Finally made it to Iris last night after hearing great things and let me tell you, it was delicious. The service was off, it seemed to take forever for the waiter to take our order, but the Halibut was by far one of the best fish entrees I’ve had – it had a grapefruit butter finish that was devine and the fish was cooked to perfection – crispy on the outside and tender and flaky inside. Yum!
An email volley with the girls from Nantucket reminded me of setting reasonable goals and having reasonable expectations. What are we capable of? Yes, we could scale mountains and super produce and all of that stuff that sounds so good on paper – but in the end, where is the art of just being? The moment of being centered from inaction? It’s not just me saying they are working themselves into a frantic tangle of confusion – I’m in a sea of the same creatures and all this “big wheels keep on churning” is mucking up the water.
Last night at the Turkish soiree at the WTC, the belly dancers reminded me of all the unreplied emails to the local belly dancer instructor that I have meant to send. Then there was the drive by dinner at Ye Old College Inn where suddenly I felt that I just couldn’t talk anymore – exhausted and conversationed out. And yet, lying in bed later I felt still that I hadn’t accomplished all that I set out to do when I had so much to do and no time to do it. What is that all about? And why does it color my every waking moment – I’m the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland – screaming I’m late I’m late for a very important date.
Is who I thought you were.
People like to use the reasoning that behaving a certain way isn’t natural – well, let me tell you – my nature is to want to jump on a table, dance a jig, and wail at the top of my lungs like some demon lover who just got let out of the insane asylum. BUT, I don’t, well, I try not to, most of the time I am keeping my feral side in check, so that I can live in this dimension with the rest of you folks.
So for minor things like keeping my weight in check, not smoking because it sucks, holding off calling up that cute guy right across the way, and being a friend even when I don’t feel like it – these are the easy unnatural things I can employ rather handily.
The difficult one is just trying to keep my living at a dull roar rather than the a full blast bottle rocket that so wants to take shape at every single turn. You know the kind where you blow up after you blast off.
Trying to put my newfound perspective into good use. I named my calendar for next week – A Fabulous Week – instead of WEEK FROM HELL, which was my original inclination. Trying to be grace under pressure, but right now I’m in double warp speed with no end in sight. On one conference call I took the phone and went out on the terrace to take a respite from the computer screen and the sun was so hot I almost fried like a turkey. I’m watching Arlene right now, sleeping on the cool marble floor in the bathroom, her legs twitching from a bitemare. Even she can’t get a break.
She says, “We haven’t had sex for 11 months. I’m too young for this.”
I say, “I’m too old for it, too.”
I’m young and passionate and sexual.
Wait, who said that?
Sitting outside on the porch doing an interview this evening and people strolling, running, driving, biking, walking, jogging by all wave and say hello. My interviewee says – “My, I like this neighborhood, people are very friendly.”
Indeed.
Five minutes later my neighbor comes whooshing by at top speed on the riding lawnmower – he is a MOWRON – he and his buddy cut the grass on the bayou and in City Park. They volunteer. I put on my shoes and walked over to move the illegal furniture on the grass. I looked up and the mower was headed my way – IPOD blaring in his ears, cigarette burning between his fingers. I came back to the porch and my interviewee said, “He’s having a damn fine time.”
Indeed.
A friend told me this morning he’s having difficulties with his wife – “she doesn’t appreciate me” – I told him I had seen a cartoon in the paper of two parrots and one turns to the other and says, “It’s not about the cracker.” I said relations are squeezed when a child arrives and maybe try a little tenderness – that’s all we want – he said that’s all he wants. He left shaking his head as if it was a lost cause.
Later I met a new friend and she told me she was on her way to break up – she couldn’t get what she wanted from him anymore – and it isn’t about the one she has found. She said she hopes they can be kind during this break up. I said kindness goes a long way, but it’s hard. Hard to be kind. Especially when she told me she wants a child and he doesn’t because he thinks a child would mess up them and she says, they’re messed up without the child. Then she cried – she said when she talked to him he cried and said he didn’t want her to go. And then I cried just hearing the whole thing.
I barely left my desk today except for conversation number 1 which took place before 8AM, and then conversation number 2, which took place at 8PM – so my day was bookended by ruminations on relationship challenges. It could make me cynical – I’m just about this close to becoming cynical – but what keeps me from going there is this beautiful woman trying to explain to me who she is – “I’m a sexual person,” she says, smoking her cigarette with her hair back in pigtails, “I’m passionate. I love boys, I can’t help it. And I want children.”
And I think, but don’t say – wow – 18 years younger and you could be my daughter or my identical twin separated at birth.
And yet am I that woman anymore?
Who loves ya, baby?
Bullshit – work is sometimes ridiculously too much.