a life of ones own
The other night, tucked sweetly under covers, awaiting another round of never ending fits and starts, I tried desperately to narrow my focus. Flashback memory to a happy place and let me drift away to dreamland.
For whatever reason, I was sitting alone eating a slice at the pizza shop I used to walk to from my house growing up. I had set out with a singular mission to eat a slice of pizza. No distractions. No way for anyone to reach me. A man on an island. Be here now.
Solitary breaths beat in rhythm as my body rested gently on an orange contoured laminate booth. Pings and pangs and bleeps and bloops emitting from the arcade games in the back room. The crashing of ice into a red plastic cup, followed by the whoosh of a soda pouring from the fountain machine.
This is where I where I chose to go, although there was never any real choice involved. When in search of a calming moment, something I could really hitch my wagon to, this is where I ended up. The end of the road.
Dead-ending is the most common through-line of any sort of creative pursuit. Not quite sure here how to thread the needle, or round the circle back to my most recent read — A Life of One’s Own by Marion Milner — but life is a messy gambit.
Knocking on the door of thirty-seven, and a face full of grey, I am still curious about ways to build the life I want. But wanting, need, desire are all paths to unhappiness. Maybe, like Milner, I should journal out my day, jotting down each solitary second where I find happiness, building my own map to the stars.
Maybe the life I want is the life I have and all of this is for naught. This being the most likely scenario, I will curl up under my covers, ear to the pillow, reaching for the sounds of crashing waves — I will find another distant memory that brings me a moment of happiness as I await the curtain close, in hopes of seeing the dawn of a new day.
Some books I have read this summer:
A Sand County Almanac: With Essays on Conservation from Round River by Aldo Leopold
Tabula Rasa: Volume 1 by John McPhee
Good shit mi amigo
I've heard of a slice of life, but a life of slice!? Jk. I've walked that road and as far as ends of roads go, you could do a lot worse. Loved this.