After 11 days away from the office, I was startled by a couple changes. Across the winter, work has been done to lay pipes, and then encase them, that are part of a system to steer ocean energy toward heating the complex housing the Dartmouth ferry terminal. This seemed a slow project, at best, with odd fits and starts of seemingly last minute applications–and then removal–of pink insulation. It had been weeks since the casework had been tended, although the warning sign about invisible men working, and variously coloured caution tape, had stayed in place.
But somehow, during my time away, the casework has been completed in full. Now we wait to see if it remains bare plyboard or becomes tiled? painted? The caution tape remains, as do the (now dented) caution signs, so the project’s not officially over at any rate.
The pedway reader is back as well; he disappeared for a couple of weeks from mid-April. This morning he seemed happily oblivious as he read a hardcover I couldn’t quite identify. But it must have been good, because he was smiling as he read.
No sooner had my ferry left the Halifax dock this morning than we had to angle a slightly different path across the harbour, due to an enormous US Navy ship, the appropriately named Big Horn, which was being nosed about by three (civilian) tugboats. A little police catamaran sped up as well, perching itself before the ship’s prow like a mouse before a lion.
Later in the morning, two smaller US Navy vessels had also come to berth and my store of possible information requested, by officemates, in a way that points up all that is idiosyncratic about “common knowledge.” The first question, who is John Paul Jones, is one I could have answered in my sleep, and which I did answer in that rote manner that an unexpected query related to facts learned a lifetime ago can bring to the fore. So, then came the next question, related to the name of the third vessel: and who is Donald Cook? Once I figured that out–and further learned that the John Paul Jones is supposed to be part of the Pacific fleet–my sense of what I know and why I know it was turned into an uncomfortable tumble.
In short, I feel landed again: dazed and a bit confused, as much by presumptions I’ve made across a lifetime as by anything with which I am currently confronted, and grateful for such small pleasures as seeing a stranger enjoy what must be a “good” book.
