my glamorous life
episodes & recollections
#68 speed of life
The cab from Laguardia deposited me in front of my apartment building at the very moment she arrived there, walking slowly in an after–work daze, not yet seeing me. I said her name. We smiled and elevatored upstairs.
She is beautiful in sleep. I am restless and wakeful. A disorderly coalition of thoughts assaults my nervous system—the aftershocks of what could unimaginately be termed a productive week. To me it feels as if my wishes have been coming true faster than I can process them.
I wished we lived together. Now we do. The packing took place on Monday night, the move on Tuesday, complete with the expensive comedy of a broken freight elevator.
I wished I could design something for a favorite client. Now I have. On Monday I marched like Sherman through a week’s worth of corrections and expansions. There were more revisions Tuesday, during and after the move.
At 1 a.m. Wednesday I was correcting errors on the site. At 5 a.m. I was dressing for my flight to New Orleans. At 8 p.m. I was dining in the Quarter with a dozen charming colleagues. I spent much of Thursday on stage trying to deliver a focused and compelling message, most of Friday trying to sleep in airplanes and taxi cabs. The speed of the week unhinged its gravity.
The fulfillment of some wishes makes others unattainable. For instance, the wish to experience the present instead of rushing through it. I am grateful for every moment of this week, airport wandings included. And yet.
There is a splinter in my palm. Storing a stack of large wooden frames that will eventually migrate to my ex’s art studio, I was pricked by an errant wood fragment. It lodged in the soft flesh between my thumb and my lifeline and has apparently set up permanent residency there.
So too, as I relive the hectic week past, there is a splinter in my gratitude: the errant wish that I might have lingered a while in each moment instead of hurrying to the next, and the next, and the next.
The change has already begun. The instant I hit my noisy New York street and saw her, saw her before she saw me, felt the coincidence and rightness of our simultaneous arrival, I knew I was coasting to a landing at the proper speed of life, and I knew I was home.