I was diddling around responding to emails this morning while this old movie played in the background. I’m not a TV person in that respect; having a television on without the explicit purpose of watching a movie or the Weather Channel, to me, smacks of wasted time and being indoors when you’re supposed to be out. Not in a condescending way, either; I just get depressed when I hear it on.
I had a cup of coffee that was too hot to drink outside, so flipped around. I’d only left it on this particular channel after catching Bob Hope take a rolled-up newspaper to the gut, rewinding the clip a couple of times.
This moment, where Bob’s character (a best-selling author) paces around in a baby blue robe with his morning coffee, reading the following into a tape recorder, crystallized my moment. I was one with Bob Hope, dudes.
How the Americans Live. Chapter 1.
The din dawns for the day. Throughout most of the civilized world, the new day is born in a silence so profound, one can imagine he hears the morning glory open its petals to greet the rising sun. But our conscious, minute-counting, time-saving America is blasted from sleep by the explosive sounds of the alarm clock radio. Which may largely explain the frenetic pace that jangles the nation’s nerves throughout the day.
Bachelor in Paradise (1961)
Not that we have a choice, though.
And then, when I started trying to mentally transport myself into my penultimate daydream scenario—fat and tan inside a Gauguin painting—I think about a friend of mine: younger than me, single mom of two, working jobs all over to make ends meet, but who is always smiling, and I’ve never heard complain about her life before.
Never.
Because we may not have a choice about having to wake up in the morning, but we do have a choice how we feel about it.
All my laundry is clean after my last post, so not much else to air out here today. I mean, this t-shirt—it’s doing the heavy lifting anyway, right?
-C.
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