Excerpts

I had a very extraordinary few hours yesterday tucked into an otherwise ordinary day. I immediately wrote 2 pages about what had happened, and to spare anyone with feeling like they have an obligation to read all that, I am only going to share a few excerpts here.

Not even getting called to questioning for jury selection seemed unusual. (At my prior call to this civic duty, I was actually chosen as a juror.)…What was different, and still is as the leaves swirl about across the concrete streets, was the temperature. A recent cold front has sent Tampa into frigid and very rare near-freezing temperatures this week. I only ended up walking for less than a half hour at lunch, but I’d gotten a taste. And though I couldn’t indentify this particular feeling or pull, there was something I knew immediately – it was delicious.

I was free to leave the courthouse, free to leave downtown and the traffic, free to forget this excuse to not be at work, free to get back to whatever it was I had to get back to…I walked all the way back to the parking garage and even got in my car, all the while this familiar yet unfamiliar tug at my spirit lingered. The line of cars waiting to exit the garage stretched all the way to the third level, where I was parked, and behind my car, preventing me from backing out. I guess this notion of not leaving was really intent on my following through with it. So I did.

Though I had no specific destination in mind, each step had purpose. Each gust of wind that whipped over my face energized me. The weather and the greyness of the skyscrapers enveloped me, and at the same time transported me right out of this city into someplace else, somewhere distant and different and unknowable. The hopes and ambitions that began to pour over me were intoxicating. I allowed myself these dreams and let my mind open itself to the possibilities of this new place, these new streets. An unimagined life began to take shape. I wanted to hold my breath for fear that I might exhale this windfall of promise out of sight. At the same time I wanted to drink in these moments with unashamed drunkenness.

But for those few moments where I captured the excitement and wonder of the unfamiliar, I was happy. I was happy with strange weather and strange faces, with unrecognizable street names and storefronts. I was happy thinking if I am somewhere else, then maybe for a while I can be someone else doing something else.

I was experiencing this apparent life-changing transformation in my psyche, and the silent narrator in my head confirmed what I’ve known since high-school. So simply I thought, “I want to write about this.” I don’t know (or maybe now I really do know…) what the “this” is. Taking this thought in the most literal sense, I stopped into a cards and gifts shop no more than thirty minutes ago and bought the journal in which I’m currently chronicling the discovery of this very thought.

I’m certainly not a person who would be mistaken for a fanatic or a cook, but can such life affirming statements carry themselves to you through an unseasonably cold burst of moments on a directionless walk meant solely to postpone returning to the life you’ve found yourself in?
I don’t think I need to decide that tonight at 502 Sports Café. What I can fully attest to is that I am almost done with my wine, my best friend is on her way to have her own glass and this was one of the best afternoons I can ever remember having.