Archive | Sabboytical
People ask me what I do when I get up so early (between 5 and 5:30 most days). They assume I am doing something earnest—meditating or writing or channeling my spirit guides. The truth is sometimes I do those things, but rarely before my coffee. Mostly in the wee hours I luxuriate in secret time, found time—a quiet unpunctuated by beeps and whistles and honks. The barely blue hours are when I feel the glamour of solitude most keenly: flowers cut like I like them, bulletin boards scrawled with my big ideas, feet and permakitten propped on the table, fingers painted an unlikely yellow, coffee cup resting without a coaster, and absolutely no media or people blaring. (My house growing up was quite loud.) I may be 46, but inside me a 6-year-old is crowing with great glee and satisfaction: IT’S MY HOUSE AND I CAN DO WHAT I WANT.A Good Kiss
Recently, I shared a good kiss with someone I hadn’t considered attractive before. I’m pretty sure he hadn’t considered me attractive either. Don’t get excited, o ye who believes my “cheese stands alone” stance is by default rather than elective. This story doesn’t come with a happy ending–at least, not of the “happily ever after” variety.
That said, it was a very nice kiss, even if this gentleman lives somewhere sunnier and slower and neither of us are inclined to change a zip code on the grounds of a good kiss. Maybe when we were younger, though I highly doubt we’d have stuck to it–he’s not the sort to be seduced by the bigger mirror of New York and I’m eternally certain nothing tops a subway ride in which everyone’s an outsider. Continue Reading →
That Stranger Called My Life
I just saw an old lover on the street. He didn’t see me–or pretended he didn’t–but I got a good eyeful. We were together off and on for four years and I hadn’t seen him in two. Recently he turned fifty, so he’s been on my mind though our connection is too dangerous to ignite with a polite phone call or card. We live in the same neighborhood so it’s a wonder we don’t run into each other more often. I often think the Universe is protecting us by ensuring we don’t. We caused each other a lot of pain–more than the pleasure we gave each other, even.
I watched him talk to someone–a friend, it looked like, though not a close one. Maybe a colleague. I watched him clasp his big hand on that man’s shoulder, then make his way down the street in the opposite direction from me. My old lover seemed smaller and bigger, blurrier and more filled in. It was a shock to see him alive at all–still human, not just an animation of my many memories. Continue Reading →