6.05.2009

it feels like saturday even though it's friday, but it feels like saturday because i had a long day at the office yesterday and today i had nothing to do. freedom is so much sweeter when it is preceeded directly by toil. so today when i woke up free it was not to the sound of my alarm and when i opened my eyes the first thing i did was not get out of bed. the first thing i did was pick up the book i was reading last night and i read it for a while. eventually i did get out of bed, to clean the house and wash the dishes and take the carnations i brought home from the shop last week, now grown moldy in an old pasta jar full of tapwater, to the compost out back. i folded laundry and listened to ckua radio and read some more. later, i found a big black spider unmoving on the bathroom counter, beside my face cream. the counter there is too narrow to fit a glass onto without space under the mouth because of the sink. i tried to capture the spider and take it out side and ask it, o grandfather, will you please give me some money, but it scurried away as if without moving at all between my counter and the wall. i looked under the sink and it didn't appear as though there was anywhere for the spider to go. i got scared of the black spider crouching hidden in a space i couldn't reach or see, so i left the house. on the way down my ankle was itchy and when i bent to scratch it i saw that i was bitten there.

at bean there was new art on the walls. lots of it, by highschool students. i was excited to take a table at the back and stare up at these new paintings. some teenyboppers gathered in the aisle, exclaiming. it's their own work, i thought. and their friends'. how exciting to have your work hanging in a coffee shop when you are not old enough to drink coffee. when i put my bag on a table, third from the back, facing west, someone said my name. i looked up and it was him and even though i like him a lot i didn't feel like talking to any one today so it was hard for me to look at all the books he proffered and make conversation. i think he got the hint though, eventually, and packed up his books and walked out the door, but not before reminding me that me and him, we're on the trampoline. the trampoline to the higher life. i went to bean so i could read the book i read in bed this morning but realized i forgot it on my sofa. i had another book but i didn't like it and got bored. i finished my lemonade and thought, what can i do with my life right now? the sun is in gemini, i remembered, because my ipod played a whole strand of songs on shuffle--all duets and dialogues and double lives. and then i remembered that norman's yoga class started one block away in fifteen minutes and thank god i decided, finally, after four previous outfits, to leave the house in black leggings and a tshirt. i don't know why it took me so long to get dressed. it just did. i bought some new shirts anyway, on my way to bean, just so this does not happen again tomorrow. the studio was warm and i put a mat down in the shadows. norman was calm and quiet as norman always is and halfway through the class, i could see him sweating all over his head chest back groin.

when i walked out of the yoga studio i walked like i had just been gently woken from a deep sleep. i wanted an ice cream but went straight home, telling myself i could have one later, if i still wanted it. i still want it, i've wanted it since wednesday, but i have not had dinner yet so it's not time. i wanted to buy hot mustard too, for my dinner tonight. you know, keen's mustard. the real stuff. anything else and my dad calls it toothpaste. i will eat a sausage for dinner, cut in half lengthwise on a toasted slice of bread and i wanted hot mustard because that's how my dad always eats sausages. i wanted hot mustard but i forgot because i was just woken from a deep sleep. i was thinking more important thoughts than mustard. i was thinking no thoughts at all. when i got home i filled my water bottle in the bathroom sink and there was that spider again, in the same place, by the face cream. the spider was still impossible to catch. i tried again anyway though and when it poofed back to its hiding place i said to it, you know, i just want to put you outside because i know you will be much happier there and your being difficult is only making it easier for me to justify killing you. i didn't though, because i couldn't, so instead of killing it i put big slab of black tourmaline on the counter, by the face cream. that was two hours ago and i haven't seen it again yet.

since i am still scared of the bathroom i decided to try and finish my book, so i wouldn't think about it, the spider. i was going to eat dinner an hour ago, my sausage on bread, with ketchup only because i forgot the mustard, and a salad because i have some things in the fridge, but i wanted to finish because in my right hand, the book just got thinner and thinner with every page i turned and now i'm starving but i finished it and when i did i cried a little bit. i haven't cried at the end of a book in five years but i did at the end of this one because it deserved it. i did at the end of this one because it was tragic, and because it was true. and now nothing i do with the rest of my night will be as satisfying as the end of this book but i will still try because the sun is out and it's out so late these days so i will go and maybe rent the wizard of oz and maybe take some pictures and maybe eat an ice cream at the water before it gets dark.

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