Scenes from a Life: Saturday {2/9}

This is the way she wends a path through a weekend. This is the way she navigates the fine line between fulfilled Aloneness and empty Loneliness:

Sits in quiet mediation as a chorus of robins pipes in the dawn. They begin somewhere between three-thirty and four every morning. She wonders if the brightening sky would feel bereft if ever the birds were silent. She thinks it would.

Waits as the dog sniffs every single thing she fancies along the trail. There is time. Weekday mornings are ruled by efficiency. Saturday monrings are not.

Collects things at the marekt: asparagus and strawberries, both vibrantly and delicioulsy in season; her favourite melon-blossom honey; dry Spanish chorizo for black-bean soup; roasted walnut oil and dried apricots; Montreal-style bagels and a little sack of herbes de Provence to replenish the supply she keeps in a glass jar. 

Takes shoes to be repaired. Her Fluevog Luxons need new heel lifts. They're brushed leather, the colour of caramel, and have a latticework of straps, which reminds her of shibari. She smiles to herself ~ she thinks of them as her kinky Mary-Janes.

Orders an extra-hot latte and find a booth at Balzac's cafe. She breaks apart a cheddar-bacon scone while reading Lydia Davis's short-story collection Can't and Won't. That title. "Tell me something I don't fucking know," she mutters as she slides her bookmark into its new place.

Buys the weekly bouquet. Matsumoto asters in mauve and violet this time. She arranges a spray for the coffee table and places a single stem in the bathroom. As she always does. Without fail.

Because being surrounded by the simple beauty of flowers, a show of kindness she repeatedly gives to herself, eases the ache.

________________________________

Sountrack: Wilco, "How to Fight Loneliness"