next top bottle

The security guards at my office are lovely -- really -- even if they're a bit forward at times. Even if they do tend to work lines I wouldn't sign after three dirty martinis on a night I was actually, erm, buying, if you get my drift. So certainly not while flashing my badge, head down, quick smile thanks, into work. But then this morning, from one of the guards, this:

"You look like a bottle."

Which slowed, if didn't stop me. Odd of him to point it out, I'm thinking. A bit inappropriate perhaps. But, I do. I do look like a bottle. A little thrill of recognition. I am seen for what I am! I am accurately defined! I am a 5'1", brown-haired, bottle-shaped girl in desperate need of an eyebrow waxing and it is good.

It made my day, I'm not ashamed to say.

And then it struck me that the guard had a cold.

oh.

what. ever.

And then it struck me that I was on the elevator and ten floors up before I'd figured it out.

oi.

No bottle, I. Though apparently, to my dismay, just as clever.

dig it

During a walk on the beach, I pass a young Chinese family. The mother is making lunch under the shade of an umbrella. The father, plastic shovel in hand, is working on a hole as his barely-toddler son watches intently from the edge, feet dangling.

A burst of joy stops me in my tracks: They made it!!

And then waiting a moment longer to see if anyone else emerges, when no one does, I continue on.

avoiding the quibble

What a disaster this place is.

Do I really pack the feather boa? My other sleeping bag -- perfectly serviceable but bulky compared to the new one? The perpetually tarnished penguin-shaped coffee urn? (I mean where will I find a penguin-shaped coffee urn again? Nevermind that I've never used it. I might.) The sketch a stranger in a bar drew me on a napkin? Sweet, yes, but the memory of its creation hanging by a pinky on the edge of some atrophied synapse.

Do I care?

Will I care? In a week? In a year? Ten? Will some imaginary daughter one day miss that which I'm giving away (throwing away) willy-nilly?

I don't think so, but one never knows. Regardless, right now, I'm half tempted to turn the key on this place with nothing under my arm but a box of pictures. I'm that over it.

While I quibble with myself, I'm avoiding myself by trolling blogs while I should be building boxes and making runs to donate shoes and sheets. And I came upon (came upon, as if I don't check her site seventeen times a day) this. Which reminded me. . .

Walking out of work the other day, I hunched my shoulders against the light rain that was falling. And then I remembered being a kid at camp, when rain meant mud and mud meant field game fun. When I not only held my head high despite the rain, but turned my face up into it and laughed for the sheer joy/life/mud of it. And as I tip-toed through the parking lot avoiding puddles, I realized I was going home, so who cared if I got a little wet? I straightened my shoulders and looked to the sky, reveling (thankfulling) in the small fact that I could feel it on my skin. Only sad that there wasn't mud to stomp, tromp, scoop and throw. No lake to jump into afterward, a big soapy bathtub. Bad for the environment maybe, but great for the soul.

Who needs thotchkes when there's rain as a reminder? Right?

Yeah, yeah, but what about that lamp I used to love so and now miss the point of? I mean, I do need light. Right? Right?

*sigh*

the best destination

Fingers clasped in a fist under my chin, elbows opening and closing, faux handles for the bellows of my lungs, breath in for a count of six and then out and in again and out again and in again and out again. Seemingly forever until we can finally move on to something even more grueling. The breath should focus the mind. The quiet mind should sooth the restless spirit. But all I can think is that I smell like pastrami. Do you know how disturbing it is to breath in your own pastrami smell? And compelling? I'm suddenly hungry.

Now I'm thinking about my hunger. That and that I'm mad, downright angry at Shonda Rhimes, Exec Producer of Grey's Anatomy. Standing on one leg, the other straight out in front of me, looking over my shoulder at the back of the room, chin and bottom of foot facing in absolute and opposite directions. Impossible and I don't care. How dare she let Izzie cut that wire?! What is she thinking? That's completely completely inexcusable. How am I to forgive her?! How is she going to fix this? How is she going to make it right, dammit?

Mmm. . . with a little sauerkraut.

And then the giggles start. Like the time my mom and I were visiting a new church and the soloist's voice bore a distinct resemblance to that of Big Bird. It starts as a grin and ultimately explodes through the nose. No grace. No composure. Body ragdoll weak under the force of the hilarity and that i-just-can't-stop-god-help-me-but-i-can't shake of the head. Toe pointed behind me to the ceiling, reaching to the mirror with my opposite hand, body dropping to perpendicular with the floor. Don't look at your cohort. Breath. Don't think about how oh-my-god-how-funny-it-is. My mother and I had to leave the church, running up the aisle, still in a fit of giggles, never to return. And yet they say God loves laughter. And I can't help but agree. Why else would he have given Big Bird a solo?

On rye.

I'm SNORT-laughing by now. It's all Audra's fault. In her funny boyshorts with the incongruously bulky fly. Her intense commitment to not falling out of the posture. Arms waving. Face straining. It's not funny at all. But it is. And she's trying not to laugh too which makes it worse. And I smell like a hot sandwich. And I keep wondering if the instructor is going to offer me a schmeer of spicy mustard with my position adjustment. I'm on my knees and gasping for breath. Not from the yoga. From trying -- oh-god-i'm-trying-so-very-hard -- not to laugh. And failing miserably. Tears streaming.

I'm mortified and that too makes it worse. All those silent, stoic yogi's staring as they stand on singular legs like so many disgruntled storks.

Have you reached a state of enlightenment maybe? the instructor wants to know. She doesn't mind the laughing. She really is a fabulous teacher.

Enlightement? Doubtful. Still, I like the idea. Laughter as evidence of such. Not just a medicine for the pain, but the destination as well.

And man, does it feel good.

Even just the idea.

limbo on the train

My direction on the periphery, I feel in the right space, on the right square, in the most appropriate conversation as long as I don't turn my head. Because when I do, it all evaporates and the ground, so seemingly solid a moment before when the mantra, it will all work out, held firm, drops out. A surprise trap door in the boards, deus ex machina in reverse. A mean trick. So much fairy dust. The rainbow of promise lost, refraction misaligned for color when both eyes gaze.

So many words. Too many. But I can't choose or eliminate. The problem ever and always, perennially, recurrent and perpetual. The constant constant. The unvariable. Decisions never my thing.

Thankfully, by default and Divine interference, I'm surrounded by doers and deciders. The only reason I've been anywhere or done anything are the uber motivated individuals with whom I've fallen, by some greater grace, into favor. Come with, they say. Go here, they urge (ticket proffered, itinerary filled out, anxieties soothed before I've stressed). Left to myself, I'd nap a lot, I think. I'd eat even more canned olives than I already do. My hair would grow to my feet, the only motivation to cut it, the frustration and trouble of tripping.

"No decision, is a decision," my Auntie Mame always says.

"Just start," advises Audra. "The more you say you're bad at it, the truer it will be."

"I hate making decisions," Steph types as we chat online.

"Me too," I tap back, "but I just don't know how."

"We should practice!!" she suggests.

"Totally! But, um, again. . .how?"

Truthfully, important decisions get made, I tell myself. Or so I've always thought. But here I am, without a place of my own to call my own. My old apartment half-disassembled, a quarter boxed and completely unlivable. My bed in an unsleepable Siberia, next door to the wackos with whom I simply cannot share a roof, let alone a wall.

Lease broken, I'm up and out May 31.

Momentary panic: WHERE AM I GOING TO LIVE!?!?

And then I look away. Out of the corner of my eye, I feel more than see the glint of a signal beacon. If I don't strain, I can hear the faint gong of a bell across the water, muffled by the fog, but distinct. And for realsies (to steal from Jill Twiss for a moment), and not simply for effect or in metaphor, I saw a rainbow the other day. And it was at the exact same moment that the guy on NPR began talking about the hidden symbolism in Da Vinci's "The Last Supper." And that's not the least bit relevant, except that it made me think.

Sometimes what's on the surface isn't the whole story. Perhaps the where of where I'm not isn't entirely because I can't decide. Perhaps it's merely a moment on the way, a blink on the train. I'm still en route and there's nothing wrong with that. So. I'm deciding to wait and see what that surprise is, confident in the knowledge that it will, indeed, all work out.

* * *

When I wrote this on Saturday, I didn't have a place to stay come June. The happy middle -- end not yet in sight -- is that I now do. I'm moving in with a friend next month for an indefinite period of time while she's selling her house, while I'm getting ducks sorted and labeled. So limbo continues. Still, I can't express clearly enough how each stepping stone, appearing as they do right as it seems I'm about to drop into the water, reaffirms my faith, my joy in the knowledge that everything is happening just as it should. Pretty cool, huh?