Mornings

I lean on the wooden counter and rest my cheek against my palm. There is accounting to be done--the year is about to end--but I would rather just watch you right now.

You are standing by the doorway, talking to the handyman, discussing woodwork. Long-limbed and golden, you are a god come to life from my favorite myths, as far as I'm concerned. Now you are the mortal you have decided to become, making arrangements for your coffee shop, making sure everything is in order, surveying your turf with your quick eyes, your astute mind taking note of what ever is not in place.

I glance at my little notebook and cringe at the numbers--I decide I would have you do it and giggle as I picture you, your eyebrows furrowing a little as you say, "but Love, I have shown you this so many times--this is how you reconcile the figures." And you will show me again and end up doing it yourself, all the while reprimanding me at my insistence on notebooks and pens. Yes, that is my plan of action, fail-proof and cute. And I can almost be sure you've already done what you're asking me to do--you simply want me to practice my Math. Numbers and I--we dislike each other. Immensely.

I look up and see you walking towards me, smiling. My heart melts, yet again, for the thirteenth time today. How can you be so handsome at 7 in the morning? I decide I will spend the day just looking at you. Or, not.

I return to my notebook and pretend I am writing something down. "How's it going, Love? I saw Mr. B-- outside today and he said the new coffee we're serving is tops."

"Well, it's supposed to be--it's a little more expensive than our usual stuff."

You nod. "That's ok. Expensive can be good." Laughter. "Remember we're closing early today. Need to whip up something nice tonight." That lopsided grin of yours--I could kiss you right about now.

"Yeah, sounds good to me," I, trying to steady my beating heart. I think it's a little crazy, my still having a crush on you. You have cooked dinner every night for me for the past 6 years and my knees still grow weak at your nearness. My books weren't lying when they said some loves last longer than others. But back to work. You distract me so.

You lean over and ask, "any progress, so far?"

I purse my lips. "A little, yeah."

You fish the notebook from my hand. You look at the page I was writing on, frown, and run your thumb along your jaw. "Hmm. A stick figure and lots of doodles. I think you make a charming accountant. Is this supposed to be me?"

I shrug. "Of course that's you, who else can it be? I studied you this morning and decided to paint you."

You shake your head. "Boy, oh boy. I am handsome."

I roll my eyes and snatch the notebook from you. "Stop smirking and go ask that nice little man over there what he needs. He's been looking under his table for the past 5 minutes."

"Yes, Ma'am," you wink at me and walk away. Smiling, I bend over to pick up a scrap of paper that has fallen to the floor, and decide I will go out to buy flowers. Mums, perhaps, and pink Gerbera daisies.

Mornings

We open at six o'clock.

You are always up hours before, and you always have to pull--carry--me out of bed and I, still warm from your kisses, would groan and mutter, "you have dragged me out of a delicious dream." I often dream. Of water and trees, sunlight and moonshine, you.

You smile that wonderful smile of yours, your smile that still renders my insides weak, still bewitching after all these years. I smile sleepily back and start to fold back into the sheets, if not for your tender admonition of "wake up, Love. Wake up."

Ah, yes, the cafe. The customers will soon trickle in. Breakfast will have to wait.

We are tucked in a street corner, beside a bake shop whose smells of warm bread waft into our open doors. Our unspoken partnership has invited more patrons into this spot than we had cared to expect, the only part of the city that has cobbled streets. 

I had been particular about cobbled streets, as much as I had been about the orange gabled roof you had asked the builders to so carefully put into place. I gaze happily at it as you earnestly pull up the red and white awnings, and I look at you, grateful for indulging my wish for an old English look. You look at me and say, "time to work, Love," and I roll my eyes, mumble a "yes, Boss," and laugh. You tousle my hair and kiss me on the cheek. A neighbor waves hello, and we wave back. 

You scoop me up into your arms and walk into the cafe. I bury my face in your neck, thinking of our fig tree.

Monday is when you're in-between weeks.

At least, I am.

Watching "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" is just the sort of thing that could get one fired up on a Monday morning. More so since it came after the reading of Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad just a week ago--in a parked car, surrounded by twilight.

Homer's been in my thoughts, lately.

But Lou Reed died yesterday, and the local elections are well underway. All in all, a gloomy morning.

October 27th was also Sylvia Plath's birthday. I remember reading her Unabridged Journals a few years ago and being struck (and left thinking about it for days) by how she was much the same person, inside and outside her poems.

Have a good one.

I'm thinking that around eleven hundred dozen thoughts

must already have been in my mind and gone away and I never had one chance to really mull them over. Well, maybe a chance, or two, but the days have again blurred into so many yesterdays and I'm left with nothing to reign them in with. The world I know has been--and still is--afloat with five, six figures preceded by dollar signs, percentages, goals to be reached, action plans to put into action, a team to lead, differences to neutralize.

Numbers, numbers, more numbers. This is one of the great ironies of my life. When I was in school, I hated my Math classes to the core, but look what I have become now: an employee in a bank, munching on numbers for lunch.

But anyway, on my ride home today, I found myself grinning like a fool while in my head I danced to some cheesy 90's song from some juvenile girl band. It's been a recurring daydream, really, and it tickles my funny bones to no end, the fact that I get so much entertainment from watching myself performing, on stage, some really basic, corny, girly steps. And then the scene shifts to another dream sequence where I am Shania Twain and her "That Don't Impress Me Much" video is really my video and I'm wearing that leopard print outfit and I have red hair and I'm rolling my eyes at the rocket scientist, the guy with the hair kept in place by so much extra-hold gel and the guy who's really Brad Pitt. And I'm singing, of course. And then there's a shift again and it's still the same song but I'm singing it live, in front of an audience made up of the folks at work and I'm still wearing the same outfit and rolling my eyes.

Hmm. Whaddya say, could it be that in the deepest recesses of my subconscious, I have some delusional hope that I could become famous? The word is delusional. But, hey, we all have to take a break from our own daily grinds, right?

After all, it's really the light, seemingly silly things that help us get by.

Because I'm too lazy to look up the synonym of random

Because I like starting my sentences with "because", I let it go at that. Even if the clock shows 8:19 a.m. and the bottle of my favorite perfume is nearly empty and I could hardly recall the stories I had told last Sunday night, or what I might have told if my umbrella were orange instead of blue. Or who would ever think it isn't really a book that's underneath the three books on top of my dresser but a planner that goes so well with how hard we all had laughed when we realized the tequila hadn't at all gone to our heads because sober is as sober goes as far as that pile of bags is concerned. So two pairs of shoes have died this month and I linked my arm around a friend's arm because, indeed, I couldn't bear to walk without mulling this thought over my head and it's forget-me-nots, my dear, not Deep Purple, or Carole King.

If walls could talk

then maybe it could talk some sense into us. What with its being privy to all the time we waste brooding and sulking and thinking and staring up at ceilings, it just might be familiar enough with us to say, "hey, buddy, quit it. All this drama is taking you absolutely nowhere.You've got books to read, my dear, and laundry to fold." 

Oh, but my books. Am missing them so. You know how remembering a particular title makes you want to take the volume from the shelf and look at it, run a hand over its cover, flip through the pages and read a particular, or some random passages? Then details begin to skim your mind, like how old you were when you bought this book, or who gave you that one, or where it was you found this one. It was particularly stormy when you finished that volume. This one here made you cry buckets. 


And so on. 


Books are houses of memories, chronicles of a life. 

I have no idea what shape this post is taking. 

Oh, but there is laundry to fold. And a new book to read.

Away

"silence, and the keenly musical light/ of sudden nothing..." -E.E. Cummings-

The evenings and the nights have not been good to me; they've been almost as cruel as the days have been. When I do get to hoodwink sleep, I'd wake up in two hours. 

It's one dream per night, now, too. I could still recount them, could still remember the faces peopling the stories, except that I could not name the strangers strewn here and there, every now and then. 

Just last night, I was almost sure I felt someone--something--sit on the empty space of the bed. The gentle push of (its) weight shook me out of the precious sleep I had so long tried to woo, an hour and a half prior. I am not easily scared. But I did feel the fingers of fear touch me. I turned on my phone's mp3 and left it on until drowsiness, once again, took over. 

And then it was 7 a.m. and I was almost grateful for the moon's unannounced absence.

He's a Libra

This morning, I woke up with a headache, probably because I've been sleeping piecemeal for the past two days. I should probably hydrate.

Yup, I should.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Jason Reitman's "Thank You For Smoking". This kid (he's 32) has got loads of talent! So far, he hasn't let me down, not with this one, "Juno" or "Up In The Air".

That's all I got for today. Haven't even had lunch or breakfast yet.

Will be watching "Fargo" later.