12/1/10 So much for meditation

I close the door and face the chair east, set the timer and close my eyes. I begin to repeat the word on the in-breath and out-breath, hoping to clear my mind and let in whatever grace might be granted someone like me.

There's a settling as the unconscious tensions I've been carrying in my muscles relax and unwind, and I find myself sinking into the chair, less rigid, more fluid, my whole body filling up with wet sand.

I'm asleep in under a minute.

9/17/09 - Because I promised

We return from the Aretha Franklin show at Radio City Music Hall weary, exasperated, underwhelmed with the performance. My body still buzzes with adrenenline from the end of the show where Katie, in contrast to her usual modus operandi, actually stopped a fight between two assholes sitting near us in our mezzanine seats.

There's a moment or two of bickering as we pack for tomorrow's journey to Connecticut for her cousin's wedding (do I have any clean clothes? Can I pull off stripes with pinstripes? Will you just answer the question?) until Katie, seeing that I am using the ironing board, throws down her unironed shirt on the couch with a sigh and goes to take a shower.

I pick up the shirt and, despite its being a girl's shirt and therefore constructed like the proverbial Chinese Algebra problem, I attempt to iron it, hoping that with this small act I can smoothe both her ruffled fur, and mine.

5-7-08 Nodding Off

On the train, I set the countdown timer on my phone to go off in 15 minutes. I know that I probably won't reach my stop by that time, and I need to catch some shut-eye. Two nights of restless sleep and my stamina is shot. I woke up every hour, on the hour, for an entire night.

12-13-07 - Where Christmas lights come from

Walking home from the show, way too late. Tired and, as usual, stuck in my own self-absorbed melancholy. I look up to see a street light shining through the branches of a tree cocooned in a layer of perfectly clear ice, so that every branch and twig of it sparkled and shone.

"So that's where Christmas lights come from," I thought, reaching up to stroke a glittering, icy branch.