Perfect Combination of Little Things

Journaling On and Around My Birthday

I am doing fewer push-ups because I am tucking my elbows in. Silas reminds gently when he sees them flair out, “you can hurt your shoulders that way.” He is 14 and went from my little Seaweed to a muscle-y guy taller than me in less than a year. I collapse into child’s pose after 10.

Strangers have been coming and going, leaving fragments of their lives to linger, as they drive off with bolts of fabric. Silas and I plan to build a gym beneath the studio once the space is cleared. We are putting our old stuff on Facebook Marketplace, then looking through other peoples old stuff for gym equipment. The endless stuff swap. Walter says what we should really do is clear everything out — including the insulation, replace it and ‘button it up” to keep the animals out. Ugh. I just want to blast the music and do a few reps to lessen the skin dripping off of my arms and to better hold balance poses in yoga. And most of all, to keep energetic blood vessels flowing to and from my brain. I hope all of this worrying about my brain isn’t hurting it.

But don’t let me fool you. I am barely motivated to wade through our old shit let alone learn how to replace insulation and button it up. I’d rather walk in the woodland and risk another tick bite, and read, read, read. I want to make clothes this summer too.

The lists don’t stop growing.

Yesterday was my birthday and we filled it up so completely. After journaling I went to yoga. I went to yoga. I didn’t find a video on You Tube. What a difference going makes! Getting up, caring a little about what I look like — brushing my hair, anyway. I was the only one up front. I generally go into the back corner but the studio is small and I didn’t know back from front. I was ready to panic but sighed a get over yourself sigh. Also, stop mouthing om. I pushed my voice out. It creaked. Without seeing a pose first, I am useless. I cannot picture the words, I struggle with knowing which side is left and which side is right. I hope the women behind me were closing their eyes, else I likely set the entire room askew.

I returned home to fresh flowers and not-too-sweet acai bowls and heaps of fruits and a range of low-sugar, gluten-free seedy granola. We went for a hike in the extreme heat and humidity and I was the only one not complaining – a miracle! We walked a few miles, dipped into the river to cool down, and hurried home for our midday dinner at Opa, our favourite restaurant in West Chester. As always, I ordered the branzino. I wanted to sit outside in the storm that was about to dump itself upon us, but my request was refused. Fair. It was cozy inside and we got to see the trees dancing wildly through the window.

After dropping S+S off at home, we zigzagged passed hundreds of fallen trees and branches and closed roads to see Charlie Cunningham at a venue so small I could see his teeth without my glasses on. Charlie’s voice crawled inside me and mingled with Ben’s voice that has been doing summersaults in there since last week.

From yesterday morning, before yoga:

Last night, after not enough oysters, we walked around the parking lot as we do. When we exhausted the parking lot like so many parking lots before, we crossed the intersection and passed modern conveniences and wandered into a neighborhood where Claire respectfully whispered and I sounded too exuberant after my virgin bloody mary and oysters. Our night walk, though we didn’t imagine it from where we began, succeeded as usual, in taking us to the fireflies and enchantments of the stars. It had rained here, so close to the balmy Five Acre Wood, where not a drop soothed the sticky.

I knew I’d be sleepy today, but I could have walked all night. Claire had the sense to turn us around. I am nearly always invigorated when lost, captivated by the endlessness of not knowing what lurks in the distance. Once sorted, Claire’s voice changed as she began to tell the story of twelve sisters with worn-out shoes that I’d never heard before. I didn’t grow up on Fairy Tales or Classics. I found my own books and I fell into a trap of reading addictive poorly written stories with ghosts and monsters. When I read some of the saved paperbacks to my family on a road trip I discovered how truly horrible they were! Where would I be if I knew better books existed in the world then, and why didn’t I find them? In the story, the father set out to discover why his girls’ shoes were worn out every morning, promising marriage to the prince who could solve the mystery. When the unlikely ‘prince’ showed up, the evening adventures began. The youngest sister was always somehow entangled with the invisibility cloak imposter and uttered expletives like, “what the fuck!” that had me howling at the telling, like a girl in love.

After last week’s darkness — music, the promise of rain, and reading, moved me into the other extreme were the smallest things lift me and I float through the world on all of its magic. Driving was good. Every song was good. The wind and the air good, good, good. When I was younger I called this “the perfect combination of little things.”

My poison ivy itches. The tick bite too. There are sore small bumps under my skin near the bite. I hate ticks. But still, my body floats.

Night Walk