I’m looking through rain-spattered window glass at a barely illumined rainy day. The sky is low and yet transparent, the rain merely steady and boring. Nothing portentous to see – can’t see the sea, either. Covered by mist, the parts of rain aerosolized in the atmosphere.
The man from the house on E.-St., across the street from the one below me, returned to his front door just as I was sitting down, wearing the same outer gear as the other time I noticed him (when he reminded me of a cop). The fluorescent lime green safety vest is incongruous, I guess. For a cop, that would be like wearing a target. He must be doing whatever it is he’s doing at this early hour of the day for his health.
Yesterday A. phoned: he will be going to Munich next week to present [startup project] to this insurance accelerator. Very exciting news. The thought of him coming back here just to drone away in a regular job is kind of sad – I hope [startup] works out instead.
I have to think of family relations just now. He might try to crash at A.’s [his cousin] for one night. If he were to get in with this accelerator, he and [business partner] would have to move to Munich. If he then were to meet [my friend] G. who lives in Munich, and if G. in turn met [A.’s cousin, my niece by marriage], G. would get a whole new or different perspective on my family, my family by marriage. A. is my niece, but is no blood relation. Were G. to meet R. [A.’s father, W.’s brother], she’d have a new reference for W. (since she knows W.), but meeting S. [R.’s wife, my sister-in-law], say, would remove or attenuate that relation again. If, on the other hand, G. met a sister of mine (say, A.I.), there would be a direct reference (“Yule’s sister”) and if she met my sister’s husband B., there would be a slight remove, but nothing as the one with S., my sister-in-law married to my brother-in-law. Woman –> sister –> sister’s husband seems a stronger link for a woman’s female friend than woman –>woman’s husband –> woman’s husband’s brother’s wife. And then the children. I think somehow we women, when we stick together, examine our own more vividly. Actually, in many ways I don’t believe a word of what I just wrote, and yet in others – or in one particular other way – I do. And I can’t put my finger, exactly, on what that one other thing might be, except that it would be based in me, in my power as a woman with a woman friend and six woman siblings. (And, interestingly, the woman friend I’m thinking of also comes from a family of seven, albeit not seven sisters, there are two brothers and five sisters.) Somehow, somewhere, we are a separate system with its own operating instructions. And that’s why those twinges of secret knowledge can sometimes be sensed.