finally: waiting is over

So here it is, finally, the last day of job before vacation.  I had it all planned out, worked my ass off through last Saturday in order that this last week not be the usual shit-show.  And guess what?  Didn't work.  

Today is going to be hell-ish, coming as it does on the heels of me telling my boss yesterday (under duress, after I asked please could we talk about this tomorrow) that she is so unpleasant to work for that I'm not sure it's healthy.  Um yeah, today is the day after THAT.  

So it's going to suck a bit, even as I know it's the last day for a while.  Even as I know it's the last day before I am liberated into writing and thinking and eating and enjoying for almost three solid weeks.

There has to be a better way.

I awakened with that thought, and then read Waiting for a Glitch, from AJ Leon and the Pursuit of Everything.  Pretty much exactly what I needed to read first thing in the morning. I deleted every single other thing in my in-box save the email from AJ, then savored it with my first cup of coffee du jour.  Damn it, I'm so busted.

I have been waiting for a glitch.

I have been waiting to win the Lotto.

Good thing I'm going on vacation, which is self-made Lotto-winning really, so I can think hard about what's next for me, what I want, who I is.  And quit waiting.

Good thing.

And then I picked up Mary Oliver's new collection of poems, A Thousand Mornings, which I've been slowly reading, page by page, as if it were two-pound box of See's dark chocolates, having just one piece a day, eating slowly, savoring. And read The Mockingbird on page 31.

More perfect words for today.

I don't know what will happen on vacation exactly, if I'll be posting regularly or just writing and taking pictures or just doing nothing but resting my weary self.  I'm trying to let go of the goal-setting for a minute, so that I don't end up whining and complaining in a tiny Pyrenean hamlet about the lack of internet access when all around me old mountains pierce the clouds.  

Thinking and reading and writing: that's all.  That's enough.

In the meantime, I'm leaving off my waiting for a glitch, and, like the mockingbird, singing my secret to the sky.

The Mockingbird

from Mary Oliver's new collection, A Thousand Mornings

All summer

the mockingbird

in his pearl-gray coat

and his white-windowed wings

flies

from the hedge to the top of the pine

and begins to sing, but it's neither

lilting nor lovely.

for he is the thief of other sounds --

whistles and truck brakes and dry hinges

plus all the songs

of others birds in his neighborhood;

mimicking and elaborating,

he sings with humor and bravado,

so I have to wait a long time

for the softer voice of his own life

to come through. He begins

by giving up his usual flutter

and settling down on the pine's forelock

then looking around

as though to make sure he's alone;

then he slaps each wing against his breast,

where his heart is,

and, copying nothing, begins

easing into it

as though it was not half so easy

as rollicking,

as though his subject now

was his true self,

which of course was as dark and secret

as anyone else's,

and it was too hard --

perhaps you understand -- 

to speak or sing it

to anything or anyone

but the sky.

XX