Pastry and The Fear

Originally Posted Friday, January 17, 2014

I have been at it for six straight days and nights, nonstop.  Today. . . I'll breathe a bit.  Friday will offer some respite.  I haven't scheduled anything for the coming week and will be able to relax and maybe catch up.  I don't know.  Relaxing hasn't been what it once was.  I get bored and lonely, I think, when I relax now.  I have a mania for production that exhausts me.  Taking another stroll down the Boulevard is not restorative.  I have a luxurious place to stay in a Park City resort this coming week for skiing and Sundance.  All I must do is buy an airline ticket.  I haven't.  ???  Beats me.  I may be scared of catching the flu on the plane.  Stupid, huh?  If I don't go, I'm sure to catch the flu at home.  I know this, but I know there is something that is giving me pause.  Maybe the skiing.  My back and knee hurt.  Maybe.  I don't know.  I'll probably book a flight this weekend. 

I'm sitting here now trying to concisely state a topic for that last paragraph.  I can't.  It is a mess.  It is truly bad writing.  Perhaps I should provide you with a weather update.  Or tell you I have coffee but no pastry, or inform you I plan to have wine with dinner tonight.  Or I could comment on what passes for "the news." 

But not today.  I'll leave it all alone for now.  You have the picture.  It is a mystery, of sorts, a beautiful portrait of The Fear.  Why do I wish to portray such things, to remind people of the darker realities we face?  I've spoken with this woman about such things.  She draws upon some personal experiences that neither you nor I would want.  She is a psychology major at the university.  She has many very pretty pictures taken by other photographers.  She likes "this sort of thing better," she says.  Can you imagine?  Even still, this is a portrait of the photographer, not of the model.  It is a projection of what I feel so often in the night.  It is the culmination of everything I've read and seen and heard and done.  Surely even people not astute at reading pictures feel it no matter how quickly they turn away.  It is what I feel now when I am not busy.  The Burning of the Days. 

I wish I had a pastry.  A pecan ring would do or an Amoretti cookie.  That would be just the thing.