So here I am in an attempt to get back the knack of writing again and it’s not that I’ve stopped. I’ve filled my journal with page after page of the mundane details of my life called April 2009—which day I cleaned my nails, what hour in the day we did our third grocery for the month, which Saturday I pestered my neighbors doing videoke by first taking on Julia Fordham’s Invisible War and finishing with a Carpenters medley.
So busy at trying to find my un-busy, that’s what I’ve always referred to it, to this, to my eternal now, trying my best to fill in the gaps so that I just have something to show for. Scrambling to tick off boxes and for whom—there’s no teacher here to pat me on the back and give me a sash that says Little Miss Conscientious. I don’t need an endorsement to figure out that I’m doing a pretty darn good job in being me.
And so for May, in addition to nail filing and the cart pushing and the off key singing (hah!), I will also spend time just s-t-a-r-i-n-g into space. It will be this month’s flavor of the month, a luxury, call it a prize for ticking off a hundred must-do items in April where there had only been a dozen or so boxes I needed to fill in.
I will stare, and imagine that I am on a beach, wearing my beaten straw hat with my sunshades on, staring into that blue endlessness—my mind as far away as I can get it to go. I’d imagine hot sand on my toes, my back burning from the fiery skies but hey, no worries, if only for a day.
I will stare, up my bedroom ceiling, thinking how badly it needs repainting yet not moving a muscle because please if there’s another person who cares just raise your hand and there’s none except mine so I’ll go on rolling off to another side, hugging myself close and I’ll peek out the window, stare at the fluffy clouds and be utterly bored. My pillows around me, the electric fan whirs away, I feel a bit warmer but that’s cool and that’s fine. Soon, I am sleeping, not a care in the world, and half a day will be gone just like that.
I will stare, into my computer, and strain to hear the sound of my breathing, just because. I will let my vision blur, but soon enough—ayayay—there would be that small box announcing I’ve got new mail, hmmm, so maybe staring wouldn’t work in these types of situations.
I will stare while waiting for my turn at Mercury Drug or while waiting for our call-in cab service to show up. I will stare at my kids while they laugh their heads off at whatever secret joke they have hatched for the day. I will stare at R when he’s driving and surely it will not bother him although he may think I’m mad or something because I will continue staring when he asks are you ok?—because golly, being unresponsive is part of the staring phenomenon.
I will be a fan of the wide-eyed and brain-numbed. I will hail it this month, celebrate its effortlessness, be happy that it’s here, in my new now, catalogued as a must-do. Maybe I’ll start a fan page in Facebook—the I Dream of Staring Into Space Fan Page. I wonder if it will be as infectious as a bug.
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Pictured: Tiny pottery at Pinto Art Museum
Finally Dee 