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November 28, 2008
A Day Off
"Have fun on your day off" a friend texted me moments after I'd dropped her off at the airport for a 7AM flight home for Thanksgiving. An hour later, sprawled out alone on a rug on the floor of that same friend's house, I thought that yes, I needed a day off. No writing, no editing. So I went back to sleep. When I woke up I picked up a novel I'd been meaning to read. I read for a while, in a way I hadn't managed for a long time; the type of reading that diminishes your peripheral vision, that makes you lose track of the where and why and what and how but not the who; there's the reading, and you, pivoting in tandem, pushing and pulling through page after page in a rhythmic, unified front.
Then I went to the movies. I saw I've Loved You So Long, and took from it the stunning work of French painter Émile Friant, whose La Douleur is prominently featured in the film. Then I read some more, and had my first cup of coffee in over three weeks. It hit me one sip in like a sledgehammer. I put the book down and went to see Rachel Getting Married, and the scene where Rachel massages her sister's neck in the tub reminded me of a time I couldn't quite place when someone did the same to me and it made me want to cry. Then I saw Milk, and it did make me cry. After that it was beginning to rain, little heavy pitter patters, and I drove home to a home that wasn't mine in my car, feeling the rain all the way there through the broken window I'd not yet gotten around to fixing. I shut the door and turned on the lights and put all the classical music on my iPod on shuffle and cooked myself dinner, and ate standing up, pacing back and forth to Wagner and Copeland and Max Richter. I would have finished my book then - I was nearly done with it by that point - but realized that I'd left it at the theater.
I think I might run ten miles in the morning. Or maybe I'll just stay here. I want to stay here. I get to feel this for three days. Then, this Sunday morning, I'm skipping out on Advent and heading down to Central America, where my phone won't work and no one will be able to find me. And where I'll surely get sick from the water and spend several days violently expunging my entire dietary history.
Posted by David Lowery at November 28, 2008 12:14 PM