Today is one of those great days. A day that feels long, time not mattering because there really isn't any place you need to be. It is a day that you consider making your own pasta, paying way more than you normally would on a meal eaten out for a meal cooked at home. The air is warm but the breeze is cool. The sun dances through the clouds. The dog is happily chewing her beef bone in the bedroom.
There will be scallops. There will be flourless chocolate cake. Candles will burn. The apartment is clean. There will be no rush. There will be wine.
Today is a day that you imagine all sorts of different lives for yourself. When you don't have to go to work, your mind roams over the other things you could do. I'm imagining a bakery or a bar. I can picture myself wearing thick, tortoise shell glasses and organizing dusty, rare books in an even dustier shop. Then I picture worn, cut-off jean shorts and dirty hands trailing through rows of tomato plants and succulents. I dream about the bones of a house - a skeleton stripped of the walls, paint, carpet, ceiling and light - a shell of the lives and memories that it once protected. I imagine what it would be like to slowly restore and renovate what can only be seen with the mind's eye, moving slowly, deliberately and purposefully when choosing the texture and color and mood of the place. And the very next moment, I have no home, just frequent flier miles and a passport.
Many of my friends back home graduated yesterday. I saw their pictures, their wide smiles and sweaty hair beneath their maroon caps. Their eyes gleam hopeful and relieved. They did it. They made it. I didn't attend a ceremony for my MA. My concluding moment was much more quiet, much more reserved. It ended with a handshake and encouraging nods from three brilliant professors. And as I walked not across a stage in a gown, but away from a book-lined room, my heart pounding and breath shaking, I remember feeling that same hope and relief - hope for the future, relief to have survived the past.
I hope you are able to find moments of hope, days of nothing that bring about thoughts of everything and anything. I hope you allow your mind to wander, your feet to move slowly but in a direction of their own choosing. Sometimes you just have to follow your feet, and let your head soar in the skies.
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