Friday!

There are things on my doorstep that I never participate in. I've never watched the ice-breakers work out on the lake, for instance. I've never gone to the other side of the island in winter and listened to the slow groan and grate of moving ice.

I don't even know the reality of such things. And yet I imagine them just past the edges of my daily experience... things I could push out and into easily enough if I could only summon the energy. Sometimes, I realize I'm hoping that somebody will take my hand and say, look I want to show you this. So that these things are not hanging always on the thread of my own volition.

Last night, I went to see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

I surrendered to the confines of winter this week; mostly staying in, finding shortest distances, calling for cabs. It's near the end, I know, and yet it's unfathomable that it will end. And I know there will be a day when I step out and think, spring. And the animal inside of me already notices the light changing quality, the movement in the earth, the slow awakening of trees.

I'm reading Jo-Anne Beard's The Boys of My Youth right now.

But tonight it will snow again. And I'll put on eyeliner and rub creams into my skin, hoping nobody notices the dry patches in the low light of some crowded venue. I'll resist going at all, but the tickets are bought and there's a show to be seen. And I'll be nervous, about finding my friends and picking my way to the bar and feeling the music in the right way. I'll probably drink too fast, waiting to feel it hit the right spot behind my eyes and in my fingers.

At one point I'll look up and say, I'm so happy it's Friday.