In between home and where I'm going, I have landed in a very pink room where a suspiciously calm (but sneaky-eyed) Victorian girl stares furtively at me. This morning, I was home, working in the office and brushing the cat off the computer so I could type. Tomorrow I'll be reading from my memoir at a conference, then visit good friends for the night. Both there and here are places that swallow me up in routine or connections, but between the two is this night, where I have the luxury of not being on tap for anything.
At dinner tonight, a cafe where I ate pesto-encrusted flounder, I looked out the window, through the pale mesh of the curtain, to see the bank of clouds edged in blue. I listened to two women perform, one singing and playing guitar, and the other on violin. I considered the elegant shape of the salt shaker. Not having people to visit with or a book to read, I had no choice but to be where I was, enjoying the lime in my ice water and listening to conversations spill over from other tables.
There’s a spaciousness and ease in such in-between spaces, a way to enjoy the adventure without any stake in what to expect. Even when I locked my keys in the car, I knew it was fine, nothing to worry over, and after a phone call and handing a man $40 for his minute-long popping open of the car door, I felt a kind of equanimity.
Listening to the train in the distance, watching the big floral wallpaper juxtaposed with the big floral bedspread or drinking water from a crystal glass in this room, I tried to just breathe it in, enjoy the nuances and gesture of being rather than doing, and wonder if my dreams tonight will be sweet or ironic.
Whatever happens, I know in-between places are the spaces in which little signs
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