The Thing Forgotten

Originally Posted Wednesday, January 22, 2014

It is a night of changing weather, the sky half cloudy but surreally bright like an old Sherlock
 Holmes movie.  I stand outside and tense my muscles in the gusty breezes that die to nothing and then come again in a second wave, then a third, bands of weather moving in.  I gaze up as the clouds blow across the bright night sky and listen to the warning noise of leaves rustling.  For the first time in some while I feel almost alive.  I should be lamenting as I've blown an opportunity to enjoy the Sundance Film Festival once again, to be sleeping in a luxury condo in Park City at a beautiful ski in/ski out resort.  I waited too long to book my ticket, tired and unsure.  And now. . . they don't want to sell the seats, apparently.  I can't afford their latest prices.  So I should lament but rather I stand outside and feel, as I say, almost alive.  Again, it has been some time since I've almost felt that.  I do not lament.  I only hope my friend is not too disappointed, not too angry.  Otherwise, I think, everything is fine. 

I ponder going toward New Orleans for Mardi Gras.  Maybe not to New Orleans.  That is not the only place where they have that celebration.  Maybe someplace else, Biloxi, perhaps, or some other town on the Gulf Coast. 

I truly just want to go somewhere with black and white film loaded into cameras.  I will stick with the digitals for color.  I want to go someplace non-standard without the same faux-stucco buildings and chain stores, someplace with a bit of character.  I want to talk to girls with strong accents who have been told they are pretty enough to be models or actresses and who believe it because they've never been anywhere they are not.  I want to meet the small town pageant winner and her boyfriend who was a state champion athlete of some sort.  I want them to think for a little bit about quitting church and coming back to the twin cities, old Sodom and Gomorra.  I want to have the guts. 

Either that or go to a Sandals resort.  It costs more, but it is easier and less threatening.  Don't laugh.  That's what people do. 

*     *     *     *     *

Now it is morning, or not quite, and the wood floors of the house are cold.  The cat wants to lie on my feet, but she gives up and goes back to the couch.  I think she may be getting arthritic.  She barely moves from the couch any more.  And I barely sleep.  I go to bed and wake at three-thirty, miserable, then four, then five, and half an hour later, I get up dreading the day for I know I will be slow, the dark circles beneath my eyes swelling, showing.  And I felt so good standing outside last night, felt as though the changing weather was bringing something hoped for.  At some point, life quits unfolding like a fairy tale.  It isn't of a sudden.  Just one day you notice, but you carry on, hoping.  Then one day, that is gone, too, and you just carry on. 

And then there are only a few things that make it worthwhile.  There is art and literature and music, of course, and there is. . . shit. . . what was the other thing?