After my double post yesterday, I’m taking the chance today to share this haiku from my friend and coworker, Ben Dwyer. Enjoy!
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I found a secret for loafing. I spent almost the entire weekend loafing: in a hotel room. Our son had a soccer tournament this weekend in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and thanks to the spread of his games on Saturday, we had hours and hours of down time.
His first game was at 8am on Saturday, so we arrived in the early morning for warmups, walked the dewy fields as the sun rose over the trees, and were finished with the game by 9am. We returned to our room for the few hours until our next game, and since we weren’t home, where there are endless chores that need to be done, our down time was truly down time. For loafing.
I lay in our bed and petted my husband’s head while I read and the kids watched cartoons on TV. For hours. We did the same thing in the afternoon after our son’s second game. We killed most of the day in our room, laying around in the white sheets of hotel beds, doing a whole lot of nothing.
It was bliss.
Now I’m sitting on a window seat in our hotel room, a version of the bay window I have day dreamed about since I was a kid. I’m sitting in a window seat, and I’m writing. The remainder of the soccer tournament has been cancelled due to rain, which is a huge bummer. But I’m sitting in a window with a cup of coffee and a book on the sill next to me, watching wind blow treetops, and grey rain fall, and cars splash puddles in the streets below. I’ve got a pen and notebook in my lap, inking words on a page, with my whole family cuddling and lounging in leisure, and with no work to do. It’s kind of awesome.
Since we won’t get to play or watch soccer today, we’re salving the wound by going out to breakfast. A real breakfast — not the stale bagels and muffins the hotel offers in the lobby. Breakfast is my favorite meal to eat out. I love the clatter of breakfast dishes in a restaurant. I love the liveliness of morning, with the whole day stretched before us, and I love endless coffee and savory breakfast foods. And my favorite part, now that we have kids, is that on the menu, there’s always something for everyone.
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I like coffee too much. I am dependent on it. I consider it a vice because I crave it and feel like life would just not be as pleasant without it. It’s part of my daily rituals: coffee in the morning, coffee in the afternoon. On special occasions, when my husband and I are on a date, one of my favorite treats, one of my favorite indulgences, is having a cup of coffee with dessert. It’s a small thing, but is the perfect end to a fine meal, and is the part that is most special to me. It’s the one thing about an evening meal that I don’t do in my normal life.
My husband doesn’t think coffee is a vice. He does not drink coffee, which may or may not be relevant. But he considers a vice to be something harmful. I’m sure he is right, and I’m sure coffee has some disadvantages or health risks, but I certainly wouldn’t call it a danger.
Feeling dependent on something though – even something harmless like coffee – makes it feel like a vice to me. Maybe I consider a vice to be something I do that feels like it is out of my control. Which really is probably more the definition of addiction: being powerless over a substance. Like I am with coffee.
I’ve tried switching to tea by it’s not hearty enough. It’s not thick enough. It’s not dark or potent enough. When I tried to switch to tea I ended up drinking a cup of tea and then drinking a cup of coffee. Or sometimes I’d drink multiple cups of tea, hoping the caffeine would take care of the coffee craving, but it didn’t. I could jitter across a room jacked up on the caffeine from a whole pot of tea, and I’d still want coffee. It’s not just the drug in it, it’s the everything: the flavor, the richness, the ritual, the strength. I am powerless over it. I succumb.
vice n. 1. an immoral or evil habit or practice… 5. a fault, defect, or shortcoming 6. a bad habit, as in a horse.
Note: Given these definitions, I agree with my husband: coffee is not a vice.
Photo credit: Colombian Coffee by McKay Savage
For the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just trying to get back into the writing habit. Thank you to Lori Carlson for the prompt “An unexpected vice.”
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All those feathers in our down comforter, in our pillows, in all the pillows and feather beds and nests of the world. They are hidden away in those places, but I think of them bursting out and flying free and floating, drifting on air pockets like little boats till they land softly, silently, onto the skin of a lake, like those insects — water gliders? Water skiers? What are those those things called with the long legs and they skate on the surface of the water? It doesn’t matter.
All those feathers on the surface of lakes, drawing your eye to their softness, making the water look hard, like sliver glass that would cut you like the sharp edges of a mirror, but if you dip your hand to catch the feather, your hand goes in smoothly, the water cool and soft, not sharp or hard-edged at all. And if you pull the feather out it’s no longer fluffy and downy like a soft-edged boat, like a fur-lined coat. It is scraggly and bedraggled, bony and dark, weighted down and dripping, skeletal and heavy in air where only moments before it was light and wispy in water.
What would fish see from below of those feathers sailing on the surface? A tiny rib? How much would break the surface, if any, and how much would the fish see that is out of the water? Probably not much, unless it is a flounder or a walleye lying on the bottom with both eyes up because all the other fishes’ eyes are on the sides of their heads looking sideways not up, and a flounder wouldn’t be in a lake anyway because it’s a saltwater fish. So forget the fish and the feathers and just think about the birds and their down, and how warm it might be in the pit of a bird wing, where geese slip their bills on cold days – for warmth?
I know nothing about birds except that blue is not always blue. I saw a bluebird with a friend and she said there’s a blue bird and I said but it’s not blue (it was red) and she said, oh but it is, just not at the angle you’re looking right now. Their feathers refract light differently at different angles and it’s blue though you may not see it that way.
Photo Credit: Feather from a swan, floating on Hatchet Pond by Jim Champion
For the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just trying to get back into the writing habit.
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sun, sunlight, solar
skin, hide, pelt, cuticle
freckles, moles, sun spots, age spots
golden, tan, brown, tawny
epidermis
bikini, naked
sunbathe, tanning oil, Coppertone
sunbow, sunbreak, sunbright, sunburst
sunbrowned
sunburned or sunburnt: reddened, tanned, seared by the sun’s rays
sunbaked
summer, sky, warm, hot
bright, blazing, blistering, sizzling
lush
tropical
sprinkled, spotted, freckle-faced
rays, sun rays
tan: to convert (skin) to leather by impregnation with an infusion of tree bark, mineral salts, or some other form of tannin or a substitute
sand, beach, salt
mineral, crust, salty, saline, briny, brackish, brown
salt-tinged, mud-tinged
beach chair, beach towel, lounge chair
wading, body surfing
cooler, salty snacks, boiled peanuts, Coke
tan, leather, browned, exposure
yellow, orange, glaring, white, blinding
shimmering, heat waves
sand, sandbar, sandbank, sandal
beach, shore, splash zone
quartz, glass, abrasive, grainy, gritty
sand crab, ghost crab, sand dollar
star fish, moon snail, mud ball
seashore, shoreline, beach comber
seashell
beach cusp (n.): sand and gravel deposits formed by wave action into points that project seaward along a coast
beach flea, beach grass, crustaceans, sea oats
sand dunes, reeds, sand burrs, stickers
superfine, white, dry, sugar sand
beach umbrella
Sunkist, Budweiser, Blondie: “The tide is high”
lifeguard stand
brown water, surf, waves, jetty
boats, boating, outboard, hum
hull, fiberglass, bimini
wake, kneeboard, crab traps, buoys
marsh, Spartina, oyster beds, mud flats
tide, tidal, rivers, creeks
serpentine, still, buzzing
boat deck, peach, warm, vibration
guard rail, bow rail, stainless steel
helm, anchor
bumper, line, cleat, dock
planks, searing hot, blistering hot
blistered skin, pink, tender
jellyfish, jelly balls, cannonball jellies
barefoot, flip flops
sundress, straps that hurt
melanoma, cancerFor the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. This one was just a spilling of words. I was tired of prose.
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My mind is in perpetual motion. A hamster on a wheel. A tornado. The only way to stop it, or at least funnel off some of the crazy, is to write. Getting the thoughts out of my head at least ends the endless repetition of one train of thought and makes room for another. Writing lets my brain move forward instead of turning into a black hole that feeds on itself, swirling and sucking everything in with its gravity.
I’m not always serious. On the outside I can be fun, and on the inside too. But I feel like my thoughts are grave or deep or big too often. It’s more fun being fun. Fortunately for myself, I think I’m hilarious. I think lots of things are hilarious, too. I spoke to our son on the phone when I was in New Orleans, and he said something that made me laugh.
“You’re funny, buddy,” I said. I sat on the stone wall and giggled at my 11 year-old.
With his father’s dryness, he said, “It’s just easy to make you laugh.”
Which is apparently why my husband married me. I’m an easy laugh.
Perpetual motion is my energy state. I wrote recently about not being able to loaf. It’s because I like to be busy. Thinking is included in that busyness. Like most, I am not able to sit still and be thought-free. But it is rare that I sit and think — I’m writing, or making coffee, or walking, or planning my week. Those are probably the slowest motion things I do besides sleep. I’m trying to recall if there was a single moment today where I was not doing something, and aside from sleeping, I cannot think of one. Oh, except when I woke this morning.
That is my still time. Waking on a Saturday or Sunday without an alarm clock. Lying in bed with my husband, my head on his chest, half-asleep, not moving. Content.
For the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Trying to get back into the writing habit. Thank you to Geoffrey for the “perpetual motion” prompt.
Butterfly Mind 