the problem with now

the problem with writing about now is that i only want it to be the past. i’d like to put it in a bottle and shelve it, let it groan beneath the weight of collected dust and haziness, and only then pull it out to inspect it, swiftly probe at its contents to deftly label and then forget it. i think of this now as i struggle to push and to pull my thoughts into sentences or phrases that don’t start in bullets or include verbs like to do and phrases like by this day, sentences that mean contemplation and humanity and not just the mechanics of task.

most days, i lead a routine life. brahms waltzes me into consciousness at 533 each morning, followed by an all-too-hasty return to unconsciousness at 534. around 610 i pop my three slices of t.j.’s cinnamon raison bread into the toaster, and around 620 i rush in a mad whirl out the door. i read my lesson plans on the subway, highlighting and bolding and making little notes into the margins. on special days i buy kombucha and a coffee with 2 splendas and a hint of creamer from mr. melon’s grocer, and on less special days i tap my feet while the keurig drips and drops some hope for alertness into my unwashed-since-september mug (oh, dear). i teach my lessons, i prep my lessons, i praise a child, i discipline a child, i read the lines of feedback and action steps from my leadership team, i soliloquize my own lines of feedback and action steps. i recite the same words my mouth has been forming since september of 2009 - sometimes artfully, but most times exhaustedly - and by 500, i have run out.

and so it is that i had planned (for the fourth time this week) on hiking to the post office in time to pick up packages sighing in weeks of wait, but diverted myself instead towards a side order of beans and rice for dinner, brought to you by our new-york-times favorite taco shop, or found myself pushing aside plans for yoga for the bikrams or painting in the stairwell in favor of a glass of something sparkling, a slather of eternal optimist on my scrunchy toenails, and an evening of pinterest.it’s hard not to feel the desire to account for one’s days, to put them together, one on top of the other, only to reveal something so collectively beautiful, something aligned to some marvelous thesis - your life - but some days will never be much more than passing days. weeks to get through, days to cross off, free hours spent under covers with books and with sweats in guilty rehabilitation. in eight hours that brahms will churn me awake, but for now, just now, i’m enjoying my chardonnay.