It’s cold in the hills. Oh, not like the rest of country which is ensconced in a big premium insulated Yeti cooler. This is Texas. Coat in the morning….short sleeve shirt by 1:30 pm…..an Inuit approved parka by sundown. There’s such a sameness within the changes. So many changes within th sameness.
By 2:30 this afternoon, I needed to replace my standard issue Hanes sweats and into something that would allow ventilation. Ther was light creeping through plantation shutters, the scourge of drapers everywhere, but such a classic style. It illuminated my thigh snd the ant farm I call my vericors veins. How oddly interconnected it all is. One turns right then to the left then carries on a straight course for an inch or so, only to reverse back and fade into spidery oblivion. Arbitrary.
“Hhhhmmmmm”, I think. “How different would my thigh look had I been thinner at this period in my life, had I not worm so much Spandex in the ’80’s…..the process of sitting cross-legged for hours at this new tangled contraption called a Persomal Computer.
I reach down and touch the scar, courtesy of a neurotic Shelti named Edmund who went a little crazy when awakes too rapidly. While traversing a dark hall way I. Which he liked to sleep, I placed my foot near his mouth, he placed a canine in the flesh above my knee.
There streak like Cuts on the shin from a broken glass as my body had the good sense to go feet first out of the front windshield during car crassh 30 yeqrs who. Scars from operations that make me look like I’m part zipper. There’a mole that lives above my ankle. It hasn’t grown, its never gotten smaller.
But I did…..the reasons why I changed don’t make good backstories.
I don’t want to compare a middle-aged woman’s arterial vexation to life, so I’ll stop trying. But the amazing thing about every mark, nick, stitch, mole, scare, eerie reddish birthmark that looks like Vishnu, they all have a backstory. Well, the birthmark might be pushing it a bit, but the other things all have histories.
The problem is I havent created any new old backstories lately. That bothers me. In my Life, I haven’t been as passionate purpose-wise as I have before. Goals have fallen short or never fully formed. There are no old comfy shoes in my closet, 17 fashion weeks behind the times, but still caked in mud and memories of an afternoon when love began. This past December, No ancient Christmas ornaments pop up in the just opened storage box and shouted, “Hey, remember me”?
No well worn dinnerware insisted I tell my guests sbout that time at the beach when these ugly ass plates made better Frisbees and dammit, there SHOULD be more stories.
It’s as though my life has a big gaping hole it in. The old varicose ants have been working on their subdermal farm, but I can’t explain anything about their workload. Why they chose to burrow left as opposed to right.
So, one again I sit here in the now cold, relative darkness of a Hill Country evening with just be enough light shining through the window to let me know I need to find more meaningful backstories…..soon.
And it also makes me aware I need to do a much better job at dusting those pain the ass plantation shutters.