Today is the time in Shakespeare’s “Henry V”…the night before the battle.
Today is a slow motion montage where the main character ponders and waits.
Today is the minutes between waking and actually opening your eyes.
Today is a train rolling through gentle fields and towns, unfamiliar and yet familiar all at the same time, en route, but not yet having arrived.
Today is the waiting for a loved one and checking your watch, only to realize your hour means but five minutes in real time.
Today is a knot, a tangle, unresolved, but left for another day’s work.
—–
I both love and hate days like today. They’re a “real” day, yet not. The world, yet technically awake and functioning, really isn’t. It’s a day where people keep score, but, for the most part, look away when one is asleep in the middle of a play….most of the time. Not all the time, though.
I love the momentary respite, but I have a problem with the underlying feeling that I really should be DOING something on days like today. “Adding value,” perhaps? Ick… I love to have fun on these days, but the repose is short and time distorts in a really strange and (for me) uncomfortable fashion.
Take this hour. It is 10:06 where I am right now. I am planning to leave work at noon to head out to a couple of movies and play some games with the family and Action Jackson. The passage of the time between now and then will feel as long as a year. Yet, at 10:06 tonight, I will have felt as if I have blinked, and I will wish for a “do over” because I don’t feel “rested” at all. Am I the only one who feels that way? Do those nice gentlemen in white coats need to fit me in that interesting jacket again?
—–
We had a really nice day yesterday. We went up to Cambridge and had dinner with Corky, Stacy, Stacy’s sister, Darcy, and her husband, Trevor. (that sentence was a cornucopia of commas…you should feel fortunate!) The company was great…we always have fun together. A lot of joking and horseplay, which is always a good diversion for me. And, I have to say, I ate what is probably the singularly best Thanksgiving dinners I have ever eaten.
I don’t even know how it worked out that way! By all means, it shouldn’t have. I made my garlic mashed potatoes, but I did it something like four hours before we ate and lugged them up to Cambridge in the back of the Jeep. I did the same thing with the yams, but I actually make the soufle up there. But I did it in such a hurried and extemporaneous and hurried manner as soon as we arrived (I had no idea just how much mashed up yams I had…the recipe called for 3 cups, and I guessed that I had about 1.75 times that amount), I thought the soufle would, well…suck. Finally, Stacy roasted her turkey in a manner that was completely foreign to me.
We sat down, and I was prepared to be underwhelmed. Instead, I was blown away. Man, it was good. High fives all the way around.
I did not, of course, get a chance to start re-reading my book (for the adaptation). I’m not certain when that’s going to happen. I promised a new screenwriter friend (he’s new to me and a new screenwriter) that I would read and critique his script this weekend, and I need to make good on that promise. Oh well, I will get to it in good time.
I DO, however, need to get a card for Jim and the author today. That CANNOT drop.
Must get to something today, so I will sign off. BTW — Lynn had a good time yesterday, too. I am still concerned about her. Her nausea is starting to come back, she has a wicked cough, and she’s tired a lot. I am still, however, not able to completely differentiate what’s jet lag and what’s related to cancer. I am keeping my eye on it over the next few days, though. It will be interesting what happens over the next three weeks in the space in between the appointment we had with her nurse practitioner and the appointment (and CT scan) we have scheduled on December 16 with her actual doctor. It will be even MORE interesting, of course, to see what result the scan yields and hear what the doctor suggests.
Hmmm….
Today is the space in between lovers: trembling, ardent, flush, and glowing…the moment before they kiss for the first time.
Talk to you later…
True Life 