Addendum: I never watch the videos, but Youtube is the simplest way to post music. And this particular jam, "Gong On" by Gnarls Barkley, is one of many jams that I appreciate and hope you do, too.
Let's write about life goals, but first, let's recount the day, and it will all come together in the end. I have a degree in this madness, children, so you must trust me.
Today I woke up, drank my coffee, and read about Snow White's many incarnations throughout the years. I regarded my fingernails and thought about painting them. I looked out the window, I washed my hair and dried it, deemed it glorious, drove like a mad thing rapping and screeching with the windows down, and arrived at work.
At work, the following happened:
A man came in, said, "You're Linda Richardson's daughter." The eyes are a giveaway. "You came and saw my roses ages ago." "David!" I said. "Yes!" He couldn't remember my name and I didn't remember his face, but the man knew his beer and we commiserated over the disappearance of Sierra Nevada's Ruthless Rye.
Another man came in, an Australian in Tulsa for the gun show, and told us about the Aborigines who cover themselves in dirt and wait by the roadside for a tourist in the outback, leap up and spear them all.
Another man came in, the stepfather of one of my truest and bluest friends, in town because her sister is right this moment pushing out a baby.
Another man came in, the father of my high school soul mate, a repeat customer who has yet to recognize me. In the meantime, the store is in frenzy because the lottery's reached some gajillion dollars, and everyone's prepping by buying champagne.
At the end, I scooped up Xena Marie, the 8-week-old Australian Shepherd mix, and rode home with her napping in the crook of my arm while I followed her owner on his new motorcycle back to his apartment.
And that, babies, is what Friday means to me.
But then there are things I want. There are things I need. There are things I aspire to. And if you know me, which you might or might not, you are aware that I live in my parents' house in Oklahoma, and that I didn't ditch my existence in coastal North Carolina by choice. There is so much I miss about that place and its people: the beach, the trees, the porches. My boyfriend and his beer knowledge. The peers who didn't look at me funny when I used multi-syllabic words like "multi-syllabic." Karaoke companions, and karaoke within walking distance.
So I pare them down. There are things I want, and there are things I do, and there are things I can do.
I want to sew a quilt. I want to never have twangers--that flabby upper arm area that keeps me from drumming--ever again. I want to travel to Belgium and drink beer with monks. I want to maintain harmony between myself and my bank account.
But think!
I've sewed dozens of smorgasborded T-shirts. I've lost fifty pounds. I've been to Norway, alone. I've saved four thousand dollars.
The point? Fuck you, for thinking there even is one. Because there isn't. I'm done with blinders, how any variation from the path is immediate failure. I'm tipsy alone in my room in my parents' house on a Friday night and guess what? That's okay.
I once texted my boyfriend: Will you brush my hair when I am sad? He responded: I don't know how to do that as I do not have much hair. Is this an Okay Thing?
And most things, if not all things, are Okay Things. I didn't win the mega-millions; Okay. I worked out with my Wii and damn near died, but now my back stands straighter; Okay. I drink by myself but I write, here, or elsewhere, on a postcard or a draft or a grocery list; Okay. I'm 25, I fled graduate school, I work in a liquor store doing a job probably anyone could master, but I talked with an alumnus from my high school who remembered meeting Ike Turner; Okay.
Okay, Okay, Okay.
So Cee-Lo Green sings: "Anyone that needs what they want but doesn't want what they need I want nothing to do with."
Don't be that person. And don't let that person be yourself.
