Taking My Shoes Off & Swimming

This has been the first summer in a long, long time that I have enjoyed. I have been in rivers, pools and in the cooling winds of a hill top at night. I have been naked several times swimming and lying in the hot sun. I’ve peeled, burnt, been bitten by insects & spiders and even got poison oak.So many summers I’ve been in the cold dark basement wishing the winter rains would come back and darken the sky. I don’t like heat. You can only take so many clothes off to cool down before it isn’t sociably acceptable, but you can always keep adding layers in the cold. I also had worked either during all the fun events or had jobs that were effected by the weather and season, so when it was sunny and beautiful out I would instead be depressed because work was going to suck.

I used to work at a home improvement center and when the sun was up, the homeowners would come marching in trying to tackle a week long project in one sunny Sunday, and they would come in three to seventeen times, losing their sanity more and more every visit as they tried to make the project work. I’d see the sun and know that I would see a man covered in mud and dragging half the house’s plumbing to try to replace it and install it himself in an hour or so. I also used to work at a gelato shop where the sun would bring in thousands of people testing the flavors. You don’t know what chocolate tastes like? You’ll try one of each? I haven’t heard that a million times already. Oh, it’s two minutes past closing, but you really want to share a coconut gelato with your unimpressed girlfriend? Fuck you.

Portland also becomes a giant recess, and that annoys me.

I don’t know if it’s because I think that I’m going to get sick again, or if I just legitimately feel like not letting the annoying kids ruin my summer, but I’ve been loving the hot sun this year. I’ve been trying to put out the insanity in my head about what the future might bring and just enjoy my life right now. I don’t have time to let my usual fear, hang-ups and I’m-just-that-kind-of-person attitudes dictate how i’ll enjoy my day. I just want to swim and lie in the sun and not process my feelings every few minutes because I get hit by a wave of terror about dying.

I am writing this after midnight in a truck stop drinking decaf coffee (DECAF!), eating artichoke dip and across the booth from me is a beautiful woman reading a Paulo Coelho novel as she drinks decaf (DECAF!). This might be the reason I have been enjoying my summer: eating artichoke dip – and spending most of my evenings with such a gorgeous lady.  

 Last night we drove up into the hills between Hillsboro and McMinnville, Oregon past the apple orchard that my grandparents used to own and up to the top of a hill and got out of the car and just lied on our backs and stared at the millions of stars as wind blew through the tops of tall fir trees and looked at shooting stars making wishes. We then sat at Banning’s Pie House later and made each other laugh. I almost had her spitting her drink. She is perfect for me today and can’t stop thinking about her. She’s an East Coast Sicilian, so she’s a real fire cracker.

Don’t tell her I wrote this.

I now have a month to wait to find out what is going to happen with the rest of my life. Do I have a know expiration date, or can I go back to my end being just a gamble? I get waves of terror and sadness, while other times I just shrug my shoulders and am resigned to die in a few years, and other times I’m pretty sure that I’ll be just fine and will live a long life. Longer than yours.

I joke about dying all the time. It’s important to me to keep my humor about it. I have to joke about it or I go spiraling into the morose hole where I want to isolate and give up. People don’t know how to talk to me about it, so I joke about it so it’s easier for them to deal with me. I see them relax and know that they don’t have to stand and be depressed and sad with me, they can just act normal. If someone is dying, fucking act normal. The people closest to me don’t like the jokes, so I try to not be so heartless about it, but it’s hard because sometimes the joke is for me, not them.

My head has been a foggy disaster with no horn and no lighthouse. This is why I haven’t been writing all that much anymore. I just don’t want to. It’s not writer’s block. My head is just not into it. It feels like I’m wasting my time writing lately. I have a bunch of short stories half done, a rejected novel, a beginning of a new novel and a bunch of half finished blog posts that I deleted or just hated. I’m hoping this will loosen the dam and I get back into the habit of writing everyday. 

Sometimes it just takes a beautiful woman forcing you to go to a truck stop with her to drink decaf and not talk to each other to inspire me.