Saturday July 18

In the morning I pull a book into bed with me. I cradle it between my arms as if it were a lover. I turn the pages softly, fingertips brushing along a cheek. I stare at the words and remember mornings and afternoons spent locked in the eyes of another and thinking that it was enough. In the mornings I make lists as if I have a type A personality. I set unattainable goals for myself involving books and movies and writing and exercise and the appropriate amount of time spent in the sun but no longer, and I wonder about whether to put sunscreen on and just stay out longer.

I read another chapter in bed, the six pillows are piled high on the opposite side of the bed, as if I am reading next to a quiet lover in an endless white robe. After a while I put the book down on the shelf. I move through the day as if it is honey, but my mind whirs. In the early afternoon I set up a mat to do yoga. I wonder whether to put on some music to entertain myself or some podcast to edify myself. I agonize over these decisions that are typically regarded as simply enjoying free time. I do not enjoy free time. I find myself wondering whether I am wasting it.

Later in the day I finish the book. I cast it aside like some soon to be forgotten lover, but it, like any lover, sticks to me for a while. So I leave to walk the streets in search of meaning. Outside, I wonder whether I should walk or go to the park. I try and calculate how close I am to the park, whether it will be worth it. I agonize over walking the streets or going to the park.

On the drive over, I look at the peculiar shapes of trees and old men playing golf. I try and remind myself that this is life. The green blades of grass mowed impeccably, the man standing twenty feet in a tree with no harness testing the limbs that overhang the street. I try and remind myself that this is what I will be returning to soon.

As I drive through the park, musing about mortality, the truck ahead of me goes underneath a bridge and has part of its top sheared off. The sound isn't like I'd expect, like metal rubbing against metal, it is more like a cannon being fired, or a tire popping. The large sheets of metal do cartwheels in the air, and I tap the brakes and watch them fall to the cement. In a moment, I pull around the two men who are standing in the street now, bewildered. I think that people from other generations might get out to say something to the men, but I drive on, pleased to have been musing rather than tailgating.

At the park I walk by a large group of people enjoying a cook out. The older men toss a football to a swarm of children. Two youngsters attempt to play ping pong without a table. I walk through them without saying a word. In the distance, I can hear the sound of the creek running over rocks, smoothing them down, making them perfect. So this is life, I think.

I sit on a bench and stare up through cracks in the trees at the light filtering down softly, lying in small spaces on the dusty banks of the river. And for some reason I am brought back to my early twenties, in a park, not so dissimilar. When I took a girl to an opening where we skipped rocks and listened to the water making its dark way onward, while the green leaves of trees brushed leaves across its back, stroking it softly, as if it were a dog returning home. I told her that I loved places like this because they reminded me of the beauty of God. She told me that that was why she always liked being with me, for moments like that.

But now, sitting on a bench nine years later, I cannot concentrate as well on the water or the rocks, or the sound of small birds in the trees. I hear the river going past and it keeps reminding me of time passing, rather than its stasis. Besides, that girl no longer believes in God. We lost touch with other years ago.

On the drive home I see a dead quail lying on the curb at the park. And as I pass the dead bird, I realize that it is only a piece of shorn rubber, left from some worn out tire. And for the rest of the ride home I try and find some stillness, but I keep thinking of all the things I've yet to do, and all the time already undone and yet to be undone.