Sixteen Sweet Sweet Sixteen

Disappointment was not an option in my exploits yesterday, as dictated in yesterday’s post. And though I did not meet anyone from a television show that would become my new personal chef and fulfill all of my needs as a human being, I was not disappointed.

The moon was full. I was full. And I even had the chance to fill myself with at least a quart of real whipped cream lying in wait in tiramisu. And I had hoped that today’s post would grant discussion of being whisked off of my feet by means of whisked sweet cream, and I suppose that happened as well as it could.

It could even be said that the tiramisu was served in a tiny crock of sorts.
Fulfillment by crockery!
Today’s secret crockpot ingredient, to top off post sweet sixteen, is cinnamon.

Maybe I spent all of my fire yesterday, trying to reflect the brightness of the moon’s enthusiasm, trying to mimic the gaiety of an Elton John video – cosmic forces to compete with, beyond the reach of any mere mortal. I am indeed spent. Today finds me drowsy and unwilling, curled in front of my heater like any number of sleepy-eyed cats whose only agenda is their own comfort. It’s warm here. And soft ground.

Noises through the ceiling suggest productivity above – neighbors doing dishes, paying taxes, sewing socks. Keeping journals, writing loved ones, eating vegetables, reading books.

Meanwhile I’ve put the hood up on my sweatshirt and am convincing myself that writing this will count as one good thing done before I give myself over to sleep for the night.

Today I sought escape at every turn throughout the day, not just now. I could not get my head in the game at work. Some days are like that. You have work to do, but the last thing you want to do is that work. And yet you are stuck there, staring at your computer, unable to even successfully distract yourself with email or the internet at-large. I could not even write what I was not supposed to be writing at work [read:this].
That was today.

Sometime around lunchtime, helicopters hovered over our building. Reports of police cars in the parking lot floated across the air above the cubicles like January’s cold and flu. The cops were still looking for suspects from a car chase shooting car accident suspect chase shooting that never should have happened last night but did. Mere blocks away. The high crime area. The dreaded full moon.

Meanwhile, students scurried past police cruisers to get into our mini-mall for one last shot of fake tanning before spring break. Priorities.
Preparation to not only make an escape, but to make an escape look good.

I, by contrast, waited for the time on my day to expire. Waited to be let go.

Lately, returning to my apartment complex feels like entering the secret garden from the book that PBS made into a television series in my childhood. T.V., perhaps my longest-standing love. A slight turn around a corner and the noises change from outside world to the in. It is quiet. Two cats stand as sentries, patrolling the comings and goings through the courtyard. One steps aside to allow me to pass, the other feigns fear, skitters away in stealth, off behind the bushes skirting a staircase. I am sure he watches my every move undetected. Eyes in the ivy shining unseen.

A third more rebellious cat is too much of a firebrand for any army. Too prone to whim and fits of needing affection to be relied upon for decorum or watchfulness. That cat, named Mischief, will make a road block of himself, rolling side to side in your planned steps until you grant him the attention and the petting he so richly deserves for so loyal and forceful a display of need, for black fur so lavish.
There is an understanding in his eyes. A power to persuade, a gift in midnight green.

In the past two weeks the staircase vines bloomed, disappearing the railings and replacing them with lush, yet delicate powder pink flower buds. Bees and flies hover and flit around the blooms, making motion of the dewy silence. And it is at the exact moment the sounds disappear that the scent of the flower-stairs reaches me.

The air is sweet sixteen, aching with the promise of what will be one day, when all of this is decided and I become the choices I am old enough and knowing enough to make, all grown up and escaped and beautiful like the adults who are. Arching my back to breathe the smell deep, my eyes follow my head skyward and find quiet night sky, and Orion looking down, arching back. It is sweet and smells clean. The air has a crispness borrowed from the memory of wider skies, and I long for the rest of those stars missing from view. The wider space, the expansive beyond, the possible reaching on forever, impossibly. The cats pad away silently, back to posts, watching for me, letting me take in my air. We will stay here in our quiet and our sweetness in this cold. We will stay silent, remain watchful, breathe deeply, and decide.
Then, as always, the warm sleep we want most. And again tomorrow.