Friday, July 26, 2013

The Optimism of a Random Afternoon

First of all, go to youtube and watch/listen to Elani Mandell's 'Girls'. I'll wait here....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-svXyOa4Nw

I am not quite sure what it is about today. Here I am, sitting in my magazine office in Cabbagetown, blaring music and drinking Red Bull, (sans vodka... its barely noon after all), and I feel, well, kind of euphoric. That kind of euphoria leftover from youth when the day is stretched out in front of you and you have options, and a few crushes, and a reasonable curfew, and a couple bucks, and its the right time of the month so your face looks less shiny and minimally bumpy.

I'm not sure if its because I just launched a book I love very much, or because I can work in a cool office where I blare music and drink Red Bull, or because I walked by the St. James cemetery on the way in this morning- the cemetery that inspired the manuscript I am working on now 'The Lithopedian of Winterson Cemetery'. I'm not sure if its texting with my best gay all morning about vaginas, and drag queens and literature. Maybe its because I'm going to the ocean in a week or because I rediscovered a Radiohead song I love (How to Disappear Completely) or because I fell asleep wrapped around a man I find incredibly hot and happen to be married to (I win!) It is probably just  because in an hour my best friend will stop by with a menthol cigarette we'll smoke on the roof, and because I am reading a biography of Jean Genet, and because my children are strange and beautiful and happy. And also because I have a reasonable curfew, and a couple bucks, and its the right time of the month so my face looks less shiny and minimally bumpy.

Its like this; there are times when the day splits along a seam and you fall into a place time doesn't know exists. Its the opposite of anxiety; a freedom boxed in by the term 'happiness' where something animal emerges, the kind of animal that appreciates chai lattes with espresso shots and the Marigny bars of New Orleans. There's no telling when it'll come, and no way to make it last. Just walk. And take in the click and crack of each rib's stretch to allow the possibility of seam-slipping afternoons. 


1 comment:

  1. Next time we are home in New Orleans, we'll break into Oddfellow's Rest Cemetery and steal lemons from the dead...

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