This morning some goateed geek smiled as I looked up from my docs on the m�tro.
I fairly skipped along la Rue de Paris, drinking in the new restaurants and caf�s and shops, and when a man in a shiny blue Kangoo stopped to let me cross despite my light having turned a bright cherry red, I grinned right at 'im.
Dumb mistake.
A screeching of wheels behind me and he was about-faced and following me down the street, whistling and making signals for me to meet him at the caf� with the cracked tables up ahead, and when I'd keep right on walking he'd drive up the deserted slum street and whistle for me to stop over and over for the last hundred metres.
I have never been so happy to see the great sliding glass doors, marble stairs and impressive logos and have them swallow me up and away from the rotten breath of the outside world. Suddenly I understood why the yuppies hide. The doors slid behind me and I breathed safe and tried desperately to shake the sharp-clawed beasts crawling up my spine before stepping into the elevator and putting on gameface.
It worked, and I'm waiting for the decompiler to download and for the SysAdmin to figure out the difference between wal_cc and cc so that I can use the right flags for the debugger
Thierry called about that analysis I'd done a while ago and wanted advice on what the Credit Agricole should do, and sounded as though he actually wanted to hear my opinion.
I am filled with ideas and hope and somehow rather aware at the same time --
That things like that keep happening to remind me that there is a city beneath the clouds that I live on, filled with dark slinking things that no longer pose any real danger to me, but they do to other people just as they once battered my own spirit so many years ago.
Never forget. Heal, accept, learn to fight efficiently when absolutely necessary, and deal the rest of the time, but never forget my own shadows.
Never. They're what taught me how to appreciate, and perhaps see more clearly, the visions that I do see today.