today.
Today is a day I would rather be lying on the grass or carrying a sleepy kitten in the crook of my arm or inventing new types of milkshakes or feeling ocean air settle like spiderwebs on my skin or navigating the swing of a precarious hammock. Today is a day for mindless television or a silly afternoon matinee or for sipping Cherry Coke at a barbeque where everything is burnt but the potato salad. Today is a day for magazines and sand and coconut oil and dreaming up renovations and whacking people with pillows and making pronouncements about lemons that seem profound.
I want to do something that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, something light. Something I can’t mess up with my vague malaise. Something uncomplicated that makes me smile.
The older I get, though, the harder it is to let go, even for a few moments. To relinquish control in favour of contentment. To accept things as they are for a bit. It’s not like my life is difficult enough to qualify as a reality check or drudgery, but still.
It’s been a tough couple of months and I just could use a few hours without my brain so furiously and determinedly trying to figure out the next step or where I should ideally be at or “am I handling this just as I should?”
Even when I pause to do things that are blissy and unfettered and good, some part of me still knows there is still something to go back to when I’m done. I am not the master distractor that I used to be.
Maybe it’s good, though.
Maybe that’s growing up.
Maybe it’s inevitable.
Maybe I’m tired of it.
Definitely I’m tired of it.
C’mon, you guys. Let’s go play. Or sleep. Or something.
August 31st, 2006 at 1:46 pm
Yeah, I could use some play. Definitely.
August 31st, 2006 at 2:02 pm
i would love to be curled up in the sun with a cuddly kitten.
August 31st, 2006 at 2:28 pm
i wish we could play…that would be nice. much nicer than sitting here in my office, though the breeze coming through the window is pleasant.
August 31st, 2006 at 8:46 pm
Speaking of milkshakes… my 11-yr-old grandson really gets what is important. The other night while he and his mother were having some ice cream he said to me: “You know, it really stinks that you can’t have ice cream!” None of that: well, at least you know what you can’t eat, or… you can have fruit, or any of that crap! Just… “it really stinks!” Later, he thought of another reason that it stinks: because I can’t have a free ice cream on my birthday as a member of the birthday club at Cold Stone Creamery.
Trying to make him feel a little less bad… I mentioned that in the first half of my life, I’d probably had enough ice cream for an entire lifetime (at which my daughter had to choke back her laughter), and the little guy responded: “Well, I think it’s a really good thing you did that!”
What a mensch! And he’s only 11!
September 1st, 2006 at 2:28 pm
I vote for sleep.