The problem with the book I’m reading isn’t the story. It’s the problem of my living. The rote nature of it. The sentences– simple declaratives, the tasks –things that get struck from a list, done and redone. Remember? See it? Life. Not merely written down like any other list of things not to be forgotten, but witnessed so never forgotten even after memory failed to hit “record”, because a day was witnessed at its onset. It’s the lack of feeling mornings, not the story of what happened. The lack of witnessing . Mornings, that time of awakening at the birth of the world to watch an egret’s legs in water, slender limbs glistening beneath a cool surface in a lagoon barely moved in the stillness of a day that has never happened before. This day has never happened before. This day will only rise once, And imminently. fleetingly. But the lack of toes in water. The missed watching, the waiting for sunlight to crest and for beak to breach. The skewering of a life has not yet occurred.
Yesterday I went to the Post Office since I have to get all my mail there because of dumb mountain stuff. The bin of packages was blocking my mailbox and the postal worker asked if I needed her to move it. I said, "Yeah, sorry. But I am here to pick up that same backpack. How weird!" She was wearing a pomeranian in a backpack and it was seriously the very pack I had just come to check if had arrived. "Oh, I just put that in a locker. Hold on. What's your last name?" "Mitch--" "--ell" she finished at the same time and laughed. "Mine's for a cat but I did get the same one." "Yup," she said handing me the package.