Pick one

pick
Here, where I am, I am surrounded by stringed instruments.They were carefully, even gracefully picked. They are picked up and put down each time they are cradled, played and held. Go ahead, pick one. You may prefer to use a pick. You must pick a pick for one of these picked guitars. You could pick up another one next time. That sort of thing.

light
Well it's 9:08am and there is barely any light to be found. Let's just say that it is light from 9 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon. Although it is functionally light from 10am until 2pm. So, you had better not pout, you better not cry! Just hurry up and do what you need to do in the light quickly. Somehow, I suppose, what needs to get done, gets done. This lighting scheme/set up does not fare well for deliberate, slow folks like myself. For example, I like to wash and rinse a morning coffee spoon for a good 3 or 4 minutes. At that rate, my daylight ration runs out quickly... after a mere 80 to 100 spoons.

dark
Strangely or not, I have observed or been pulled into several episodes that have affected me deeply. I suppose
one could say that episodes of impact have swirled about me since I arrived here. It's all I can do to stay sane, to walk the line, to stay the course, to navigate the straits and narrows, to see the forest and not just the fallen twigs and branches on the soft, snowy white pine needle ground cover.

an episode: With lovingly, carefully selected and packaged Christmas offerings, I made arrangements to meet an old friend. The evening rendezvous promised to be full of laughs and reminiscing about the good old days. Hope springs eternal.

The evening unfolded differently than I thought it would. After almost an hour of frustrating phone calls to determine our exact locations so that we could actually meet, I was greeted by an inebriated and angry man, more or less lost on the streets of his own city. He stood in the freezing cold, hatless and gloveless, guarding a large heavy gym bag on the sidewalk in front of him. His efforts to find my apartment had failed. Our eventual meeting place was a full city block away after he had searched various unfriendly apartment buildings for apartment 94. My "happy to see you again" hug was countered with slander. He began to shower me with foul remarks. I was peppered with crude insults aimed directly and unabashedly at the people dearest to me. This Holiday episode became a foul-fest in a hurry. I was silent and astonished.

Perhaps a silly act of self defense... I offered to help him find his way home, because it was clear that the ritual of gift-giving would be unlikely. As he swayed, hollered and stumbled into snow piles on the streets of Riga, I found myself following his directions... making sure he got home safely was the least I could do. Of course, I offered to carry the heavy gym bag. The large canvas bag turned out to be full of Christmas cheer in the form of bottles. The handle of the bag was quite worn, so I held the bottle bag close to my chest. On this dark, cold winter night in Riga, I was cradling a heavy gym bag full of liquor bottles, walking with a drunken man through streets unknown, in directions unknown, as he publicly humiliated me in 3 different languages. Slurs in broken English, Latvian and Russian echoed on city streets as passers-by shook their heads in disapproval. This is a complete, comprehensive "drunk and disorderly" offense in most civilized countries.

When I tried to better understand where we were going, when I asked for clarification about where I was carrying this rather heavy bag of liquor bottles... it became clear that since the very beginning of our 25 minute walk, there had been massive directional confusion. We had been only a block or two away from his desired destination, but instead I had politely followed him into parts unknown. We had traversed Čaka iela, Avotu iela and were quite near Valmieras iela... Sensing that something was not right, I announced that we would be retracing our steps and returning to our starting point, which was only 2 blocks from where he intended to go in the first place.

After about an hour of verbal/spiritual abuse, it was clear that we would not sit, sip coffee and chit-chat about old times. I escorted him back to Kr. Barona and Ģertrūdes iela and politely suggested that we could perhaps try this again at some later date.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

- the registrar of wrong