one of those days

It's hard to let go of happy days, those rare blips of true peace and well-being over an ordinary lifetime of stress and bother, some self-created, some not, the two often indistinguishable. K left just under an hour ago. I dropped her off at the train station after a quick but totally present kiss, the kind in which you feel your being pouring into the other person for a few moments. Before the kiss we walked in the last full hour of daylight, the hour that comes too quicky these early autumn days, the bite of night and cold already around the edges. While we walked my suburban neighborhood, front lawns studded with curled brown leaves, election posters (mostly for Obama/Biden or democratic council members), and for sale signs that make me wonder who among those I saw at the last social event fell into the wrong ARMs, I thought about Roseann Cash's record "10 Song Demo." The songs on it always seem to evoke the mood I feel on days like today.

Before our walk, K and I sat at our respective computers and worked--she on a concept paper, I a bit on some editing, but mostly on this musing and jotting I'm so good at and so underpaid for. Our silent, companionable industry was interrupted only by my domestic buzzing--breaking out a snack of beer and salt and black pepper chips, before that a lunch of pizza, salad and beer, and before that the lupini beans I'd been saving for her.

We didn't get to our computers until noon, reasonable considering that's when "The View" ended and we had finished our breakfast oatmeal and coffee. (Yes, we eat often. Musing burns up a lot of energy.)

We didn't get to breakfast til 11, awake enough finally to feel hungry.

We didn't feel the sun from the window at at the head of the bed warming the edges of our pillows, warming us awake, until 10:00 or so, after 10 hours of solid sleep, 10 hours the gift of the first night of almost-frost, when, still pining for summer, our heads are too sluggish to think and our bodies want nothing but the essentials. Happiness isn't usually among these--contentment perhaps, but not happiness. There's a subtle difference, especially when the two stand in contrast to the stress of malfunctioning mass transit, resulting tepid dinners and curtailed conversations, and the cumulative frustration over the theft of jealously guarded hours and moments.

It's not that I'm advocating calling in sick as a way to make up such losses every time life stands in its own way. Email is so much better.