Walking Up An Incline

Walking up to the mailbox today, I had an epiphany of sorts.

I never leave myself alone.

I am forever telling myself that I need to be doing x, y, or z. I am perpetually dissatisfied with how I spend my time. I sift through my past days, months, decades, and ignore the glittering flecks. Instead, I focus on the dark sludge along the bottom lip of the pan.

There’s always some project that I should be doing. Some habit I need to break. Some improvement I need to make. Some shortcoming I need to fix.

Such a mess.

There are two of me,

(And there are two of you, too, gentle reader.)

I know this because of this interior dialogue. “You should be doing this differently….”

So who is the “you” being addressed, and who is doing the speaking to him?

Yes, there are two of me. And I wish one of us would leave the other one the hell alone.

The humidity is down a bit, and there was a good breeze for much of the afternoon. My wife and I sat out in the front meadow and read and nibbled on cheese, olives, and pickles while watching Jinx make the case for committing him to a canine asylum. Not a man-made sound around us. The locusts and crickets and crows and hummingbirds and goldfinches provided plenty of mood music.

I’m fairly certain that my Father (and Mother?) looks upon me with a more kindly gaze than I do upon myself. Grateful for this semi-certainty.

And grateful for a Saturday evening, when the family rituals run in their channels like a stylus runs in a round, black groove.

~ S.K. Orr