This is what happens when it's time to go to work,
First of all, I don't wake up in a panicked headache,
And, the sun is also up.
It's not 3am, it's 7:30am,
And I have to be at work at 8am.
And I get there on my feet.
And cars, and whistles, and humans are buzzing around me,
The world is on my side.
Or at least my community, my safe neighborhood.
My Chinese restaurants and my second hand boutiques.
I don't have to strap flash lights to my forehead and snake through tunnels to get to work.
I don't share the last car with bus boys and exchanging stocks.
I just walk ten minutes in the sun to a building on a corner, and watch out for the bikes on my left.
All the people I serve have the same blades of grass that I have on my patch of land, they have roughly the same philosophical climate and cuisine.
They wear clothes not unlike mine, they smell faintly of strife over come.
They want to be with me in the building on the corner.
They work with me to make the experience durable.
They didn't wake up already deciding that I was put on this Earth to disappoint them, and their family, and all the things that make them happy.
They don't even order, they ask, and then they get comfortable, and then as soon as I get the chance, I politely do what they asked.
And they say things like thank you, and how are you? And please take your time.
Sometimes I have to get out the glossary to look these words up to the heavens.
When it's time to go home I'm already home.
I don't have to share the last car with the charter school trips.
My feet might have a dull thumping, but they don't throb up to my knee caps.
I don't collapse onto my pile of dirty laundry and sleep for nine hours, I boil water and look out the window for forty five minutes.
Then I set my pages up next to my tea and read the literature, and scribble the poetry, and google contests, and google submissions.
And take it all into the grain and the now.
This semester has actual writing classes, actual pens and jars of ink.
And circles of critical, long legged, youngsters.
And I have to say, I definitely, how do I put this, notice-- a-- difference.
Not in talent or ability, no, no.
Acting college taught me that those things don't exist.
And if they do, they're so obviously fabricated, and manipulated into lies and deceit, that you'd have to reduce them to a crumb of dust to get them to shine.
I'm just saying, that even though I have just as much to learn as the next Christian liberal artist, I definitely notice a difference in experience, and voice.
I like the teacher, I like looking at her curriculum, seeing how she maps it out, adjusts it, commands it lightly.
I like that she has her life absorbed in this thing that I'm also passionate about, I like the mold of her days, I like that, I want that.
Honestly, folks, a writing class is not that much different then a Too Much Light rehearsal, if you can conduct one of those, you're just one step away from orchestrating a syllabus.
I have this distinct memory of being in the Art Institute with east coast half number two, you know, the sister with the secure marriage who makes art that hangs on walls.
She was in town visiting me and my mother who is also her mother, and we were all dressed up for the opening of a Monet exhibit.
Number two and I had gotten separated from the dragon somehow.
And wandering through all those hay stacks at different times of the same day was a bit on the overwhelming side, plus we had probably been in the company of the dragon for at least seven consecutive hours, in pantie hoes, which means, to say the least, we were ready to go.
And I remember this so clearly, she stopped at a pink and yellow impression, turned to me, and said, "I can do that".
Now don't go flooding her in box with accusations and bible verses.
She wasn't saying she could do it better.
No one's saying that.
She wasn't even saying she wanted to do that, landscapes aren't even her thing you guys.
My point is; I can do that, in whatever context you choose to interpret it in, is the perfect string of words to stitch onto the backs of your eye lids.
Simple Strokes,
Skin and Toast
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