Thursday

Since it's turned out my internet access has indeed been sparse lately, I feel the need to post to this column whenever I happen to actually have some. Over the next few days, like the last few, there's a holiday with plenty of parties and socializing. I'm not sure I'll make it to this forum every day. Since I'm able to post now, I would be remiss if I didn't do so. While thinking this through earlier, I planned to come up with a worthwhile theme while taking my shower. I've taken showers in a number of different places over these last weeks (eight actually) and I'm still uncertain whether my continuing delight stems from the astounding variety of those experiences, the rejuvenation of showering after long winter nights of social visiting, or poking around in other people's toiletries. There's a predictably extensive array of scented gels, perishable conditioners, and sculpted soaps in the mostly feminine bathtubs I've stood in while doing this poking; the rooms themselves artfully decked with colored candles, stocked with magazines, and hung with fluffy guest towels. What interested me today, distracted me from conjuring a real post topic, was the sheer difference between these showers themselves. I fiddled with the handles in today's bathtub trying to comprehend the dramatically unrelated torque ratios of the hot and the cold taps. A few days ago, I was in a tub old enough to have four porcelain knobs, one of which was labeled "waste." Somewhat before that, I used a tub with exposed water pipes. These physical characteristics, the actual context of different showers, has proven as compelling as the vagaries of their content--those cakes and decorations or even the nature of the unsteadily-adjusted water itself. I quite forgot to imagine anything of interest otherwise. [Cavin]