life with interest

I like the light here. Perfect-looking people look all the more perfect in this light, and everyone else still is painted with the polish of perfection. There is a cool breeze circulating around my lips, entering from the open door where light pours in. It also pours in through the large glass doors and the loft ceilings with more tall windows. This place is far too fancy for someone like me, with every element designed to meet the highest of standards, and every guest seemingly architected to fit in their respective space, much like the ceramic mugs with half-heart-shaped handles.

It is a “gallery cafe” and its aesthetic is apropos. I’m far too desheviled for this space, but perhaps I’m performance art disrupting perfection. Women with crisp white button downs and bright blue jumpsuits and soft cotton flowing skirts are on display. Men who look like professors and rock stars and startup CEOs also design themselves into the scene. The “rock star” has tattoos and long hair and wears a muscle shirt that says “risk it for the biscuit.” I wonder if he really would.

Today, I’m ok with being alone. I’m enjoying the cool air pressing against my nose and tracing its invisible path and sources. I’m enjoying the parade of pants perfectly creased, too-perfectly creased for Sunday. And the tall trees outside, piercing up fiercly, far beyond my view. And those smaller, whisper trees that feature leaves in the season’s transition, a base of green yellows up into red orange, as if someone took a culinary torch and burnt just their tippy tops into rust.

I’m tired. Not tired as in I didn’t sleep last night, but tired as in a visceral exhaustion that aches through my bones. The exhaustion that comes with fighting getting one year older, one year further from my father’s death, one year away from my childhood home likely being sold, and forever away from identifying some greater purpose–or maybe moments away from that.

I can barely keep my eyes open. But with them closed, as they are now, I do not fall asleep. I feel more awake than ever. I feel the breeze up against me, holding me, keeping me safe in my solitude. I have to go back to the real world shortly–this is just a brief post appointment hiatus to caffeinate and rejuvenate before the week ahead. The weeks ahead. The last month of 35.

Turning 36 is something. Not that it’s old, but it’s certainly way closer to 40 than I ever thought I’d ever be. And its gone so fast it’s clear that I’m also close to 50 and 60 and the rest of it. I want to do something in this vast pool of time I have left in good health before it’s gone. I’ve always felt death’s hold against me–as a child I’d close my eyes tight at night and wonder what it would be like to just be gone–but now it’s there, ahead of me, approaching. If the next 20 years of my life are dedicated to earning income and motherhood, that means I’ll be 56 before I have time to create. Not that I know what to create or have any talent, but I still want to find the time to try before I’m 56.

I just write these silly blog posts because they’re the only thing I have time for these days, and writing consistently, even pointlessly, helps me in my day job. But what else is there? There must be something more. It feels like a cruel trick that through childhood we’re given ample time to create and then, just when we have enough knowledge and maturity to say something meaningful via these creations, we have no time.

But I do have this time, sitting here, eyes closed, typing hopefully the right letters, circulating a thousand possibilities in my mind, breathing that fresh, pollinated fall air deep into my burning lungs.