If you have just finished shopping and you are trying to balance all 6 bags of groceries along with your purse, half an eggplant brie sandwich, a bag of sour gummies from Sweet Tooth, and your bike lock in your basket. And as you are stretching the bungies across your taller-than-usual load, you pause for a minute and enjoy the incense wafting from the yoga studio next door. If this is you, then the moment will be beyond perfect when you discover that someone you love has left a petite bouquet of pink poesies in your gearshift knob.
Category: if this is you
-
if this is you…
-
if this is you…
If today you spent the morning on the phone on hold, trying to get through to your insurance company, working on loopholes that might allow you to bill for the “non-allowable” repair of your microprocessor knee, then you spent 3 hours talking feminist theory and history with your colleagues, and afterwards you picked up the kids and then dropped them off at a lecture with John, then you headed to the Science Library to read French medical texts and a too-long book about Buffalo Bill, well if this is you and you find yourself ravenous at 5:30 pm because you realize that the nutella and jam sandwich that you ate at lunch was just too long ago, you should drop by the Veggie Cafe for a quick appetizer before you go grocery shopping at Trader Joes. And when you are at TJs, don’t forget to get a bar of super-dark chocolate because that’s what you’ll be craving later tonight.
-
if this is you…
If you are waiting for a podcast to download and you randomly click on a song in your itunes library, and pouring forth is “Figlio Perduto“, as sung my Sarah Brightman. And you close your eyes and remember. That one Sunday that seemed like every other Sunday until the organist started playing the postlude. And it was Beethoven’s music, the music behind Sarah’s singing. And you sat back and let the song wash over you, because the organ was loud and D’s playing was perfect, and you were not caring that everyone else was leaving for Sunday School. And if this is you remembering this right now, you may feel a bit sad. Wishing you could be with that organ again, hearing that song. Someday. When the rest of life isn’t crowding around.
-
if this is you…
If you spent six hours in the community garden this morning, working alongside your neighbors to clear out empty plots, to trim large trees, and filling a semi-truck-sized dumpster within 2 hours. Then you took some time to just sit and talk with your garden–feeling sad that the frost did much damage, seeing how much work needs to be done before spring planting, realizing that momotaro (peach tree #2) didn’t make it. And then you got slightly sunburned (such a sunny day!) and you returned home with leaves in your hair, burrs in your socks, and mud on your pants.
So if this is you, you should pick a bouquet of lavender and put it on your nightstand–filling your bedroom with its relaxing scent, then take a warm shower and wash the organic matter out of your hair, put on your new favorite wool sweater and curl up on the bed with Ellycat (who can’t resist cuddling with a wool sweater) and take a short nap.
-
If this is you…
If your leg is finally feeling right, and you are actually itching for more places to walk because you’ve already walked pretty much everywhere, well after you go to the Newport Beach library with the family, then spontaneously suggest that you head to Big Corona beach (after all, it’s only 8 pm and the beach is open until 10). You’ll discover how easy it is to see one’s path in the light of the nearly-full moon, and you’ll delight at the pyrotechnic displays of burning Christmas trees at the firepits. And John will take your arm and point out the constellations of stars overhead. And if this is you and you are shivering because you didn’t bring a coat, your insides will be warm and happy nonetheless. -
If you are
If you are waking up to a grey morning, clouds hanging low and wet like those mornings in China. If you then brew a pot of jasmine tea to break the fog that is in your head from reading history texts until the wee hours of last night. And if you are weary of this day before it has even begun, then this is the perfect excerpt of a song for you to discover in the flyleaf of John Demos’ Unredeemed Captive
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
It’s how the light gets in.
–Leonard Cohen, “Anthem” -
if you are…
If you are sitting at the kitchen table with the windows open, realizing that the Santa Ana winds have just started blowing, and knowing what this means (as in, that’s why you haven’t been able to breathe through your nose for the past 2 days, and that’s why, when you were making copies of the syllabus for class tomorrow that you started dry-coughing so hard you couldn’t finish your conversation with the other people waiting in line for the copy machine), and you are eating a chile & cheese tamale for lunch, wondering why when you’ve finally found the perfect tank top with built-in underwire size-D bra, that it insists in slipping up around your midsection when you layer it under cotton shirts and then your pants, which are really just too slightly low-cut for anyone with a genetic propensity to a paunchy belly, well they are showing a bit too much skin and underwear lines because of the scrunchiness of said tank top, well if that is you, then can I tell you that the perfect music for you to be listening to just at this moment is Poe’s “5 1/2 Minute Hallway.” Just in case you needed to know that.
-
Because people sing to me
Some workers are trimming the trees around our apartment. I suspect that if today wasn’t a Portland-style drizzly day that this would actually mean that a ray of light would be coming in our windows. This will totally change our lives, I think. To actually be able to open the windows and have sun streaming in.
I have the back sliding door wide open (with the screen closed) and the front door open (again, with a screen). The 5 or 6 workers who are hanging from the various trees are serenading me in Spanish right now. Well, I have to admit that they might not necessarily be singing to me, but considering that I am sitting in the LR at the table working, and they are less than 10 feet away from me and there is only a flimsy plastic screen between us, they ARE singing to me. I tried hooking up a mic to my computer to record their voices, but all I got was some odd mechanical sounds from my processor (no music). Grrr.
These are the same workers who, when I came home from class yesterday afternoon, had made nests of burlap sacks in the bushes and were catching a quick nap after lunch. When I rode past them on my bike one of them tipped the brim of his hat at me and winked. I’m suspecting that The Winker is the one who’s singing the loudest right now.
John never believes that people sing to me when I am at home during the day. It’s often the neighbors, and not men in trees. But it happens. All the time. Promise.
;) -
to self
Note to self: next time you make German Chocolate Cookies for the kids’ lunches, bag them up and put them into the freezer. Right away. Don’t leave them in a tantalizing pile on the counter. Otherwise they will call out to you the whole day as you’re trying to read Foucault.
‘Cuz everyone knows that Theory goes down much easier with copious amounts of chunky cookies w/pecans. Yep.
:)
