I was surprised by the sentimental feelings that crept into my consciousness as I swept two dead plants into a brown paper trash bag and pressed the plunger on my coffee maker and poured a cup of 'morning juice' into my beloved mug. I made a little tour of the place, aware that I would not be living there any longer, and in fact would not be living alone any longer, ever again.
I looked at disgust at myself in a mirror for a moment, at the puffy face and silly mustache, grown in an attempt at humor, as is the fashion here in the Northwest amongst white men who consider themselves clever. The extra 30 pounds jostling around the place where my waist once existed was acknowledged briefly before a switch in my cloudy mind flipped and demanded I look elsewhere before I became too upset.
An aborted 'TO-DO / GOALS' whiteboard stuck to the refrigerator had no entries after the beginning of last month. It is true, there was much chaos and turmoil swirling about these rooms and this life, and the promise of a new beginning Tomorrow usually trumps immediate action. I have to feed a new thought into the gray folded machine. I have to jump-start this new life, and it's flashpoint will be this single thought: I can not be predictable. I can not become a cliche.
In short, I need to work. There is a trajectory that seems to have settled in around me, and I have to break out of it. As we all remember from our science and physics classes, bodies in motion tend to remain in motion, and bodies at rest will remain at rest until some action zaps them to life. You may also remember, it is much easier to keep a body in motion, exploiting it's momentum than it is to get a body at rest to start doing something different. In fact, it can be very difficult indeed to get this fucking body to do anything you want it to do, if you let the thing rest too long, or wander off on some irrelevant vector. One has to muster their energies and will to make even tiny adjustments, not to mention major change altogether. This is the crossroads I recognize I have come to today: It is time to muster, and I have enough motivations and encouragement to begin right now. It is Tomorrow! Clear a path! From the artificial significance of a new page on the calendar to the very real significance of moving into a new house with another person, I have many motivations to make changes. This is a distilling of purpose, this is a new opportunity to pin great colored pieces of paper to the walls and scribble my new strategies and goals upon them, a new opportunity to mark off days with big black 'X's and tally accomplishments in the appropriate columns.
There are many new beginnings afoot here now, it is springtime and the plants and animals are making their transitions without even knowing why. In fact, even my editor is channeling similar vibrations: He stopped by yesterday and shared with me his resolution to lose 100 pounds - by Memorial Day - drinking nothing but a new herbal potion he discovered on the internet and immediately purchased, mail-order from Quebec, consisting of powdered shark placenta suspended in a matrix of distilled water, grapefruit juice, and sea algae. If the science of the drink doesn't do it by itself, the $1100 price tag is enough to get you to follow the directions included with each bottle:
"Drink one full 8oz drink of HearbalBlast every morning, followed by 2 hours of rigorous exercise. Be sure to eat nothing else for the rest of the day. You may drink as much pure, clear water as you like. Do not forget to clench the balls of your feet everywhere you go, and whenever possible squeeze your hands into fists as tight as you can for fifteen minute stretches at a time. Enjoy one more 8oz vessel of HerbalBlast before bedtime. Repeat for 45 days..."
These are magical times friends! Sometimes I am amazed to discover that even I can believe that anything is possible.
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