Saturday Morning

Morning. I've done a lot of massage this week, and my forearms and quads are tired. (Why quads? Because I do a lot of my massage kneeling: good for the back, because I don't bend over much, but involving a lot of standing up and getting back down on my knees.) Another massage at eleven. I'm in Tosi's, on an incredibly beautiful morning, a bit sweaty from my bike ride. Deeply happy. I'm beginning to believe that this massage gig is actually going to work out.

If I'm having a difficult day at work -- which doesn't happen often, at the Foundation, but happens sometimes, of course -- I remember I have a massage scheduled that night, and a wave of gladness and gratitude washes over me, and -- everything's okay. It still seems a deal too good to be true, that people are willing to pay me to do something I love doing so much, that people are willing to trust me.

It's the culmination of that realization, some five years ago, that I was assiduously building my own isolation. Once I could see it, I could start unbuilding it.

(And now, incidentally, I have to get back to practicing, because I can feel the beginnings of a backwards slippage. Faint, but unmistakeable. I'm not going back to that.)

And now a clean blue sky, a bright morning, a cup of glorious diner coffee, the light spilling in through the north windows and making it seem that I've stepped over the frame into a painting of a Greek diner by Vermeer. And maybe Reyna will show up, who knows?