What is ordinary?

Back from Utah for a couple days. It rained every day, to some degree, but the trip was good nonetheless. I wonder how many people go to the canyons for a vacation and get a chance to see the blue sheen of the water running off the colored rock and reflecting the sky? It makes the whole scene quite different from the pictures we're shown.

Counting the Mad

by Donald Justice

This one was put in a jacket,
This one was sent home,

This one was given bread and meat

But would eat none,

And this one cried No No No No

All day long.

This one looked at the window

As though it were a wall,

This one saw things that were not there,

This one things that were,

And this one cried No No No No

All day long.

This one thought himself a bird,

This one a dog,

And this one thought himself a man,

An ordinary man,

And cried and cried No No No No

All day long.

from New and Selected Poems. © Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

That's one of the Poems of the Day that the FFM sent while I was gone. He sends them to people sometimes, and some of them strike me more than others.

I did a lot of complaining on the trip about other people's unobservant actions, just being completely oblivious, or not giving a crap, to others around them. We are an ordinarily self-centered bunch anymore. And I couldn't help but feel bad for the people who sat in their RVs to eat breakfast, when it was perfectly gorgeous (the rain of course did not usually happen in the morning, and sometime after midnight a person could crawl out of a tent to see an amazing star show, and then rise to sunshine later on) outside, with a functional picnic table sitting empty just a few feet from the trailer. One couple from Texas parked their RV at least the night before we arrived at Petrified Forest State Park in Escalante, and until they left the morning after the afternoon we got there, we never saw them exit the vehicle. I'm not sure why people spend all that money on gas to go to a place like that and then not see it.

Anyway, I'm just another ordinary person; who am I to judge? I just think I have it better than people like I bitched about all weekend. But I don't know for sure.