This Is Real

I'm always hearing people referencing living "real life," as in, "Yeah, and now it's back to real life." My response is always tinged with sass: "As opposed to fake life?" As I'm thinking of what to write next, it is a stream of questions, and phrases starting with the word "maybe". I think perhaps I have been watching too much Sex and the City the last few days, and that Carrie Bradshaw's writing style is starting to affect my mental processes.


But getting back to real life (oops...there I go using those two silly little words...it's an epidemic!), it seems that Americans in particular have become acculturated to viewing truly enjoying oneself as not counting as real life. Is real life then working day in and day out, meanwhile exhausting ourselves in the process? I've got to believe we are meant for more. Maybe I'm thinking differently because I'm a college student. After all, I did just take a course on American cultural and political society, which was code for "come to class and leave depressed". Why can't we be like Europe? They seem to have got this whole living for pleasure thing down pat. Well, it seems we just have to try harder.

Where am I going with this? 

Peonies are in bloom and showing up on living room tables and kitchen islands everywhere. There is time for peach tea and oatmeal with fruit on the patio in the morning, and summer vegetables there again in the evening. My book goes everywhere with me. There are opportunities for me to sit in a corner couch surrounded by windows and read for three hour intervals in complete silence. I enjoy the company of good friends. Sometimes there are pistachio macaroons and ginger tea involved, and there is always love, laughter and good conversation. I am even practicing living instinctually, making the decision at 8:30 on a Saturday night to drive home amid blackened sky to the east and setting sun to the west, and surprise my family. I can always count on them for a treat (Ben & Jerry's Half Baked Fro-Yo) and a movie (the gorgeous animated views of Paris and fine cuisine in Ratatouille). There are farmer's markets to be walked, neighborhoods to be bicycled through, baseball games to be attended, beaches and parks to be graced with fair skin and pockets of freckles, and more books to be poured over. 


It's summer, but there is no reason why we can't choose to live all year round. There will still be dishes to wash, laundry to fold, errands to run. Real life is all-inclusive. It is laced with enjoyment.

And So It Went

Someday you need to take a walk when the sky is dark and a storm is about to rush in. It's often good to stop and smell the roses. Sometimes there will be retaining walls of shrubbery around the beds and warning signs that say the area is restricted to personnel only. Ignore those, and put your long legs to use and climb over the uncomfortably prickly stuff anyway. Your tuition is being paid to fund a public university, including its gardens, and you would like the right to smush your face into hundreds of varieties of roses and drink in their delicate floral fragrances. I support you. I supported myself, despite uncomfortable stares directed in the general direction of an ungraceful woman sticking out like a sore thumb with its nail painted red.

No Place

Drapes that actually block out early morning sun, successfully prolonging my sleep. Bike rides every day. Through downtown, up and down residential streets lined with trees and well-maintained early 20th century homes, along the waterfront and into the marina. Cool temperatures, salty winds, changing scents with the changing of tides, and views of islands, sailboats and kite surfers. Cordial interactions with strangers in passing, and sidewalk chats with friends. Daytime PJs and Sex and the City marathons. Pastel purple toenails. Laying in the backyard receiving massages from my sister. Laughing at 6 feet 5 inches and over 220 pounds of brother nearly breaking his neck attempting oafish hands stands. Driving ten minutes to the J. Crew outlet.

Home. I could use some more of it.