The air is thinner here.
24 hours on pavement instead of 3-4 in the sky tremendously help lung adjustment.
I'm getting old. The kind of old where it's become necessary to make such traveling adaptations so that your body can better adjust to changes in the climate. I'm only 31. Cringe.
Sun-rays filtered through my eyelids still shine brightly. Prisms of light dance about before the back of my hand pressed to the bridge of my nose helps to block out some intensity. Laid between pavement and skin a towel prevents inevitable bodily harm, but the decrease in clothing I'm wearing enables it. Sliding into my third day at 'home' one of my only goals thus far has been to acquire a base tan by laying out first thing when I get out of bed. Eyes still closed and with a slight smile on my face I mentally move my index finger in the air with a quick swipe. Check.
Laying on the ground in my backyard, eyes closed, I inwardly take in my surroundings. The lack of clutter comforts my ears. My senses are warmed by the wind stirring the dust and dry pine needles about me, the leaf blower powered by the man next door acts like a sort of white noise machine, and a sense of contented emptiness hangs in the air -- empty only because of what's lacking -- the rush of traffic, voices of pedestrians, the patter of someone's feet running down the apartment hallway, and the gyrating vibration of road construction. I love the city. But I also love to leave the city.
Click-clack sounds the small rectangular flap over the small rectangular door cut into the side of the garage wall, and I know that my large fluff of a canine has joined my solitary backyard party. My ears discern her paws padding and her snout sniffing. She's performing her perimeter examination before she joins me in the party's main event. At the gate near the driveway she belts out a few cautionary reminders:
Woof! this is my territory; Woof! your approach is most unwelcome; and Woof! should you not heed this warning properly you will experience regret.
By sniffing my ear and my armpit (why?) she concludes that though I'm laying prone on the ground, I'm okay, and she marches off to complete her guard duty at the other gate. Having successfully warded off threats of crow, car, and canine, she joins the reclining-on-cement-party, although her choice of prime real-estate seems to be one that is lacking in rays of sunshine.
Turning to my stomach, I rest my forehead on the book I've yet to read during these tanning sessions, as the necessity of my head seeking comfort away from the cemented ground seems to be greater than the urge to find out what happens next in A Man Called Ove. But without the distraction of another's story to occupy my mind, the goals I need to attain in the coming weeks begin to creep in...questions, action steps, a little bit of worry...
Hard stop.
NNNNOPE!
I nip the existential crisis which inevitably follows a season of intensity-suddenly-concluded in the bud. Journaling, filtering, organizing, categorizing, systematizing, planning, searching...save that for later. In time. Soon. Currently, breathe in. Feel the sun on your skin. Enjoy the lack.
Rest in this present, gifted moment.
I yawn and stretch a little, then settle back into my sprawled rag doll position. Callie does the same.
The sun still blankets my skin.
Sigh, this is nice.
