So we prepare for the holidays. We are having a guest come and stay with us, so we make the preparations. I look around the apartment and see all of the things that I've stopped seeing. The clutter and senselessness of accumulation. I look at stacks of magazines. There are many, I search the dates on them. It has been 9 months since I've thrown any of them out. They have gestated and given birth to a mess. Today I will clean them up and purge the apartment of needless things. I will make a trip to the storage unit and put away my bike for the winter, bags of clothes left by friends as they speed through town and beyond. Junk that I don't have the moral strength to throw away.
But we are both excited about our guest. We will watch movies and eat ice cream hopefully. I feel like we're having a friend come over for dinner and spend the night so we'll be able to do holiday things, take pictures and stay up late, listen to music and talk about girls. Though in reality I know that I will probably be sleeping on the air mattress in the living room while my wife and her friend get the bed. I will hear them giggling from the other room and pretend that I am canoeing across many lakes as I drift away to the sleep horizon.
I have three days off in a row starting today. They will fly by of course, as if even time has to work overtime for the holiday weekend, focusing its cruel energies on me. Work descends on me already, from afar. I made the mistake at looking at the calendar and could see that work is only perhaps two inches away, by tomorrow it will be within centipede striking range. I will have to remember to avoid the calendar as it crawls towards and over me.
Today I will sip tea and get things done. I have the day to myself and a list of things that I want to do. Already I know that some of them will drop off the list incomplete, and I will be enjoying a beer by mid-afternoon, reading through the manual for my camera and speedlight. It is a day off and I know not to take it too seriously or I run the risk of ruining it with accomplishments, sullying it forever with ambitions and minor triumphs. Whoever has not learned how to waste a perfectly good day has not learned how to live. That is my daily wisdom for you, pundit I.
