I realise I haven't written anything 'small' here for a while, something just descriptive and not reflective. It may be because I feel like I need to make 'worthy' offerings on this platform, whatever that means (and perhaps my mind tells me different things are worthy at different times.)
Here is something 'small', just a day, because it was a day of joy and that is quite worthy enough.
Last week, tuesday.
I woke up and did some yoga, breathing in and out on the mat that Alex sent to the signal-less, up-a-mountain-in-the-lake-district, next-to-an-abandoned-slate-mine hostel that I was in last year on my birthday.
I had breakfast, porridge. I might have had a cup of tea. (I am proud to say that my prediction to fall in love with tea has largely worked - I have had more than 25 cups of rooibos since mid-October last year, and also various other cups in different houses with different people.)
I did some reading, then made some sandwiches accompanied by a growing excitement. Sourdough bread, hummus, smoked walnut tofu, sliced beetroot, sauteed garlicky kale, hummus, bread.
I got onto Liv and cycled down to St James Park, singing Ellie Goulding's The Writer as I went - I can never remember the first verse, so I always start from the chorus, cycle through the second verse, back to the chorus, second verse, over and over till I get bored. But the people I pass in quick succession do not know and I quite like repeating the line 'I try out a smile and I aim it at you/You must have missed it/You always do'. The cycle took me past St Martin in the Fields, the National Gallery and down The Mall, a wide avenue which makes me feel quite regal.
When I got to St James Park, I chose a spot on a bench that was drenched in sunlight, and sat there and read while I waited for Jacob. I'm working my way through 'The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man', which is taking a long time, no longer the quick hurricane reading I did as an undergrad. But that means I get to enjoy the book in different places and different times, like on a park bench in the sun. Half my mind was on the book and half was just enjoying the feeling of sun on my skin and the feeling of spring. Of course, it is still technically winter, but the sun and the green of the park and the almost palpable shared feeling of promise was quite a spring like feeling.
'If we were in another universe where Jacob and I had never met, and I was on this bench reading, and he walked by, would he fall in love with me?' I wondered.
Jacob entered from a different end of the park, so I walked along the pond to meet him halfway and as always after I haven't seen him for a while - butterflies. (It's been a year and a half but I still feel as happily excited as November 2017) We sat on the same park bench I'd been reading on, and he pronounced the sandwich the best one he'd ever had.
Writing about time with Jacob is one of the hardest things, because I can't remember every detail but the each detail was a golden moment. And I can't convey how normal conversation is elevated because it isn't elevated by words but just by being there, with him. Will you trust that I was wonderfully happy without my writing how?
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