A cordone of yellow tape signals a quarantine zone that I all too willingly step into in the hours that are just slightly morning. Tea seemed to be a good, stable choice. So did making my bed and hanging my clothes. No matter how many times I try remind myself not to, I leave a trail of socks that betray daily little routines. Nearly alive piles at the foot and side of my bed. Inside the closet. Just in front of the sink in the bathroom. Stocking feet can be little precursors to varied spirits.
To some extent, I have never liked change. I am not averse to it, but it is inconvenient and I always stick the landing a little off. That offness I can never prevent, but I land either way. Uncertainty, the thing that makes you jump and start. That throws it all off.
Out of the blue, I became overly concerned that, once I relocate, the path to a space of solitude will be wildly out of my reach. It was a bit gaseous, and I thought to have a drink to null the coming exhaust. Instead I sat, suffused myself with sticky nicotine, and did a chore or three. I have routes by which I can obtain this for myself already etched out in some form or another. Drafts and branching paths. I am so far out from the jourmey that I am filling my head with awful things that could fill the future. They aren’t awful, really. They are only inconvenient.
Give me an inch, and I’ll take a nautical league.
The warping of my profound unhappiness.
A something I said to my cousin over the phone, and he thought that could be the title of a great thing I could write. I think if I was honest and told the majority of the truth, it would be a great thing to write. It is truly where I am, despite how the sentence sounds. It is without a doubt the greatest place I’ve been in a significant while. A product of getting older, no doubt. If I made a transparency of the person I am now and the person I was ten years ago, the similarities between the existential flu I had then versus now would be very apparent when overlayed. The product of age, of longevity (and to some extent continuity) that I have come to hold dear in my heart is the composure that can come from a growing life. Naive she is now the seasoned me. An adjustment I earned through rites of passage. Continuance. And paying attention, as a life. Awareness is probably a better word. The short of it, I occupied this body as completely as I was able in every space that filled out and grew. I still sit in every classroom, parked car, bleacher, abandoned wood, concert arc, and patch of overgrown grass that I have ever sat in. All at once. And eventually every one I will come to sit in, will add another me to the choir.
I did end up having a drink. Nondescript conveyor belt wine of the paper carton variety in tandem with the battering of my emotions at the hands of Portishead. I grabbed a book off the desk, something leisurely, and my intention is to exercise a bit in the in-betweens.
I forget how nice it is to write. To give some sort of cohesion to that which tosses and turns this way and that. I always write about what I’m doing or what I’m thinking. Thankfully I’ve become less self-absorbed and more self-aware. The tone has changed dramatically. But, I’ve never tried telling a story. I wonder if I made this a writing exercise, would I dredge up some long lost things from off the banks of Ye old Recall Memory? Any sort of memory. The ones that you’d never think about at any otherwise. Like a tshirt in a photograph you forgot you even had. I think that might become an exercise I try out. It intimidates me! A best quote:
“Intimidated to live my life.”
I invite a lot of rigidity into my life that is informed by a lot of the rituals I learned in rote. This journaling, for example. I had a sudden realization not even ten seconds ago, that to more reguarly write, an entry could encompass a day. My diary is not a five paragraph essay doomed to be turned in and graded. It doesn’t have to be neatly wrapped. It doesn’t even have to be complete. It’s such an elemtary realization, but I’ve come to accept that I am a bit of an elementary person. A late bloomer of the freedom war. I will go to the grave alone. I might as well take my sweet, wanting-to-be meticulous time.