I spent the weekend reading romance novels, tucked into myself on the bed, then the couch, then sitting upright on the bed, then draped across it, and then a little bit of each of those in turn again.
I haven't been blowdrying my hair, because it's unnecessary. My hair dries very fast. A blowdryer is only a seemingly necessary tool for me because it makes things faster, and faster is something that has fallen out of fashion these days.
Slow is fast, fast is slow, my fire captains used to say, and that was a revelation for someone who had always thought fast was never quite fast enough.
There, I eagerly learned how slow could be made to mean fast. Now I am learning how to let slow just be slow. How a day can linger along your spine. How it can slowdrip from your hair. How it can leave you curly-headed, cotton-candy-brained, tired from all the sleepy awakeness.
My hair wasn't curly before the strokes, but now it holds a bit of a twist on most days, is less poof and more rope. I couldn't read at all for awhile, but now with light-controlling glasses, and the flexibility of an e-font, I can manage the lighter tales. I used to breeze through books, but now each page is like a gentle whisper against my ear. Slowly.
A beautiful slow.
I came so late in life to this appreciation, but as much as I now can see the waltz in the dawdle, I miss the bustle.
I miss the half-breath of quiet that falls on a city when everyone is trying to determine if it has begun to rain. I miss the hiccup of slow when a busy event makes an announcement about somebody's car.
I miss when books hit me like a wash of wind, where I had to fight to breathe from the force of it.
But slow is a comfort in these times. I move my hands over the text, a curl from my hair lazily draping over the words. I stretch my toes.
Tomorrow there will be things to do, and I will have to be the meticulous slow I learned in camp, the kind that imitates quickness without losing any of its fullness.
But today, there is only fullness. I hold a glass of water in my hand, cold and heavy. I take a sip, letting it rest on my tongue before the swallowing. Today, the day rests on my lap instead of my shoulders.
I let it rest.
