godspeed, yone

So my best case scenario for sticking around on the planet, if we're using Yone Minagawa as a life-yardstick of sorts, is eighty-one more years. That remainder I've got is longer than anyone's even lived in my family, but why quibble?

Don't wake me from the dream! With that many years left, I've got time to master this effing fiddle, paint well, build a warehouse full of shadow boxes, settle firmly into fluency in Italian AND Japanese, tour Iceland, read my entire booklist (if I don't add anything else to it), send the letters I owe, review some stuff, run Boston, run Boston better, learn to build stuff, find a place with views and quiet, build a green home with views and quiet, learn to ride a motorcycle, buy a motorcycle, ride said motorcycle some faraway place, have important road trip realizations like Che (in a minor chord), act on insights, achieve enlightenment (snap!), and of course, finish two novels (yes, just two; can't be too lofty), the stories, the screenplay, even the epitaph.

So thank you, Yone! You (and the hope that, if I take my vitamins, drink lots of water, and exercise like Oprah tells me to, I might break your record) have reduced the anxious insistence I always feel to get all of the above done tonight. I think instead, it is a nice night to walk the dog to the ice cream parlor and get myself some coffee ice cream with extra fudge. And then I'll sit in the dark on the old-fashioned parlor seat with the cracked, striped covering, watch Bling (see 8/9) eat her Frosty Paws, and take in the magical example the beasts set in enjoying what's right before one's snout.

(And no, you are incorrect, mon cynical frere! Ice cream will make me live longer, not shorter. Silly health freaks. Oh, I'm sure of it. Ask me over ice cream when I am one hundred fifteen.)