some days are meant to be lazy

suddenly i feel that i'm about to understand something important, something about being, something that i previously understood entirely differently. indeed, i now realize that i did believe that i knew enough, which is always a dangerous thing, especially since such beliefs can sprout up in secret, without giving notice of their existence, nourished by hopes and fears and barely realized values. this about-to-understand is a nudge at the back of my head, a vagueness, a vaporous sense of uncertainty, the kind that tightens my belly into a ball of anxiety, coated with a sprinkling of excitement. "what does it mean" and "what will happen" and "where am i then" and "i'm confused".

i wonder if cats and dogs and birds ever get this feeling in their tummies. do they realize, and re-realize, and realize that their previous realizations weren't all that there was to realize, after all. oh idleness.

and her happiness is sublime to see, her gestures more calm than in months, her patience no longer worn by constant bickering, his presence soothing her heart. i like watching them, i like sitting in their delightfully eclectic kitchen and talk with her without feeling that there was anything that he couldn't overhear.


are we truly who we are because of the small things, is our truest identity truly hidden in the things that we don't truly pay attention to. do my habits reveal me more than i could, is there something to be known in the way that i always pick this spoon but never that one, in how i always slip my keys into the pocket of a certain coat whenever i come home, in how i take forever in picking fruits, in how my voice lowers in pitch when i talk with certain people. he has a habit of expressing concern over how fast i drink my orange juice at lunch, she has a habit of searching for words with her hands as well as her mouth, he's in the habit of forming his questions so that it's near impossible to give an answer that would please him, and she just can't fall asleep unless the curtains are completely closed. are these secrets in ourselves that we never truly realize but other people could reveal for us. possibly, plausibly, probably. perhaps.

all this leaves me pensive.

i want to be a baker now. wearing an apron always makes me aware of the image of a housewife, and how such images really don't say everything, not at all. if i store food into plastic containers, it doesn't mean that i'm sexually frustrated. if i hum to the water pipes while doing the dishes, it doesn't mean that next i'll start scrubbing the floor because it's all that i can think of doing. and if i were to start scrubbing the floor because it was all that i could think of doing, it wouldn't mean that it was all that i could think of doing for the remainder of my days. it's strange that such images are lodged so tightly within our minds, and strange how reluctant we often are to look beyond them.


in the image of a baker now.