My sister, when I went out and visited her, used to drive to 7/11 every morning and get me a Big Brew, the 24 oz. cup of coffee they vend at that fine merchant. I never got why she did this, and I also never knew how she was so aware that I was deathly addicted to caffeine, even at 19. She just did, but sometimes I’d catch her taking sips out of it before she gave it to me. That’s only 23 oz. left.
I find myself doing things like this, and not minding — like I’ll walk into our department building and go see the chair, and if he’s not in there and I have to come back later, or if I just wasted a trip, it’s no big deal. The campus where I go to school is beautiful, lined with plenty of trees and intricate, unique architecture, and within the building there there’s scraps of multitudinous book covers, one of which is Raymond Carver, which I discovered that very way.
I always, in this way, feel like I’m working toward an idea — but hopefully life in general is like this, anyway. There’s a natural, gushing enthusiasm informing the things we do, and it’s not even explainable, it’s like a butane fire has been lit under our chins, pushing our faces into smiles and our bodies into motion, and we don’t even think twice of it. This can happen on the job, I think, like how I happen to genuinely enjoy my cooking job regardless of pay, but it can also just be part of living life — part of walking, reflecting, bit**ing about the weather, hungering, painting on the outside, painting on the inside. This is the opposite of anxiety — this is the blackboard mortar on which we hew out our visions of the world, and our opinions on who we are, like a deep, blazing inferno, taking anxiety and replacing it with constant, endless, miasmic reflection, and always knowing you just a little bit better than you think it will.