I have a great and terrible wish hidden in the evergreen forest of my heart.
I want to liberate the dogs.
And I have a plan.
A day will come, a Saturday. A Go To the Park and Meet Someone Saturday, I'll set out with my great scissors. My great scissors and I will go to the park and SNAP go off the leashes and SNIP come off the collars and, shaking a plastic tumbler of treats, I'll pied piper them off.
By the dozens, dashing and barking and too excited to stop we'll run until they all think 'run' and run together. Think 'bark' and all bark together. Spot and Pepper and Yakino and all. Big dogs small dogs barking together ferocious and free. Never again an empty apartment locked and alone. Never again only outside on the end of a rope and at the whim of a working man. Never again to sniff in passing and not speak. I want to liberate all the damn dogs.
I'm not sure when it started. February, maybe? Probably earlier.
I think when my hair reached my shoulders they started talking about the old days. Hair was all like 'Remember our floor length dresses and our pickup truck?' and shoulders replied 'Remember when we still thought we had some global warming breathing room?'. Hair laughed.
Or perhaps its all the reading. Hemmingway and Perkins-Gilman and Fitzgerald and Stevens and Whitman. Especially Hemmingway (because he's Idahoan) and Whitman (because he loves with a fervor of equality). The world of imaginary wandering suddenly increases in surface area by tenfold. Every river of the mind that I used to spend hours floating down comes rushing back in a wave of punctuation and prose and suddenly I'm floating past my thoughts of 10 years ago.
But what *is* it?
Not nostalgia. I don't miss the curfew or the constant motoring around. I can't imagine going back to no art, no music, old theater and far away at that.
Not regression. I've grown, and my skin would be too loose if I tried to ungrow. Besides, you can never really unknow what you know. That's why there are certain things I'm trying to avoid knowing.
But *like* nostalgia I want my hair long and my shoes laced. I want Big Mac coveralls and a muscle shirt down past my hips. I want pockets full of reassuring trinketry and bobbledom. Cheerios and Bisquick pancakes. Water, Water everywhere, and all of it fit to swim in.
And *like* regression I fail to make another decision. I stare straight at everything I believe, but I can't make one get out of the way of the other. I alternately try to unknow this or unknow that, but the effort only solidifies their reality. I stop trying for fear of making the quandry worse.
I went to a shower the other day which was attended by some of the people I love most. As I wandered around the room getting the updates, I found that lots of folks are getting exactly what they wanted this year. Exactly what they were trying to figure out a few years ago is coming to fruition and whisking them around the world on a wave of satisfaction. As I met many babies and and got the scoop on who's a future rockstar, a huge wave of relief came over me. Wait, not relief. Hope. A wave of hope.
Not hope that I'd get what I want. That's too shady a base for my happiness. Hope that I'd find the right things to want after.
The primary problem with my love of PBS is that I've seen a huge majority of the documentaries that get shown in classes. Kinsey report? Seen it. How the moon was formed? Seen it. Biography of Jack Johnson? Seen it. Did you know there are estimated to be less than 30,000 lions left in Africa? Nothing that eats what we eat is going to survive.
And I still haven't chosen a major, btw. When I tell people that I'll be a Junior in less than a quarter and they ask what my focus is and I say I totally dont freaking know...they're starting to make this funny face. That funny face is making me nervous! Stop with the face!