| It's been one of those days...my head has been tilted in a half smile since I woke up; well, rather, jumped out of bed with fifteen minutes to get from my tent to the 12th floor of a retirement home on top of a neighbor hill. I've been sleeping out in the tent with Turtle as weather has been kind enough to permit such indulgences. I am now convinced that my cat will sleep with me anywhere, including the treehouse and the hammock. She guards the doorflap of the tent from all the creatures that scurry and flurry outside in the dark, and then falls exausted on my legs when all stands quiet. It's nice to have a guard cat, I must say. The half tilt smile has been an overwhelming sort of urge. I think the prospect of being off work by noon and having the rest of the afternoon and the evening to do as I please with my mind and body had something to do with it. Or, maybe, just the reality that, at the ripe age of thirty-one, I feel younger than ever. It's funny, whenever I mention this to anyone in their early twenties, I am met with a bit of disbelief, as if I've just mentioned that dinosaurs wear size five undies. Well, some of them do, perhaps. And, perhaps, some thirty year olds really do feel as life has only begun to really make some fucking sense! I have been liking my job as of late. This is subject to change, of course, as anything that we have some sort of control over, does. Liking it because I have been able to see the brighter side of it more consistently rather than the parts that suck. It is like gaining four sets of grandparents! And not being pimped out to the elderly, which it can sometime feel like as I treck from one hill to the next, cooking and cleaning from one house to the next. But these are things I would do for people I love. And so it must be close to my heart. But, there are times when I wonder about my time, and how my life consists mainly of it; and, how, if I had a choice and money was of no issue, if this is truly what I should be doing with my time. Then I think of time I am buying with every minute I spend doing something other than what I wish to be doing. It's that whole friggin' thing about delayed gratification, which I've never really quite grasped, a kite with it's thread lost to my fingers. I still don't, really. I am still able to gratify myself wherever and whenever I am. When my grandparents sleep, I do ballet and yoga in their livingroom. When they are watching television, I draw them and the flowers that adorn their diminishing universe....when they are up to passing on some wisdom, I listen. Being present, it's been (and is still) a difficult endeavor. Then my shift ended and I still had that half tilt smile on my face. I got on my bicycle and pedaled to the nearby forest, to the nearby lake, to the nearby hubbub, past the suburbs and neighborhoods that may or may not contain grandparents that need help getting to the toilet. I know what the Buddha says about suffering, how it is something we will find in life, everywhere; but I also know that there is a way to be joyful despite/inspite that overwhelming sense of being surrounded by it. Sometimes the inevitability of something can be the key to letting it go, letting it be, opening your arms wide for the fall. And so I pedaled and pedaled my legs because I still have use of them; I smiled and grinned at all the passerbys because it's a free thing to do with your face; and I stopped and picked blackberries to fill my mouth because it's there. And all the while, humming and singing to myself, I missed you and you and you and all of the people that keep that half tilt smile on my face a fixed crescent moon in midday and midnights. Life, sometimes you suck, but I love you! |
