Tuesday, September 23, 2008

A Coffee Cake So Immense

I saw a coffee cake today that was so big that it made me think of a poem KT recently posted on her blog. It is a poem about autumn. It begins with this line: "Lord: it is time. The summer was immense."

I quoted it to one of my co-workers, another new associate with whom I was going to lunch. She and three others and I found ourselves unusually without scheduled lunches (it's typical for new attorneys at my firm to lunch with more senior attorneys for most of the days during the first few weeks of work), so we headed to the Corner Bakery. We paid for ourselves. I'm not sure what she thought of my comparing summer to a coffee cake or quoting Rainer Maria Rilke at a casual Tuesday lunch, but it was a nice moment. A nice moment of collegiality and humanness and food we were buying ourselves (like real working adults) in the midst of two days of sitting, drinking free herbal tea, eating free fruit, and listening to people say, over and over again, in many and different ways, "Welcome to firm life." For example: "Here's a gift umbrella."

Tomorrow I start actually working with my assigned practice group, which works solely on pro bono cases (meaning, cases we do for free, for the good of thing). I'll spend three or four months with them, until I rotate into another group, another practice area, another kind of law with other co-workers. Maybe by then the mean blisters I got yesterday will have healed.

But my shoes. They were oh-so-pretty. Once the blisters die down, I do plan on wearing them again. Half-size too small and all. Patent leather stretches, yeah?

My next goal is to have a job where I don't spend the second day of work thinking mostly about my feet and whether or not anyone would notice if, underneath my computer-training console, I wore the flip-flops I'd smuggled in my bag.

Autumn Day by Rainer Maria Rilke

Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

(Translated by Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann, “The Essential Rilke” (Ecco))

12 comments:

mcampbell said...

Very pretty. Worth the blisters.

Love you. always. :)

Jim and Lisa said...

Hey, so where are you working at down here? We should get together. Good story, by the way.

Reijaranger said...
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Kate said...

February by Dar Williams is one of the best songs ever sung. Just saw that on your sidebar. I'm a big Earth Shoes fan. Stylish & the most comfortable things you can put on your feet.

Sarah Louise said...

Kate, I'm taking your comment seriously. Earth Shoes. I've googled them and I might just be on board.

Rebecca Smylie said...

So it's begun. Have an umbrella. Very, very funny. Get yourself a mug.

Ashlee Marie said...

AHHH, I remember the first time someone told me "fashion hurts". Then I saw these: neurotalk (dot) psychcentral (dot) com/thread45043(dot) html

Sarah Louise said...

Ashlee, those are unbelievable. Seriously. I'm in disbelief. Holy cow. I cannot even imagine.

Kate said...

Some say they have a "learning curve" because your feet are in the opposite position of most shoes (ie heels lower than toes). It's hard to be objective since I'm such a fanatic... & I wear Earth Shoes exclusively. Even my sandals... Earth sandals.
But, I swear to you that after these pointy toe-jammers will seem so idiotic, you will never look back.

mrs. everything said...

NOT WORTH THE BLISTERS! Since I sell shoes and I know this stuff I can tell you patent leather doesn't really have much give. Sorry to break it to you. You can stretch them a little on a shoe tree for width but not much. I see some pretty boomin' bunions on an almost daily basis so I would try to find some equally cute shoes that fit better. Bunions and hammer toes are gross.

mrs. everything said...
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mrs. everything said...

I also wanted to tell you that our home teacher Bob Turley told me today that you were one of his favorite BYU people.