A Day in the Life, Part V"Washington becomes Oregon"

There's something altogether humbling about turning the page on a calendar.

I did that today for my home and work calendars (all five of them), amazed to realize the summer is nearly gone.

Next will come autumn, and then winter, and then spring, and then summer.

You know the story -- it neither begins nor ends, it just... keeps going. Sometimes considerably faster than we like; and some days slower than we ever thought possible.


But enough of that; you're probably wondering why one person would need so many calendars, in which case I feel compelled to say the quantity has more to do with an obsession with art, rather than an obsession with time.

Though it is most certainly both.


Every time I turn one of those pages, I'm as eager to see the next month's artwork as I am disturbed to see the previous one pass.

And I cannot help but think, too, how ironic it is that days drag on whereas years pass in a proverbial blink.


A marker of a life wasted, methinks. A failure to enjoy the moment and the desperation that comes when you realize months upon months are full of wasted days.

So stop wasting them.

I am reminded, too, of a recent communique from a friend, asking who the real me is -- the words and pictures he knows from this fiber optic anomaly, or the girl with an off-color sense of humor who takes pride in her life's misadventures (not the least of which involved getting lost in the hills of New England).

I've been thinking about that question, and now -- days later -- my calculated response is the same as my immediate:

I am both.

Look at it this way: we've all heard the tragic tales of our favorite comedians. These people who -- on stage -- made us laugh so hard we cried, though their personal histories were often of a much darker ilk.

I won't at all profess to contain that level of tragedy or propensity for fame -- because I don't -- but the comparison remains the same:

I'm the reverse, in a way.

Roughly half of the people who read me have never met me. And so, all they know is this... melodramatic voice.

Though in person, I'm full of jokes, terrible puns, and stories of woe that nearly always have a humorous spin.

I'm the girl who cackles with glee when she realizes a simple word has been transformed either by time


Or some like-minded imp.


The girl who thinks this street name -- in hippie city, USA (i.e. Eugene, OR) -- is too fitting to be an accident.



The girl who mispronounces a name she's known all her life when it's out of context, and realizes just how unfortunate (that is to say: humorous) it really is.



And so on and so on, for days upon days.


But you know what I most liked about Eugene? This statue, which seemed more alive to me than most of the people I pass on any given day.



It's the first little boy that most stood out to me. Because for all of my love of literature, and movies, and plays... I understand and appreciate his desire to turn away from the speaker.

It's not so much that he's adverse to fiction.

(In fact, I imagine the converse to be true.)



But that he's immersed in life.