All morning, time slips. From sleep to stirring to slowly waking to sips of coffee facing a wool-gray sky.
There’s little to report. The days slide by, mostly unencumbered.
Saturday we filled the square. We marched. We dispersed and went home. On the bus I spoke with a woman, a veteran undergoing cancer treatments. She’s pissed. Upset that cancer research and support for veterans is being cut.
On my way to pick up dinner, a dozen parakeets sat on the wire across the street from my apartment. Bright green. Ruby red throat. Later, feeling sun-baked and tired, I fell asleep early.
Sunday, at the farmers’ market I bought (and later ate) the thickest cookie I think I’ve ever had. Later, after sitting by the water with coffee, a book, and a notebook, I stopped at La Fromagerie. Wrapped in waxy butcher paper, I took home a wedge of Tomme de Savoie. A late day snack: cheese, wine, fresh bread, and tomato, followed by a nap in what was left of the late day sun.
By the water, I played with the irony of trying to list the things I’ve forgotten – names and faces, scents and places. I couldn’t remember if someone I once dated wore contact lenses, but I remembered their glasses/reading glasses and their sleepy shuffle out for morning coffee. I began by stating that I expected the end of forgetting to have arrived sooner than it did. I expected that when the list ran dry, the real forgetting would begin. It turns out there’s no end to forgetting. All the while, a ghost moon sailed across the afternoon’s clear blue sky. The boats on the bay turned and headed back towards the docks. All the while time slipped by.
There are days when I ask what I’m doing here – not so much in the literal or geographic sense, just in that general, bigness sense. I wanted to create something. I wanted to enjoy something. There are days when I reflect back and think about how surrounded by so many easy pleasures, we unnecessarily complicate our lives: friendships, relationships, work, and play. Still on the list of forgetting, I remembered the atmosphere around a simple meal I once had in Philadelphia. The restaurant was in a row home – there might have been room for six tables. The chef, a short and bubbly man had a voice like Cookie Monster or Grover. So many small and hidden places to discover. I wanted to discover more places, experience more things.
Sunday’s slowness felt like a silk tie unknotting, a breaking down into, and appreciation of, simplicity. Reveries suggested a path forward, memory inspired how to live in the current moment.
As happens more often than I expect it to, this morning’s slippage of time delivered my thinking back to me packaged in someone else’s words. A poem “There. I Did It. I Remembered Well.” from Devin Kelly. A snippet:
…I’ll pause, making coffee in the morning’s
winter darkness, & marvel that this is my life. There. I did it.
I remembered beautiful; I remembered well. I remembered
the way your absence turns the world into the shape of you
whenever you are gone, & you become the space between
my pocket & my heart, & the whole distance that the horizon
makes of sky. I remember you did the same for me…
I have lots of days when I marvel that this is my life. I have lots of days when I remember beautiful and I remember well. There’s gloating in the remembering.
The morning slipped into work clothes and work thinking. The work filled the room, filled my head, thicker than Sunday’s cookie.
Dinner. Hoodie. Hands in pocket walk around the neighborhood. Followed by a different list of forgetting. Eadie Brickell’s “Circles” reminds me of high school. Cab Calloway’s “Eadie Was a Lady” those years when I was really into Jazz. “Wish I Knew You” by the Revivalists that first summer and first serious relationship after the divorce, runs along the canal path, finding a bit of city swagger. The moon is high and the evening, like time, slips behind closed blinds.