Baby Cheek Perfect

I called Jaz and I said, “I know you don’t believe in the Universe or Flow or Spirit or Energy or any of that woo woo stuff but remember the other day when you told me the thing you liked best that I’d written was some actual story from maybe two years ago and then I didn’t even remember what it was and had no idea where it might be? Well I was looking for business-sized envelopes in my office chest of drawers and literally – literally – there were some folded up sheets of paper with the story you were talking about written on them inside one of the envelopes and it just kinda fell out into my hand.” “Cool,” she said, but I’m pretty sure she was thinking that snappy me is more fun than woo-woo me. Or maybe she was just checking e-mail and not thinking about me at all. It’s hard to tell.

Anyway I guess I must have liked that story too because I squirreled it away in a “special” place in the drawer for stationary, office supplies, and Mike’s old Akido outfit. Meanwhile, I couldn’t bring myself to read it. What if it actually is better than any of the stuff I’m spitting out today? What if it hits me like an arrow of regret for not keeping going way back then, or the time before that?

I could frame it courageous or focused I guess. Like a no looking back, keep moving forward, stay on course kinda thing. I’m fully into this little essay mode. The agenda is no agenda drop the shtick, drop it, then drop it again, and again. Be real, which a snarkier snappier me would say is a shtick too but the earnest pure-heart me would say, no, it’s not. It’s not. There is a real in there, it’s just not been invited out to play that much. And it’s quite soft, amazingly soft, like a jellyfish, like a baby’s cheek, like a kelp forest, perfect and vulnerable, unprotected, fascinating without doing much of anything. Being itself, breathing in and out, living.