Orange and Blue

Last November, I had an afternoon that was just lovely. No other word for it. It was a Tuesday (my favorite - no excuses on a Tuesday) with perfect fall weather: sunny, warmish, orange, and blue. I finished a quiet daytime shift at the pub around two. I headed over to Fell's Point, where I spent the afternoon doing the thing I love best, nothing. Urban, waterside nothing.

I ate a late lunch at a place on Thames Street. Among hipster daycrawlers, I sat alone at the bar with my book, an act that required the muted confidence I'd always wanted and had finally found. Then I went outside and sat on a bench. Stared at the harbor. Watched the pigeons. Felt the air. Thought back to the time when a happy 3pm was a concept in the abstract, never an experience. I opened my book again but couldn't concentrate for the voices in my head. It's so rare, just go with it. Plain life - yours - and it's singing. For once. Just listen, ok, and GO with it.

Should you ever find yourself in such a lovely afternoon, please do as I say and go with it. Don't muck it up with work, or reading, or heavy thoughts, or thoughts at all. If you must bother to commit any of it to memory, remember only the place, so you can go there again. Or maybe remember the color, so you can paint it. Yes, paint it. Later, when for irrefutably excellent reasons your life has swung back in the direction of office-bound Tuesdays, you can hang the painting on a blank wall and think, well, I had some time.