A Reprise

On occasion I like to sit outside at Starbucks and breathe the cigarette smoke because it makes me feel that I am at a fair. So much has changed for me lately inwardly and outwardly. I want to pause to take it in, but there doesn't seem to be time. All the things I want to try dart to the front and back of my mind on occasion and only their frequency gives me any clarity as to whether I should pursue that idea. I try to start with a blank slate each day, not wanting to carry over the previous day's ideas, which so quickly become baggage. So despite my endless searching I can't really say anything for sure until it is soundly felt. Today I have felt like Jane Eyre. A little older than the crowd, or perhaps born old. Desperately in need of a wardrobe update and a trip to the salon. This morning I looked at my black stockings and found them covered with cat hair. A dead giveaway of any introvert, not that I have anything to hide anymore.

  Last weekend I made the Herb Bread from Betty Crocker’s classic cookbook. The main differences were using milk instead of water and a copious quantity of herbs to season the bread. Despite a shorter rising time, it became gigantic in the oven, making for very large sandwiches.   I also made ginger cookies throughout the last couple of weeks with some dough I kept in the refrigerator. I cut my last batch with larger cutters and frosted them. They were softer and much tastier.

  I wonder if it can really be true that I am not meant to know or be intimate with my Creator. That I will spend a lifetime wandering, eating, concerned with my own life, while my Creator’s face is never revealed to me. This morning I felt my Creator’s love. I felt it many times over this week. It has been a difficult week as I have struggled with depression, and I have had certain breaks in luck, and I have caught myself and looked at those breaks and thought, I don’t know how I would have gotten through without this or that to light my path this day or that day. These things must be the work of some divine creator watching over me, but I don’t know how to connect with this creator. Internally I am wracked with frustration. I have studied religion. I have tried to pray. But it seems that this cup is not mine. I have no mind to understand my Creator, no matter what I read or how I try to communicate.

      Every day, it rains. A few weeks ago I couldn’t even remember the sound of rain. Now I can’t remember our land’s former aridity. Due to the rain our grass has sprouted and is a six-acre sea of blue-green through which Reginald swims. When I took these pictures I still considered him half-wild and was a little afraid to pet him. Hard to believe two weeks later he’s curled up on the couch with me. It didn’t take this cat long to get domesticated. We are still trying to make him live outside.

It was 1998. “I’m not… sure I… want to go to college. I mean, there’s nothing I really want to do-“ “You’re going to college.” I keep wondering. Will I really live my whole life through without being a barista? Could life really be so short? If I am useful to the machine at all, which I doubt, if there is anything at all I can do, I think it is make and serve coffee. For one thing, I excel at rapid customer service, multi-tasking, and operating machines. I doubt an espresso maker is much trickier than an HPLC – and just think, there wouldn’t be any columns or mobile phase. Just lovely water and coffee grounds. For another thing, I excel at friendly but not intimate discourse with complete strangers.