2:37 PM, all this bright coolness and the swirl of colored leaves, drifting down like Autumn-tinted confetti. It’s a Wednesday afternoon and I love October.
A couple of weeks ago, my brother Joel and I caught the Frank Black show at Graffiti. As cool as I’d imagined him to be, Black played songs from his days with the Pixies, solo stuff, and new music -- it was a fun night, prefaced by a bite to eat at Valhalla (excellent veggie wraps and a tasty home-brewed pilsner). I’ve slipped into a casual rut of late and the night was a welcomed change-of-pace.
Habits can be such reluctant things. Good ones are so hard to coax into being and bad ones wish to stay forever. No real newsflash there, I know. It is easy to fall asleep in your life. Relaxing even. There is something very comforting in a well-worn routine.
Ah, but that inertia-killing reluctance...
Too much change is chaos but too little is stagnation. A small new thing, now and then, deflects your glide path just enough to keep life fresh. Hopefully. Radical changes on a day-to-day basis are a bit much to ask of anyone -- but small stuff, hey, that’s not too bad. And you never know from where those soft inspirations to shake up your routine will come.
Early today my phone rang, awakening me from a vague ephemeral dream. Without my glasses the room was an impressionistic blur of morning-white and I was reluctant to move from the body-warmed covers. On my desk the computer whispered into alertness far more rapidly than I -- taking the message for me.
It was a single word, from a woman who’s voice I do not know.
"’Morning," she said.
Indeed it was, and though I had been planning on sleeping late, I decided to get up then instead. And enjoy it.
So, from me to you: good afternoon.
--- JWR, 10/21/98
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