-A catchy title for the newest action film, to be sure, if only it wasn't true! I slept in late Sunday, taking my time getting ready for a full day of library sales and NFL football, not suspecting anything sinister on such a beautiful October day, boy was I wrong! As I walked down the sidewalk in front of the building where I live, it suddenly struck me that I wasn't seeing my car, but assumed it would come into view any second. As it dawned on me that my vehicle was nowhere to be found, I calmly went over a mental checklist of possibilities:

1) It had been mistakenly towed by an absentminded driver, not seeing the big yellow parking sticker on my windshield. This turned out not to be the case.
2) I was simply forgetting that I had left it in the visitors lot, finding no good space the night before. Nope, not a chance of this.
3) My car had been stolen, which has turned out to be true. BOO!

After doing the necessary, calling the police, filling out a report, and  contacting my insurance company, I simply went inside and turned on revitalizing football, although the Bears were having a day even worse than mine. There was nothing more for me to do, save walking the streets looking for my car, like a vengeful Ahab searching for the white whale that maimed me and took the last slice of cheesecake. They will either recover my car, hopefully intact, or I will get a newer and better one, the insurance will see to that.

Monday came anyway. The sun has come out. Shakespeare would not have written this into a tragedy, although Richard III could have used my car at the battle of Bosworth. ("My kingdom for a car" just doesn't have much of a ring to it though). 

Back to stacks of books, Tony

Edit: My car was recovered by the Carbondale police Monday afternoon, so all's well
that ends well, although I did have a new car picked out already. Nothing missing but five dollars in change and some jumper cables, so little more than a temporary inconvenience.

For the first time since early May, we have had three days in a row without thunderstorms or rain, so it feels like Summer has finally arrived at last, with less than a month to officially go. The new semester has arrived here, starting tomorrow, but l find myself listless and drifting this beautiful, cool Sunday morning. l feel no desire to leave this chair, to put on clothes, to open my front door, to eat, to work, to read, or to do make any effort at all. Sunday has a lot to do with that l know, it's a day ready-made to overthink everything; Saturday night is always my favorite, with every path in my mind clear and free of any felled trees or angry trolls (aren't all trolls angry?) Fear has a lot to with this as well, but not fear of sasquatch, scary clowns, or a Yoko Ono greatest hits album, but of moving forward, moving my chess pieces down the board, to make it simple. To wit, here are a few examples that l intend to follow:

Bagdad cafe (1987): This is one of my all time favorite films, and it's one that you may never have heard of, being a small independent foreign film from 22 years ago. Not to give anything away, but there is a scene where Jasmin (Marianne Sagebrecht), a tourist from Germany who finds herself stranded at the cafe, cleans the office windows of the cafe/truckstop owner (CCH Pounder), who can at last see the beauty of the world on the other side. It's a wonderful moment, that speaks to me everytime l see it. lf we never clean our own windows and see the beauty that is waiting for us, we will never grow. We will be living examples of Plato's allegorical cave-dwellers, only seeing the reflection of what must be true, but unable to see things for what they really are.

Here's to:

- Like Jasmine, cleaning the dirty glass, where no light could penetrate.

-Like Brenda, opening the windows for the first time, even if it safer to keep them closed.

-Like the Roman Emperor Vespasian, carrying the first load of rubble from the city ravaged by fire. We can rebuild if we will get off our throne,  if we are ready to lead.

-Like ____________making a list of your fears, facing them, and checking them off, like items on a grocery list.

GO TO IT, Tony

PS: There's a door up ahead not a wall.