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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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Six Impossible Things and Three Possible Things
Six Impossible Things I wake up and know immediately that I have to take everything out of all my closets and reorganize. I have to move all my stored things into the closet where my clothes are now, and move all my clothes into the closet where I store stuff. Also, I have to sort through the lingering box of diary entries and photographs that I brought from the house I shared with Max. This must be done. It takes several hours. After, I call Max. We decide to go to the gym before I have to run off to meet the match.com guy, Matthew. In a second phone call, we re-decide to go to lunch instead of the gym. This too is done. We go off and I tell Max about finding a written/paper diary entry that recorded a particularly difficult time in our lives. Some guy from the university had developed a crush on Max and had begun to email him and send him little gifts. I, of course, put a swift end to this little interaction. I made Max email the guy a very curt letter and give away the little gifts. (How I wish now that I had taken the out that the universe was trying to provide me with and, instead of putting an end to the whole thing had rather said, "That guy wants you? Well, I think that's a fine idea. You go on ahead without me." It would have saved me about ten years anyway.) I asked Max if he remembered the guy's name. He didn't. I remind him that it was Erik. We talk about jealousy. I go home and get ready for Matthew. I shower and do my hair and makeup. I've said in my bio that my hair is my best feature, and though I have a momentary urge to show up with my hair looking like crap, I don't let myself give in. It's like quitting smoking, giving up giving in to those momentary urges. Man, you let yourself slip once and then suddenly you are a smoker--or someone who hasn't the capacity to delay any kind of gratification of momentary urges--again. Anyway, I do my hair so that it's all loose and shiny and pretty, and I do my makeup so that I don't look loose or shiny, but do look rather pretty, and I dress in red, and I head off to have coffee with Matthew. After coffee with Matthew, I go over to Max's to tell him about coffee with Matthew and then we go off to Wild Oates to buy some groceries. I am still trying to put on weight, but my body is tricky. Here's why: There are foods that I count and foods that I don't count. I don't, for example, count vegetables. I do, for example, count peanut butter. Normally, I eat a ton of food that I don't count. But suddenly, trying to put on weight, and eating more "countable" foods, the body stops wanting the "no-count" foods. What it boils down to is that I'm still essentially taking in about the same number of calories, only it's with countable foods. I'm the Red Queen all of a sudden, eating and eating and eating and staying at the same weight. Okay, so what? Well, the body has apparently weighed in, cast the winning vote here. Still, I do try to outsmart it by doing things like the following: After dropping Max off, I want to go out and ponder. Pondering is always best done over a plate of raw fish. That said, I recall that a new sushi restaurant has opened in the heights, and I have been thinking this may be where I can find Fu. I decide to go up there for dinner. The place is nice and the sushi is incredibly but incredibly good, but there is no Fu behind the sushi bar. I ask the friendly chef, Steven, if he knows Fu. Maybe Fu works there and has the night off. "Fu-san?" Steven asks, and says, "From [insert the name of another Japanese restaurant here]?" The place he mentions is not associated in my mind with Fu, so I say, "No, from--" and tell him the last place Fu worked. "I don't know," Steven says. I ask again in a different way, thinking that maybe the translation is going haywire, but he still insists that he doesn't know. Turns out, however that he did know, and I'll tell you how I know that he knew: On my way home, I pass the place where the Aisho had told me months ago that the new restaurant they'd be working for would be opening. I have driven past the place, but had not seen evidence of a new restaurant. I decide to take another look. To my surprise, there is a huge new Japanese restaurant sitting in the parking lot. I park and go in. Aisho is behind the sushi bar. I haven't seen or spoken to him--besides that one stupid phone call when someone, probably one of his friends, called and left a message pretending to be him. I decide that I'll spare him the loss of face by not mentioning the phone call. So I walk in and he looks at me and slowly recognizes me. He says, "Oh. My. God. I don't believe it." I greet him and say, "Where's Fu?" Fu, it turns out, is not working with Aisho ("Long story," Aisho says when I ask why not). Rather, Fu is working where Steven said he was working. I chat with Aisho, mainly to get Fu's number, which he gives me. As I'm preparing to leave, Aisho says to me, "You look different." I make a face. "Different how?" I ask. "Good different," he replies. I think, I do look good, don't I? (I'm still all prettied up for the Matthew experience.) I think, you aren't sorry you passed this up, are you? I tell him that I'll try to stop by for dinner some night. I certainly have no intention of fostering a friendship with him, and so I don't intend on going back to the restaurant for dinner of course. So I waved goodbye and left./p> And I Drove Away, Grateful I am still grateful for the Aisho and for Fu, and now I am grateful for Steven. I am still grateful for sushi, especially incredible sushi in a new restaurant. I am grateful for Matthew, for sugar and caffeine, for this day. I am grateful for Sublingua, whose phone calls remind me that the dream that is my waking life has a theme that is constantly in flux. I am grateful for May, whose changes remind me that changes are good and necessary things. I am grateful for closet space, which I have in abundance. I am grateful for Max, for Judi, for time. I am grateful for snow, which falls on my little house as I write this. I am grateful and obedient, I am grateful and humble. I am grateful.
More lies:
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