Why was he doing that?

Driving to work this morning it  was dark, overnight gales persisting, heavy rain slanting down as if some demented supra-gardener was waving a watering can in time to Carmina Burana. In the dimly lit street I saw a car door open and close. I came closer and saw water spray bouncing off the car. At 7.05 am, in a howling gale and torrential rain, in near total darkness, someone was washing their car with a pressure hose. As I passed there he was, leaning against the gale, assiduously washing a car that was being rained on in a gale.

Only one question occurs - Why?

But the puzzles of the day kept coming. The floor director of the Silverburn shopping centre was being asked about the plight of the retail sector, and the mega-malls as customers seem less reluctant to throw money away. Amongst the comments he made was that families were not spending enough dwell time in the centre. Now "dwell time", suggests a place to stay, a settling down, maybe even home. The idea that a retail temple is a place to spend dwell time just about says what it is that makes contemporary life such a kaleidoscope of impermanence.

I've no answers to the man with the pressure hose, or the customers who need to spend dwell time in Silverburn Centre. Just the perplexity of one who tries to live wittily in the tangle of my mind - and make some sense of this odd, loveable world.

Comments

[Duncan]

Thank you so much for all your posts which I regularly read with interest. Last night I watched a really disturbing programme on adoption and was perplexed to observe that a major factor being weighed in the balance by the social workers when trying to find a home for 2 girls who had been in foster care for years, was whether the prospective family might have a dog or be willing to get a dog! How important is a dog in the bigger picture of being in foster care for years. I also couldn't get over a 4 year old boy being told all the details of a court case which would decide his future.Why? Just getting my perplexity off my chest!