Trailing

Posted on | November 2, 2007 | 5 Comments

I skip work and sleep in until ten. My body has felt like a Duchamp painting the past few days, in too many places at the same time. When I woke up the sun was flooding the room, and I lay in bed, surrounded by soft white flannel, and watched the dust motes dance in the light.

When I wake up, especially when I wake up late or from a nap, I feel like I am trailing myself for a few moments. I startle easily then, and prefer to move slowly, to linger where I am still fluent with the images of my dreams, before language ripples the surface of my mind like someone throwing a handful of pebbles into a serene pond.

I made my way to my studio where lady bugs still seem to linger—one or two greet me each day on the windowsills, moving about as the sun warms their shiny beetle backs. I wrote for an hour or so, feeling the zinging of anxiety rise and fall in my chest. What if it’s not good? What if I can do better? What if I can never get past the point of beginning, or the halfway? Then I’d move to my yoga mat facing the sun, and bring my attention towards my tight hamstrings and uneven breath.

By noon, I went running. Some days I wish every day could be like this: mired into the thick of the work I love most, yet able to be flexible and active midday when the sun makes the air fragrant with the smell of dry leaves and damp earth. I came back determined to gather focus, and to pursue what I want (to write fulltime) with more clarity. I’ve been waiting for this to happen. This shift away from summer’s dreaminess and early autumns tumbled wonder. Like waking up, it takes me a while to shift gears towards productivity after the sensory world I inhabit when the fields are green and the air is rife with the fragrance of ripening fruit and the busy humming of insects.

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