floaty

a tiny dispatch from me after a busy week

Dear friend,

I’m not always sure who I’m picturing on the other end of these little letters I write. Other times, I know.

Yesterday, I ordered a silent ride to the airport from my office in San Francisco. Did you know the Lyft app lets you request things like the car temp and whether or not you have to smalltalk with your driver? Cool and quiet for me, please.

My headphones are in. I’m listening to a trio of HAIM songs they released ahead of their new album. (“Relationships” is a great song.) Then I tap the screen for a song that meets the moment. (this one.)

I look out the window and watch the city skyline retreat against the bay water. It is sometimes sunny; clouds making big shapes over the ground below as they moved moody across the sky. My backpack awkward and overstuffed with a sweater and a denim jacket I can’t bear to wear indoors.

Through security without a hitch. My eyes flit across signage, mazing my way to the right terminal and gate, checking and double-checking and triple-checking my boarding pass.

I feel myself walking fast and so I pause.

I can go slow. I’m in no hurry.

I am feeling the heaviness of a nonstop workweek. I’m overstimulated. Maybe part of me is trying to outrun the feeling.

Endless events and meetings and dreaded icebreakers and noise and being extroverted when your natural inclination is a brand of introversion that runs so deep you’re content to spend entire weekends without speaking, except to greet your cat in the kitchen.

And then,

I turn a corner and I see a full bookshop.

Not an airport kiosk. Not a single table of pulpy paperbacks.

A full bookstore with shelves and tables and piles of books.

A proper poetry section.

I let out a breath I don’t know I’m holding.

Suddenly, four books pile into in my hands.

There’s the inevitable grab of a short story collection.

(I always want to be the kind of person who devours a short story collection when flying.)

I check-out with Joni’s voice rippling in my ears. Better than quiet; tonally meeting me where I am in this moment.

I leaf pages on my way to the gate. Smell the pages.

I peel back each cover to read the acknowledgements and the dedications.

I like to think the person to whom a story is dedicated is the person the author was thinking of most as they wrote.

Maybe it’s who they pictured in those quiet afternoons when they sat down not sure what they’d write, and then found the words came easy.

Maybe thinking of them made the words come easier.

I’ve read before that words are easy when they float.