a typical thursday night
let me start with what was not typical.
the minute i closed my car door, i walked not up the stairs but up the hill, a more strenuous venture, it turns out, into the forest, toting my journal on my back in my black bag.
i have longed to take this walk for months and have not.
in the out of doors i am part of a different piece of the wide world, one that is constantly growing and constantly dying at once. no moment seems the same, though i've trudged this forest path many times before. what i saw struck me in new ways from last august, or the august before...i don't even remember whether i've been here in august before.
the poison oak leaves were dripping off thier stems, brilliant red and strewn through the dry grass in short stands.
the argentinian ants - those small black kitchen ants that taste of putrid acid when they invade your water jug - found their way to my seated form in the flattened brown oats and rattlesnake grass. they shimmied up my pant legs, up my shoulder and into my sweater, along the straps of my black chacos, and i could barely feel them at all, so i just let them scurry as they may...until they started biting me. i draw the line there, though voices arose in my mind that admonished, "it's just a sensation, what if you just felt it and let it be without trying to stop it?" i flicked them off me and grabbed at my clothes whenever i felt a bite, and wrote in my journal throughout, slightly unsettled. my ass was asleep when i got up as the light turned golden-pink on the tree tops stretched out for miles below me. i wondered whether my ass got sore like that when i was 10. i can't remember.
now that i am home, the light is gone from the sky, the windows are black and reflecting the ceiling light. my feet are asleep instead of my ass. the house smells of broiled chicken, but i can barely smell it - i haven't left the room long enough to reall notice it. those chicken molecules just crept into my nose slowly so i didn't notice them. but i know there's this mouth-watering smell hanging in the air like warm orange cloth from the ceiling. there's a blue bowl full of bright orange yam slices and a white bowl of carrot shreds on the counter. the chicken is all cut up and in a bowl whose color i can no longer picture. the laundry is still in the dryer. my love is on his way home. it is almost bed time.
tomorrow i will eat a ham sandwich and quinoa with broccoli and grilled rosemary chicken. i think about the pancakes i will make on sunday morning. blueberries, chocolate, walnuts, butter, maple syrup. each mundane meal is a glorious feast.
the day is a microcosm of myriad opposites moving towards each other: light to dark to light, death to life to death, full to empty to hungry to full, asleep to wakefulness to alertness to sleepiness to sleep.
the minute i closed my car door, i walked not up the stairs but up the hill, a more strenuous venture, it turns out, into the forest, toting my journal on my back in my black bag.
i have longed to take this walk for months and have not.
in the out of doors i am part of a different piece of the wide world, one that is constantly growing and constantly dying at once. no moment seems the same, though i've trudged this forest path many times before. what i saw struck me in new ways from last august, or the august before...i don't even remember whether i've been here in august before.
the poison oak leaves were dripping off thier stems, brilliant red and strewn through the dry grass in short stands.
the argentinian ants - those small black kitchen ants that taste of putrid acid when they invade your water jug - found their way to my seated form in the flattened brown oats and rattlesnake grass. they shimmied up my pant legs, up my shoulder and into my sweater, along the straps of my black chacos, and i could barely feel them at all, so i just let them scurry as they may...until they started biting me. i draw the line there, though voices arose in my mind that admonished, "it's just a sensation, what if you just felt it and let it be without trying to stop it?" i flicked them off me and grabbed at my clothes whenever i felt a bite, and wrote in my journal throughout, slightly unsettled. my ass was asleep when i got up as the light turned golden-pink on the tree tops stretched out for miles below me. i wondered whether my ass got sore like that when i was 10. i can't remember.
now that i am home, the light is gone from the sky, the windows are black and reflecting the ceiling light. my feet are asleep instead of my ass. the house smells of broiled chicken, but i can barely smell it - i haven't left the room long enough to reall notice it. those chicken molecules just crept into my nose slowly so i didn't notice them. but i know there's this mouth-watering smell hanging in the air like warm orange cloth from the ceiling. there's a blue bowl full of bright orange yam slices and a white bowl of carrot shreds on the counter. the chicken is all cut up and in a bowl whose color i can no longer picture. the laundry is still in the dryer. my love is on his way home. it is almost bed time.
tomorrow i will eat a ham sandwich and quinoa with broccoli and grilled rosemary chicken. i think about the pancakes i will make on sunday morning. blueberries, chocolate, walnuts, butter, maple syrup. each mundane meal is a glorious feast.
the day is a microcosm of myriad opposites moving towards each other: light to dark to light, death to life to death, full to empty to hungry to full, asleep to wakefulness to alertness to sleepiness to sleep.
