On Sunday evening, after a long-desired weekend filled with nothing but reading, cooking and the Sunday NY Times crossword puzzle, I garner the umpf to fulfill my one self-imposed responsibility for the weekend: write a check made out to "United States Treasury."
In a moment, as I wander into my office to do the deed, a horizontal ripple surfs through my lower back. No nagging warning ache. No low-level preceding throb. Just SNAP and I'm hunched over, steadying myself with dressers and chairs to get myself prone. I've been through this drill before. I know that my feet have to be lifted onto the bed before I recline. I ease onto my side, then roll onto my back while clutching the side of the bed. Pillow-positioning is next. I lay still, with pillows angled like a house roof just under my shoulders to keep my head from lolling to either side. Ten minutes after the SNAP I'm immovably flat. There I quiet my body and ask my mind to soar to the place where time and space and body have no control. I call it, "placing myself in the realm of LOVE." I am not afraid. I simply wait, and hope the inevitable trip to the bathroom comes mercifully later.
Monday morning I don't go to work. Something I typically relish. But the rebel that lives in me despises a body-mandated day off. Tuesday I stay home again and by 7pm I discover I can now get netflix on demand on my macbook. (We don't have a television and this extended homestay is the first time I miss it.) I watch Humbolt County and ponder the more complicated time of my youth ... experiencing the pot-growing scene through the eyes of the little girl. I yearn for the simplicity of life off-the-grid --the life I spurned as a little girl-- and realize I'm inching closer.
I get ready to return to work in the morning and before settling in bed I hobble to my office, pull out my checkbook, and fill in: "United States Treasury." Two days off-schedule, but back on-the-grid.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Resurrection
Easter Sunday seems a fitting occasion to resurrect a presumed-dead blog and former writing outlet incantation. I started it in the summer of 2007, right after returning from a month in Italy and Greece. It was an effort to establish some avenue for creativity to inhibit getting sucked into the workaday creative vacuum. It served a purpose! Shortly after its inception I signed up for a Creative Writing Course (my first writing course ever) and then a Humor Writing Course. With my writing taking on a more academic pursuit, the blog was left to wither on the net. And in May 2008, with the launch of my travel blog "meanderings" became the forgotten ugly-stepchild. The travel blog incited my affair with amateur photography. In the travel blog, words matter but pictures are the thing! As with any affair, passions wane and a return to fantasies about first love is inevitable. So I return to writing stories unaccompliced by images.
Enough with the introduction! Where shall we meander?
23rd Street and 9th Avenue. April 10, Friday morning: 9:28. I'm adjusting my earbuds as, "Hey, I'm Anderson Cooper, welcome to the 360 podcast," greets me on my ipod mini-screen. I glance up to see if the M23 bus is nearing as a black teen-size version of an SUV crashed into a blacker mercedes. Both cars tried to avert the impact causing the mercedes to jump the median, plow down a street sign and straddle the bike lane. The moving image was fast in real time but slow in surreality.
As I stood there amazed that none of the twenty or so pedestrians on that corner (the one I'd stepped through not 30 seconds earlier) were hurt, the 30-ish blonde standing next to me said, "I saw a pedestrian get killed on that corner." I wondered if it was the elderly woman from my building who took too long to cross the street. This was before the Fort-Knox-like bike lane was installed with apparent success. An NYPD patrol car happened to be passing by, both drivers stepped out of their cars unharmed, and my bus made it across the intersection without delay. I boarded the bus, leaving the scene of the crime, tuned back to Anderson Cooper as he gave us an update on the pirate/hostage standoff in the Indian Ocean, and counted my blessings.
Enough with the introduction! Where shall we meander?
23rd Street and 9th Avenue. April 10, Friday morning: 9:28. I'm adjusting my earbuds as, "Hey, I'm Anderson Cooper, welcome to the 360 podcast," greets me on my ipod mini-screen. I glance up to see if the M23 bus is nearing as a black teen-size version of an SUV crashed into a blacker mercedes. Both cars tried to avert the impact causing the mercedes to jump the median, plow down a street sign and straddle the bike lane. The moving image was fast in real time but slow in surreality.
As I stood there amazed that none of the twenty or so pedestrians on that corner (the one I'd stepped through not 30 seconds earlier) were hurt, the 30-ish blonde standing next to me said, "I saw a pedestrian get killed on that corner." I wondered if it was the elderly woman from my building who took too long to cross the street. This was before the Fort-Knox-like bike lane was installed with apparent success. An NYPD patrol car happened to be passing by, both drivers stepped out of their cars unharmed, and my bus made it across the intersection without delay. I boarded the bus, leaving the scene of the crime, tuned back to Anderson Cooper as he gave us an update on the pirate/hostage standoff in the Indian Ocean, and counted my blessings.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
