Cave and the Wave

"There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit." 1 Corinthians 12:4

It's the small pleasures that matter really. I don't understand this blissful reality every day of my life. And those in which I don't I often seem to have a splinter in my foot and rocks in my overstuffed hobo bag. Not today however...a train ticket, a fleece blanket, and five pounds of arts, news, propaganda, and overzealous paid opinions combined with pristine Jones Beach and I am light as a floating feather.

I received a couple of kick in the head realities today. One being I need a dictionary on hand while reading the NY Times Week in Review..Mensch or pettifogging anyone?

Also if I am going to read intellectual Jew writers who say that whites don't feel the blow of the recession because they reach out to wealthy relatives( is she looking in a mirror) or a misogynistic director get rave reviews because he enjoys putting women on pedestals and knocking them off to get back at his controlling mom, then I am going to have to play the old tape in my head that relishing the paper after a morning farmer's market run, a train to the shore, five hours in the sand, and well into my Sunday evening off are a sheer pleasure and not intended to ruffle my feathers only to exercise my emotions.

I think I am mainly pissed because they are published opinions with high circulation. (By the way, click on my adds, I get paid)

However, the true revelation of the day that has any weight bearing impact hit me today while I played referee to the Book in Review pages and the mighty wind which had so gustily blown all of our clouds away to reveal the late summer sun. I was contemplating my sitting position in line with the horizon, the tilt in the Earth's axis and the pull of gravity, the fact that we are all bundles of energy made up of majority salty water and our brains could feasi ...when my dear husband with rival intelligence chimed in...

"I wonder if we can get a swirl cone at Friendly's."

Now I write this with a straight and surprisingly calm face. This curiosity is no more a measurement of breadth or depth of mind, only what gets us off at that moment in time. His being ice cream. Mine, the meaning of life.

Now, on those heavily burdened days, I would normally groan with exasperation that we just are not on the same wavelength and how is it he doesn't get my contemplative groove?

But today with his heavy hand supporting me on the small of my back as we stood on the L coming home together, he smiled at me with a genuine look of love.

And I realized our vast differences are our simple strengths in this strange, strange world.

I'll read. He'll watch. I will tangle wires, he will compartmentalize, I'll cook like a raving madwoman, he'll clean as he goes, my subtraction will be wrong and his will be right. I'll analyze the ambiguous. He will assemble the obvious. At the end of a long day I'll pour a Loire Valley Sancerre in a Riedel glass. He'll drink a can of Miller Lite.

I know this. And so I'm braced for the reply the next time I ask," What are you thinking about dear?"

Do you ever wonder where the act of good old fashioned thinking will lead you?