Sunday night already. Seems to me I was just watching 'Monk'. I love the show. Have watched since the very first show nine seasons ago. Tony Shalhoub is one of my favorites. He inhabits the men he plays. His humanity is wonderful. Remember him in 'Wings'? He was the Italian cab driver. There was a kind of hilarious, off beat brilliance to the cabby..

When he won his first Emmy for best comedy for 'Monk', he said something to the effect that it wasn't a comedy. It wasn't supposed to be funny. He said it with a very straight face. It isn't all funny:Monk is a wounded soul, desperate to find the one who killed his wife and his life in one fell swoop. But Monk keeps trudging. All his nervous compulsions hold him, just barely, on this side of sanity.

I laugh until I weep. And then I weep for his vulnerability, his huge loss, and at the recognition of how much he adored his wife. Sometimes his loneliness eats right through my skin. And then he's busy at work again, seeing things as only he can. It's his attention to the tiniest of details that allows him to solve the mysteries. The same attention to details, the constant straightening of corners, the evening up of spaces between things, the noticing of things just slightly awry that defines his obsessive compulsions, is what allows him to see what others do not. His 'craziness' is what makes him valuable as a detective and lovable/maddening as a person. I weep until I laugh.

It occurs to me that each show is a lot like a good meeting. It occurs to me that among the gifts of meetings is that I have learned to listen to stuff that is not about me, specifically. I hear about things that apparently have little to do with my life, and realize they have everything to do with how I view the world. It's the pang of recognition: we are more alike then different. My ways of staying on this side of sanity are different from Monk's, but he would probably view my ways with the same combination of laughter, tears, and attention as I view his.