It is past noon. The sun is shining, the snow is sparkly. The world outside is somebody's kingdom, someone's playground. It is bright blue sky and ominous cold shadow. Somewhere out there is probably something I could be doing.
I just got out of bed. It is well past noon. I called to find out my best friend is still alive. Someone isn't calling me back. My plans are uncertain. I hate having a day not knowing if someone will call to make plans or not. In the meantime I decide: do I leave and have a lovely life missing this person and take the chance that I'll miss the call and the chance to cross paths? Or do I sit at home with some semblance of normal passing before my eyes wondering why I'm wasting time?
Life is like a bag of salad. Bad simile, but appropriate. Who do I want to be today? Spring mix? Youthful and wild but not necessarily tasty? What about garden? Isn't that what soccer mums bring home?
This morning which is now afternoon I am not a bag of salad. I am someone trying to decide between breakfast beer or breakfast coffee and settling for breakfast tea. I am trying to understand why I can't seem to put my shoes on and go outside. I love outside. I am trying to pull from the haze a memory of a place I could go to write and drink coffee but the only places coming to mind are mixed with feelings of being the outsider. The only cafes I feel comfortable writing in are so far from here that the words would be lost by the time I got there. Why can I not find such a place in my own hometown? And what defines it? Good coffee, gentle atmosphere, and the kind of place where strangers coexist, as opposed to a place where friends go to meet friends. Somewhere that displays a perpetual state of culture shock because on days when I cannot get out of bed, that is what I seek.
Culture shock makes me feel normal again.
Yet there is not a cafe in chinatown or little italy or little india where I can go to write. I cannot be the stranger in my own hometown. I can change my hair and wear things no one thinks I own but I cannot feel incognito here.
It is the writer in me. I could have a fantastic performance career doing almost anything involving news, dance, probably even art, but I chose to write. Or it chose me. I prefer to be the bricks in the wall the lovers leaned up against. I want to be the snow crunching under your feet or the sun kissing your face or the wind running its fingers through your hair. Once or twice I want you to notice me but not enough so that I need cease describing your beauty.
Who describes me? What defines me?
When I am the invisible energy surrounding us, when I blend into the wall, a figure with a notepad, does anyone feel the scratching of my pen on paper like an itch they cannot quite comprehend?
When you put your arms around me do you have any idea what is going through my head? Did you know that beauty, the feeling, comes in colours and sounds? Do you know how it feels when all that invisible energy rushes to your head to the point where you cannot think but only experience? Have you been to the place where words cease and it is only after that it can begin to be captured, thusly destroyed?
She ran her fingers through my hair yesterday before I left. She massaged and the release was amazing. We decided I would be her tax write-off and we could tell everyone we got married because she has amazing fingers. But did she know at all how her fingers felt on my head? She has a gift like that, one that is not spoken of nearly often enough. It is too intimate to speak of friends like that. Yet neither of us know any other way to be.
He moved through the door into the hall gently coordinated, swaying a bit but not off balance. His movements were as elegant as any dance yet not a dance. Beauty greeted him at the door. Come sit by me she said. He resisted but finally threw himself to the wolves and the wolves picked his bones clean and considered it an honour. Something was missing. Beauty refused to accept anything less than full expression of herself. She asked her wolves to bring his bones to the edge of a cliff, where she could say her magic words and throw them off one by one. As each bone was hurled from the cliff, it transformed into a manifestation of who he was. Her words were simple. Each piece of who we are is in our bones. It is yours to keep or release. Keep what you will and release now what is not yours anymore. The earth will take back what she gave when it is no longer of use to you.
I love the pretty pictures I can make in my head. I do not know what he has released. I cannot tell you which bones sank into the earth, shattering on impact. I do not know what his new skeleton looks like. Though I can request it, though I can pull words out of thin air, I cannot predict. I know only what I see, what is underneath everything. I know where parts of his soul want to sing but they are not singing. I know parts that have amazing harmony because I have heard them. I know I am not the choirmaster.
Sometimes the blankets pull me under. They are warm and they know my shape and form. Sometimes I stay too long, I linger, I play with my computer. I roll out of bed squinting from eye strain and with my sweater open at the front in the mirror I see only my eyes. I like my eyes. Then slowly I look around. I realize I have become one of those women who is capable of rolling out of bed looking unconventionally pretty. It is not the kind of beauty you'd see in a magazine. It is the kind of beauty that comes from inside, the kind that convinces me to stay in bed or get up. It is a sign of how the world will be reflected through my eyes that day. I don't like to get out of bed if I cannot be convinced that I will face everything and everyone with my raw emotions. The hard ones sparkle if you catch me out of the corner of your eye. Everysingleone of my feelings come together to make me dance. When I can accept the idea of breakfast beer alongside breakfast coffee, I compromise on tea and begin. The world presents me with its sunshiny beauty and if for one instant I can accept it into my heart, I am blown apart by gratitude.
It was a promise I made myself a long long time ago, staring up at the stars somewhere I never should have been. If I do not face the beauty of the world with gratitude, I should not get out of bed.
I've had a few phone calls. My best friend is alive and my plans are happening this evening. I think now I can go outside. In fact, I think I am going to buy a salad in a bag and eat the entire thing.
