debilitating waiting.

I try not to be in too big of a hurry most of the time. I don't like rushing, and I don't like making other people feel rushed either. I am comfortable waiting for them to arrive, knowing they are more comfortable not feeling rushed. 

I was sitting in my parked car the other evening, scarfing down a post-run subway sandwich. Someone was meeting me, and we were going to go somewhere else. I was struck by the joy was was experiencing in that moment of limbo, crunching on the veggies, periodically glancing in my rearview when I heard a car turning the corner, and looking ahead in case she drove up from the other direction. I realized that I actually enjoy waiting on people to arrive. It's a childlike joy, like the the joy of knowing dessert will come if you clean your plate. It is much easier to make it through the brussel sprouts when you know you have three layer chocolate chocolate cake waiting on you when they are gone. My time in the car was kind of like the brussel sprouts, tolerable and at moments exciting because of those little bitty bursts of joy each time I heard a car at the stop sign behind me. The sweetness was the knowledge of my friends impending arrival.

The waiting that sucks is the kind that lets you know, often, that there's no guarantee. 

rain.

The rain is hitting the concrete hard outside, and I am just hoping for a rain respite somewhere between two and two-thirty today, so I can make it hope on my bicycle without a soaked butt. 

I was awake for an hour and a half in the middle of the eeeeearly morning hours, tossing and turning, and well, not sleeping. I think it may have been because of the bottle of wine split over conversational therapy with an irreplaceable friend. A worthy cause. 

I hope that wherever you are, if it isn't raining, that there is something in your present moment making you as happy as this rain is presently making me.

a sunrise.

This place I am sitting, the place I am choosing to get away, is abuzz with people choosing the opposite. I am mellow. The barista is mellow. I am drinking chamomile tea to help this state along. The rest of these people are drinking coffee and espresso and big trains, getting hyped up on human connection, caffeine and sugar. 

I am listening to Radical Face. They are singing the lyrics “Welcome Home” so loudly in my ear that they are making me happy to be sitting here with all of these careless strangers. It’s because I feel at ease in their words. I feel peace at the thought of a “home” existing. It’s a fleeting peace, the kind that I am not sure really exists. It leaves when a friend moves away too soon, when falseness floats to the surface, when a song ends. 

Now Jacob Dylan is singing tunes in my ears, with lines including “days of old”, “magnificent floating” and going “into the mystic”. I don’t know what the mystic is, but right now, it feels so much more real to me than home. 

And now, quite appropriately, Augustana is encouraging me to go to Boston.