38.

What should I write about Nancy I ask her, it is a little past seven at the Java shop at the beach it is just her and I, the early morning calm the jazz music her chicken salad my coffee her capasheeeeno.  Awww mylormybakhurss she says in her accent that I adore.  Write I am a sweeet woomun...she says.  This is what I always write about I think, myself, me me me my feelings my complaints my outlooks my own amping of my self into the day, into life my life my means of downloading my funny frenzy of delightful and nutty brain.  Web-log, origin of the invisible hand voyeur, sacred blog.  Aww my lord, her back hurts, her kid kicked it all night long and her man took up most the bed meant otherwise for the three of them.  Soon she will leave to take her kid Picapoca Little Spicy to daycare and it will be just me.  Just me, the outside hush of water and expanse of grey blue sky that says in the words that are not words Be quiet, I will tell you of the sea. 

Officially, I am counting days.  One month exactly from today is my dinner with my cousins followed by a last night out in Baltimore with friends from home.  37 days from today is the Fleet Foxes show at Constitution Hall in DC with the tickets that cost so much I could fuel my car three times get to Memphis and past there and that's even with inflated gas prices or maybe live for a full month in campgrounds and National Forests across the States.  I think I will skip that show which sucks.  38 days from now I leave, to be a bohemian, to be me, to be wild woman, to be freeee.

How much is that the woman says, then again before I can even respond howmuchdoIoweyou?  I haven't even stuck her bagel in the toaster much less gotten close to the register.  Perhaps she thinks that my glasses equate a calculator in my head and the knife that I cut the bagel with the buttons to do the equations.  What I want to answer: I CAN NOT WAIT TO NOT EVER HAVE TO DEAL AGAIN WITH PUSHY RUDE PEOPLE LIKE YOU.

I break to take the muffins and cookies out of the oven.   Coffee is too acidy for me this morning all that meat at the cookout over the weekend in my muscles foamy protein, I switch to Americano.  The cookies, a peanut butter one, falls apart on the tray so now it is me, my americano jazz music the big sky and a cookie.  And the keys of my computer and its wide-eye fairytale screen.  Nancy's gone, big sky and the air song unsung of the hollering insistent sea.

She was not insistent yesterday she was mostly giggling.   The ocean I mean.  I needed a day off, a nothing day, yesterday was it.   I took my books and blankets to the ocean.  I traded the day, a day off with nothing, sacrificed writing for the quiet time and rejuvenation:  And This is it, Life gives to you when you give to it and don't make habit so much out of lying about what you really need.  Don't martyr yourself the thoughts of your own needs aren't selfish they're really the only true truth you'll ever know.  Everything else is extension of yourself lying, or begging you to please be honest: reflection.  I needed a break yesterday I took it like I would a cup of coffee or used to a cigarette, drinking in and reflective with the sea.  The wind blew, it always does in the spring.  It blew sand in my ear I laughed and let it sweep in.  Today I come to work and here it is, just me no one else this morning now that PicaPoca's on her way to school:  me, and the time to write.  Me and the blank screen.  Life took care of me usually when I stop whining and surrender it does, it usually does.

Later, now that it is later, the guys came in the head of Public Works and the one who is in charge of all the renovations around here, the actual follow through the design and getting it down.  Thank god for them they keep me sane, it's almost over this phase.  38 days.