Day 21: Walking Pneumonia, Little Blues
So after seven sick days, three doctor visits, a clear X-ray, a weirdly energetic weekend and a performance at the MLK, Jr Children’s Celebration, the boy showed up at Couchland…
And the flowers budded and bloomed on the trees, who finally and swiftly grew leaves so green it hurt to look at them, and the air became friendly and you forgot why you were so sad and tired all the time. The kids play till dusk: baseball, basketball, soccer, four square. Hudson has ticks. You remember about plants and how they make everything better. The greens on your plates are juicy, and locals sell asparagus at gas stations. Time has become expansive. Things that have malingered on your to do list are getting atttended to, if not done. Things like this:
1. Swap your winter clothes for summer clothes. Wonder why you even need those insanely hot woolen things in your house. Throw everything away into the Salvation Army bin at the dump.
2. Regret this the next day when it only gets up to 47 again.
3. Refuse to go for a run even though it’s finally warm. Continue to walk, because you’re over 50 and you do what you want to now. Take Hudson for long walks on the Mill River and listen to Junot Diaz read the first story from This is How You Lose Her on your phone. Ignore all people. Argue with yourself about whether he gets special dispensation for his misogyny.
4. Get a second dog, even smaller and frou-frier than Hudson, who is the smallest frou-friest dog you’ve ever had. Don’t name it Cutalicious as your daughter suggests. Name it Dolly Parton, Jr, and dress it in girls’ clothes.
5. Wait impatiently for your agent to get back to you about your behemoth novel which you’ve been working on for 10 years. Have many intense conversations with her in your head as she delays and delays. Add multiple ultimatums. Imagine every possible scenario. Break up with her. Reconcile with her. All without actually communicating, except through yoga nidra.
6. Contemplate for the umpteenth time going to grad school for an MFA. Research low-res programs all over the country. Imagine spending even three days away from home. Laugh so hard you start sneezing. Think about Dolly Parton, Jr. Imagine taking her to your low res MFA.
7. Decide to revise novel written in 2004 and published by a children’s publisher whose editors you were so afraid of that you did whatever they said, forgetting that at the end of the day it will be your book and not theirs. Take your rights back and contemplate re-writing it completely instead of going to low-res MFA program. Spend the rest of your life trying just to write that novel.
8. Revisit the Enneagram. Decide you are really a Four after all and use this as an excuse to have conflicting feelings about Junot Diaz. Argue with people about him. Whatever side they take, oppose them. When they say something smart, shake your hands in the air and yell, “It’s complicated!”
9. Detest the other clients of your contractor. Resent the fact that the workers are divided between your Little Blue Studio and whatever sad excuse for a building he’s got going across town. Decide to find out who the other client is, and warn them about your contractor. Make stuff up. Walk in passive aggressive circles around the building instead of going for a run.
10. Consider re-writing your entire second novel in blank verse.
11. Decide to stop buying anything from Corporate America. Consider furnishing entire new studio with cable spools the electrician left in your yard.
12. Discover that a child you know is color blind and cannot tell the difference between dark green and purple. Dress Dolly Parton Jr. in dark green.
13. Realize you are doing way too much. Then start two new choruses–one to sing only protest music of the 1940s and one to arrange This Is How You Lose Her as a rock opera.
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Love it! I must make my own list. . . Thank you for the inspiration.
Calling Thich Nhat Hanh!