joebelknapwall | the furry ridgeline--a stranger visits

I woke up early, ready to go back to work and face the challenges of a new decade, with a simple, lovely quote circulating gently in my head like the strata of sweet-smelling pipe tobacco smoke.

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

- Albert Camus

It's a good way to start a year, drifting out of dreams to the words of a presumed absurdist, and I walked to the train station, rode to work with the landscape rolling past in shades of grey, and worked a reasonable, if a little frustrating, shift. At lunch, I thought of Camus again, eating my can of soup in front of the computer with Bach quietly counting the minutes on my little radio, and idly sat there, blowing on my spoon and reading about Facel Vega automobiles like the one that killed him—sleek, gorgeous, magical things...

The time drifts, some days.

At home, I curled up on the bed with the dog, aimlessly watching a little television and rooting through the random alleys of the internet, and I tuned in a familiar website about the kind of automotive minutia that gives me an odd sense of pleasure. Odd, too, that today's the fiftieth anniversary of the day Albert Camus died in that Facel Vega, wrapped around a tree with a train ticket in his pocket for the trip he'd meant to take, but was talked out of by his publisher.

I wonder how I know such things, and how these awkward moments collide.

I was still thinking of the coincidence, or whatever you'd call it, when an unseen hand, or at least the impression of one, turned the doorknob on the closet door on the other side of the room. The door clicked open, then gradually swung open with a theatrical cre-e-e-e-eak. I felt the electric thrill of gooseflesh, and wasn't sure how to react, except to tense up slightly in expectation.

The dog was less circumspect, and was on her feet, hackles raised in a twenty-two inch mohawk running down her spine, ears pricked, and letting out the kind of deep, visceral growl dogs make when they're not fooling around. I sat up, watched the door swing, then pause, then swing fully open, in what was probably just one of those tricks of an old and uneven house.

The closet was just the closet, packed solid with my excesses.

The dog was not assuaged.

I stroked her, if only to feel the bristly ridge of raised fur and the low rumble of an ongoing growl, and chuckled.

"Mister Camus, I presume," I said, to no one in particular, and went back to my distractions.

Hell, I never could make heads or tails of The Stranger, but you have to love an invincible summer.