Rough Drafts
A Series of Pieces Written in The Wild
#3
I sit at the kitchen table in my AirBnB on a very sunny day writing instead of going out with all the masses on the weekend. That’s part of the reason I am not out. Too many masses on weekends. And since I work for myself my weekends can be any day not just the ones the corporate and governmental overloads have deemed appropriate for everyone. So I work on Saturdays alone in the house which is ideal for me. I edited an episode of my podcast and took a ukulele break. I’m amazed at how much more music is able to come from my fingers now that they’re numb and un manicured. I remember when I tried to teach myself guitar many years ago, I worried about the calluses I would accumulate and how unbecoming I was told that was on a woman. Unbecoming for whom, though? And I gave up my dream, and desire to learn and create for other people’s vanity that I adopted as my own. I let their voices ring true to drown out the little one that said “who the fuck cares just play your music.” And now I do: You Are My Sunshine, Happy Birthday, and Rip Tide (badly) and I love it. Many of my regrets come from not listening to that voice consistently and making it shout into the void as I pretended it wasn’t there and that everything was fine, and normal, and LIFE. This is how life goes and how it’s supposed to be. But it wasn’t what I wanted. And now I’m worried I’m rambling about the moment I realized I could say FUCK IT and do what I wanted but there’s not one moment. There are series of moments spread out across 30+ years, some feel so small and insignificant. And I’m sad I made that voice feel that way. I was sad I was being made to feel that way. A news story about the gambling game Roulette just flashed across my screen. I don’t care about it. I don’t care about much of these headlines that flash before my eyes maybe because they feel asinine compared to the actual game of roulette we are all playing all the time just by being alive. I think about how anything could happen: My life could take some drastic turn or I could die. Dumb ways to die. That song is so catchy and ridiculous, which, I guess, is the point. It better not be the soundtrack in my head when I do eventually kick it. Actually, maybe it should so I go out with a chuckle. I need to let the cat back in. He sits on the windowsill when he’s ready. Right before I let him out he wouldn’t let me clean the goop out of his eye. Gatsby would always let me clean him. I miss those big, blue green eyes slow blinking at me.
