Week Sixteen sort of felt like the week that wouldn’t end. Or was that last week? Or every week? Forced to stay still for so long, I am realizing that hiding under the layer of stress I usually feel by the hundreds of things that keep me busy during a week, is an anxiety. I am anxious to live my life.
No, I don’t mean I’m anxious to get back out there, to see the students face-to-face, to get back in the gym, to return to yoga, to eat at a restaurant, peruse a bookshop, see a show… though I’ll be happy to do those things again… I mean I’m anxious to live the life I want to be mine. Not some half-version, not some safe version, not some palatable version. MY life.
As you can probably tell, I felt cooped up this week, both in the literal sense because there was a lot of crappy weather, and in the sense that I felt locked inside my thoughts. That’s okay… some weeks are meant for introspection. And this week I realized taking notice of the small beauties around me has made me crave a fuller existence.
Sunday
I got a text from Nick and Ashley: “Hi Tiff!!!! Do not look out your window for the next 15 minutes… Do not ask questions… You will get the green light when you can go outside [egg emoji]”
What better way to enjoy Easter morning than finding eggs filled with Jell-O shots and chocolate on your front porch and lawn?
Monday
These little guys randomly appear in random places. Always alone. Always lethargic. They hang out in a spot, barely moving, and then a day or two later I find they’ve died in that exact same spot. I don’t know what the deal is, but I’d like to think they’ve lived a full and happy life and are looking for a warm solitary refuge — a place to pace on peacefully. And I’d like to believe my home is providing that.
Tuesday
When you’re trying to record videos for your students and the kitties think that’s silly.
Wednesday
The sun! It was a week of flighty Upstate, NY weather… snowing one minute, raining the next, sunny for an hour, then back to snow. It was cool this day. I bundled up. Because sometimes that’s what you have to do to be able to spot the buds growing in on the trees, promising better days ahead.
Thursday
I was feeling… down. In a bit of slump. I wasn’t overly motivated. I spent most of the day inside. With my cats and my books and my bed. I was productive the first half of the day…
Anywho. I took a picture of this nightlight Brian gave me that I love, sitting on a book I was told to read in the old breakfast-in-bed serving tray that used to belong to my grandma that I somehow ended up with… Or maybe my mom and I picked it up at a secondhand store? I can’t remember… Anyway I took a picture of this little whale lit up, ready for the sun to go down so he could properly shine on the words for me as I read in bed.
Friday
I remember when this was painted about five years ago. It was a massive Graffiti Busters effort we were involved with at my old job (working through a grant program with the students in Utica). Our group didn’t do this particular one; we painted the one on the side of the Oneida Street health center.
This picture is actually depressing to me. I know I set out to find beauty, and there certainly is beauty in a large community effort to paint over old graffiti and leave a better mark by brightening up city spaces, but this park was abandoned when I walked through. It has to be with the COVID-19 restrictions. The playground is wrapped with caution tape to keep kids from venturing onto the rigs, and garbage blows around in the breeze. Plus, this is the side of the building that has managed to stay graffiti-free. There’s a larger mural on the other side that’s been tagged. And not in a cool, graffiti-art type of way. Just in a let’s-destroy-something kind of way.
But this was left untouched. And it’s cute in that “We tried!” kind of way.
Saturday
We found some of the shells already shed on the ground. Most are still protecting the buds from the cold days our spring still has coming. But some of the flowers are already free to bloom.
Changes are happening. Some of them a little painful with a little carnage. Some of them a little beautiful with a little hope. Most of them all of these things.