Adjustment to Living Indoors

As my sister drives us back home from Orangeburg, where I accepted an offer to be picked up (her home in Ladson, and my home, in North Charleston, but ten miles southeast of hers), I stare at my new copy of On The Road (The Original Scroll) in my lap, deliberately growing the hankering to finally read it. As I said earlier, delayed gratification is the muse of the wise and seasoned. While I don't ascribe those qualities to myself, I feel I am just beginning to develop them. I will discover in the next few days that I have a better ability to budget my time, less laziness, and a greater aversion to television to show for my three-week absence (I will still snag thirty minutes every other day or so, don't get me wrong, but I now tend to read when tired from the day, when once in a blue moon I get bushed enough to read from tiredness). My sister and I talked about her younger years, her youngest daughter and oldest niece of mine, her husband, her job, my plans for the next few days.

Simply put, the adjustment to living indoors. . . there was no adjustment (especially considering I had really been sleeping indoors since last Saturday, though I'd be out the door by 8am). I found myself driving A LOT (some 170 miles Friday the 6th and Saturday the 7th). It just happened. The constant movement of the lifestyle I have had over the last month simply transferred to city life and the schedule I had previous to and again resumed after these journeys.

My plans for the next few days included (I hate getting even a few days behind in blogging. Having to use the past tense is a real bummer. If I write about it the day it happened, I interpret it with that day's mindset, and feel good about using present tense) going to the beach in the early morning, followed immediately by contra (if I would be able to soak up all of the day's sun while at the beach). Things to get done included cashing a check, clearing my fines at the library (again, I really wish I had gotten up this post before posting where my blog would now be headed), and loading up on CDs, books on tape, and, of course, literature (particularly from my reading list of novels that Chris McCandless carried with him on his travels).

Waking up early in the morning, as I am now wont to do (I also usually get to bed before midnight. It's great), I headed out to the beach, listening to my new CD, Short Trip Home, by Edgar Meyer and Joshua Bell w/ Sam Bush and Mike Marshall, which was teary and beautiful for the ride through the island of my childhood. The complexities and rhythmic intensities that the CD also provided were enormously appreciated as well. Falling asleep on the beach, in the warmth of the sun, covered in a blanket, shielded from the wind that would otherwise rob my of comfy heat, was something I had desired for about a week now. I awoke in time to get downtown for a class I like to sit in on. The drive home was slow going. Oh, but that drive home, how I missed it, and how ritual it was to do. The game of it -- taking bursts of speed where the curves hide the car from radar, timing lights to avoid heavy breaking, meandering through the cars like a maze when traffic is just too. darn. slow. I even cherished the slow-going at that ever-so-consistent I-26/I-526 merge, for it allowed me time to read On The Road, gaining sneak insights from commentary and wonderment from the first few five pages, which I had actually already read, if any readers recall. I relaxed the rest of the afternoon until Contra. Contra wasn't exciting until the fun kids showed up.