With each step, the hallway doubles in length. Behind each door is the possibility of the man. Maybe behind each door. She can’t escape him. Turning around doesn’t seem to matter. “Am I turning at all?”
“You’re thinking.”
The hall recedes and disappears into a spoon in a cup.
Everything has something that makes them tick.
Sometimes it’s a battery.
Sometimes that battery is dead.
Thought there were words enough there to get a story going. Sometimes that battery is dead. So there is the review of the day, the asking of feeling, maybe a revisiting of memory and looking for holes. Perhaps it is safe to visit the box labeled “dead to me” for some thing, some spark, some emotion to send one on a trajectory.
But no. Instead she goes to the refrigerator to see what needs doing or eating. It’s the default place to look when nothing else comes to mind.
“You’re thinking.” he said.
Coming back to the physical world is swimming to the surface from the bottom of a swamp. She lets it go. Reluctantly. That pearl of thought is lost. Never very good at holding on to ephemera, even the stuff that lives inside her mind.
Cute. Okay. He can be forgiven for interrupting that particular reverie. Seems unimportant now. It turns out it really was important, but that won’t be apparent for a while.
It’s been a perfect weekend of beautiful weather and not talking to anyone.
Thought about how very different my friend, Liz and I are. For her, thoughts aren’t quite real until they come out of her mouth. Experiences aren’t quite real unless shared.
So different than this tangible grounding of uninterrupted solitary wandering that went as far as imagination and all within the confines of my (now tidy) home. There was that excursion to the lake just to look at water and breathe. It doesn’t require anything more.
This? External memory. Not to announce to the world my exploits. It’s because I have dog memory. And that is why everything is shiny and new all the time. Remember this. Perfect thing.
Nothing did ruffle rattle or roll me. See that?
Still standing.
Let’s try this. Cancel all the noise, the self-criticism, the need for an objective; a pithy ending; a self-contained palatable chunk.
Well, that doesn’t leave much. I baked cinnamon rolls. Sun is shining. The weather is fine.
Here I am. Three little birds.
And with that it’s a Bob Marley kinda day.
Ramble. Skip playback on life leitmotif . For a little bit it was Aha’s “Take On Me” (eff the Pitbull version). Stupid “Trouble” gets interfered with by goats. And because of students, Yello’s “Oh Yeah”. For some reason, in-between it slips to Abba’s “Dancing Queen”.
Time to wake up the Gabe and get this party started right.
So I didn’t get my driver’s license until the early twenties. I forget exactly when. Didn’t need one. I biked everywhere. Oh, those godzilla legs. (That’s what some guy said as I was walking down the street).
No spinning. Just powered my way through sun, rain, snow.
The hope is that this won’t be awful for the leg and may actually help it.
And because
Summer.
Here’s to hoping and rehabilitation.
Put the cane down. That isn’t a metaphor. I just put it down.
Thought experiment…what if this really is the new normal? This constant low grade pain with occasional flares of what-the-fuck? Add this to the year of lessons in mortality. Little deaths. My body is not what it was. It’s degrading. And that’s what happens with age. Old isn’t bad. Yeah. I’m fifty and that is a number and big whoop. No. It’s this
I am broken
I am breaking
Maybe I am accepting. It’s time for that stage of grieving. It’s about time.
Some insignificant word as proof of existence leaked into the ether.