I went the wrong way and ended up buying ice cream. . .
Summer musings
It’s summer. I’m moving slow. I hope you are too. A few things on my overheated brain:
”I went the wrong way and ended up buying ice cream—
I wish I hadn't but I couldn’t help it. . .”
As I walked around the lake as I do many nights, a woman said this to me in passing. It made me chuckle for the first time that day. I loved it so much, I stopped to jot it down on my phone.
Because doesn’t it be like that? My only wish for her was that she didn’t have regrets. Because sometimes you do go the wrong way-- but then you end up getting ice cream.
When I think about all the wrong ways I’ve taken, I almost always realize that over time that it wasn’t the wrong way after all. Sometimes it takes a long, long time to realize it, but realize it I do.
“I think I made a wrong turn back there somewhere. . .”
In one of her many genius songs, Erykah Badu croons:
“Time to save the world
Where in the world is all the time?
So many things I still don't know
So many times I've changed my mind
Guess I was born to make mistakes
But I ain't scared to take the weight
So when I stumble off the path
I know my heart will guide me back”
In these times where the world most certainly needs saving, where is all the time? How can we do it in the course of the 24 hour day? The labor movement said that we are supposed to enjoy eight hours of work, eight hours of leisure, and eight hours of sleep in each 24 hour period, and this is the way we are supposed to divide up the pie of our lives. I guess until we are dead, or until retirement, ha. How many of us are following this rubric, and what do you think of it?
Did you know that fireflies have actual lights in their butts? I mean, you do know that, but when was the last time you truly thought about that? And when was the last time that you thought about the fact that it is often (depending on species) the female firefly who emits that light in a specific pattern to attract a mate? And yes, once they do, some species will eat their mate. Sex and a sandwich. Who doesn’t love that?
I took the time to think about this one evening when I was not in fact working, when I was probably not saving the world, when I was not overtaken by the glow of a computer screen, but instead overcome by the glow of a fireflies ass. Did you know that if you take the time to track the trajectory of a single firefly as it disappears into the dark thick of a tree’s leaves, standing still against the twilight, your heart can soar and break in a single second? I hope you can take the time this summer to try it.
Last night, my nephew was quoting something my mom said, and his reported reply to her was:
“You’re old! You don’t know.”
I had to stop him right there, as he clutched a lego in his sticky, nine-year-old hand, and reported to him that old people know far more than young people. Why? Because we have been on the planet longer. He thought about it. I don’t know if he believed me.
Time, plus all of the wrong turns, plus all of the accumulated ice cream cones and firefly twilights can sometimes result in something approaching wisdom.
I’ve been reading some profiles about old broads lately, including this one on writer E. Jean Carroll and this one on Broadway icon Patti Lupone. Each woman in the final stretch in their careers and soon enough, their lives.
Both profiles showcase women who have seen, literally, it all. Carroll hot tubbed with Hunter S. Thompson, for instance, and Lupone reported on a red carpet that she would never perform for Trump “because she hates the motherfucker.” The clip went viral. Carroll reports in the profile that she has “buried” three dogs by putting them in her treetops and letting the birds and other wildlife take care of the job, and that she would like to see a similar fate come to her corpse when the time comes. LuPone hosts parties in her NYC apartment that guests have described as “cops and showgirls vibes.”
Carroll was also allegedly raped by Donald Trump, and thanks to her frankness, LuPone is constantly marginalized in her career for being “difficult.” But they have both reached the stretches of their lives where they seem mercifully at peace with the way they choose to live. Carroll on a remote parcel of land in upstate New York she has named “Frog Island’ because frogs come to mate in her swimming pool each spring. In spite of having plenty of money to subsist on (including a civil settlement reaching into many millions from Trump) she refuses to buy a toaster.
“If I get a toaster, will I want an oven? If I get a toaster, then I’m going to want a stove. Then who am I? I’m nobody. I’m somebody with a stove.”
Maybe her philosophy seems kooky to the swath of humanity who owns stoves, but she has chosen how she wants to live, and she’s abiding by it. I like that. Living without a toaster and a stove is probably a harder life, but what’s so bad about hard, anyway?
“I was dealt the hard hand in everything. This life is about figuring that out,” says LuPone. “The next life is going to be easier. We start in life vulnerable, then we are accosted. And then we put up the barriers. We put up the armor. I’ve never lost my vulnerability, so the shock continues. I firmly believe this: it’s better to fail. Because you learn so much more. If you are anointed, you have nowhere to go. Failure makes you investigate. Failure moves you to the next step.”
Follow the firefly-
Go the wrong way-
Get the ice cream-
Refuse to wish that you hadn't.
Our July Immigrant Kitchen featuring Safa Abdulareesh is sold out!
Information on August’s dinner coming soon.
The fireflies, and a monarch that showed up on a butterfly bush as if to say hello…..
made me drool