Today’s steps to reminding yourself that you are Alive, and you Like it.
Essentials:
1. Iced Coffee, and how, and lots.
2. A newspaper.
3. An (arbitary) destination
4. Imaginary Money
5. A cellular device containing the cellular numbers of all the people you love.
6. Confused tourists.
Wake up late to the happy sight of the faithful tree outside of your window. Thank God, it’s always there, or where would joy be?
Maybe the joy would be in sleeping late, which is crucial. The kind of sleep where your eyes are forced open at the time you would normally rise for work. Don’t do it. Roll yourself into your soft covers, bun yourself all up like a lil pastrie, and drift back to sleep.
Wake up rested and lazy. Stretch yourself out across the bed and say good morning to your room. Activities within the next (relaxed, mind you) hours can involve home made breakfast sandwiches, kid’s TV with hip-hop cheetos commercials, or a long shower with extra attention given to smelly-good exfoliating: because there is so much time, and living is good.
Iced Coffee, and lots. Fixed however you like. Purchased at boedga of choice, near train. Also, purchase a Daily News, tuck it under your arm. Feel connected with the rest of the world and the things happening in it: be they hillary’s cleavage or helicopters colliding.
Take the train to where. While waiting for said train, notice confused tourists regarding their sweaty maps. Smile at them, ensuring that they will feel comfortable three minutes from now when they work up the balls to ask you a question. Smile again, and help. Feel proud/wonderful/alive that you have information that they need: feel like a good person when you deliver the information with patience and concern. Say you’re welcome.
Wander around. More ice coffee probably needs to happen. Wander towards stores containing dresses you don’t need, but that you feel are crucial in the accentuation of the length of your back. Find the best one.
It’s red with blue flowers, and thin straps that dip down your back and make your shoulders look like princesses. Purchase with imaginary money, because money is for spending, and dresses are a part of being alive, and being alive is good.
Enter a Starbucks. More iced coffee. In the bathroom, after waiting patiently for it, with joy, take off the sweaty shit you put on this morning. Shove into your bag. Put on your new dress, and re-emerge, a more joyful version of yourself.
Wander more. As you wander from place to place, make phone calls to every person you love. Don’t leave messages, because there are no words, really, to express the wonder of being alive – and the need to express this joy and frustration. If you get someone on the phone, stop, and listen. Want more than anything to hear about the specifics of their life. Ask them if they are happy. Say, I am too.