was) and I was glad to arrive home safely. We were having a nice dinner to welcome Sam to the farm.
I think I’ll like her, but there was some sizing one another up, circling like tigers, or whatever image you like to use when two people are not sure if they will like or can trust one another but are nontheless going to be living and working in a shared space.
I was annoyed by Duncan and a little by Sam too and I started to think about how the assertion, “I know.” is probably not so closely associated with wisdom. Wisdom is probably more about letting slippery things slide and not trying to make them stick.
Denis asked Sam something along the lines of, “What are you running from?”
She kind of didn’t really respond but also kind of mumbled that she wasn’t running from anything and Denis pressed the point. “Everyne who comes here,” he declared, “is running from something.
I said, “I’m not.”
“That’s what everyone says.”
I didn’t bother explaining that I would never run from anything bad, only towards something good, and I didn’t even bother telling him “oh” the way I described above. I let it pass. The conversation moved on.
But inside my head, part of me dwelled there on that question. I did not ask the obvious followup- ‘why is Denis so sure of this/what is it in him that makes him feel this way/what reaction is he trying to get with this question?
No, instead, I searched deep, trying to figure out if I’d been lying to myself about my feelings and motivations and if, somehow Denis had seen through all that.
I went to bed hours later still thinking about it because sometimes that’s how I get.
Ten Years Ago Today 