I forgot a pen today. Forgot. A. Pen. I also woke up twenty-two minutes before class started (it takes, on average, 9.7 minutes to make my morning sprint up the hill to campus), threw on the clothes I wore yesterday (plus a scarf), tossed my hair around for a second (after it fell out of my first-attempt bobby-pinned bun), and left without breakfast (this is actually not that unusual).
Made it to the humanities building three minutes before the bell rang. Felt pretty smug about it, too, until I tried to take notes.
I am lost impossible incapacitated without a writing instrument of any sort.
Spent most of that morning lecture in various stages of irrational anxiety and practically sprinted to the nearest copy room the second class let out.
me: Do you perhaps have a pen I could buy?
kid at the counter: (looks around, vaguely, shaking his head)
kid at the counter: . . .
kid at the counter: I've got one you could have, for free.
me: For keeps?!
kid at the counter: Wow. If you're that excited, yes. Please. Take it.
me: So shines a good deed in a weary world (Gene Wilder version).
kid at the counter: . . .
kid at the counter: I hope your day gets better.
So now I have a pen and only wish I had more time to write with it, write the things that really matter, that dog me day and night and in and out and through and around every other crazy necessity on my midterms schedule this week. I have so many words in my head I can hardly sleep. And even when I finally do, the words wake me up in the morning like tousled toddlers, big-eyed and blinking. We're still here. You made us, now raise us. We have still so many things to say.
So many things. Music and parties and pasta. Star charts and road maps and song sheets. Love letters and eulogies and thank yous---especially thank yous, because I have received several soul-swelling emails of late and I thank you for reading my writing and I thank you for writing to tell me that you're reading. I am getting around to replying, I am I am.
But until then, just know that I have a pen. And that's a start.
9 comments:
my favorite line in this post is
"for keeps?!"
because, as we've already discussed, we definitely need more abbreviations in the english language. :)
hope your day improves lovely miss e.
(e)
we don't know each other, and i doubt we ever will.
but i love to read your words. please, please, please. keep it coming.
(b)
Hahaha. You write with such humor and wit. Love it. I feel the exact same when I go to school without a pen.
p.s. I am obsessed with your new picture. You are gorgeous.
e--
I don't think I've ever commented here, but I have to tell you that I think your words are the best kind of words and that you seem like a really really neat human. Keep writing and I will be here reading.
Oh my word I die of laughter. My question is how you managed to write with just any pen a guy gave you! But you're probably just not as much of a pen snob as I am. Or you were just desperate? It's those p-500s. Now that I've written with one I find it incredibly hard to write a single word without one.
Being without a pen is quite a predicament indeed. I love the end. What a grand crescendo of words!
I die. I can picture you in the copy room having this conversation. I love you. And miss you tons and tons.
oh my word this made me smile! I can so feel your pain... it reminds me of the time I was at the art museum and was informed I couldn't use my pen.. I about died.. or at least melted into a puddle.. thank goodness for the 1/2 pencils the front desk had.. otherwise I don't know what I would have done with so much inspiration and no way to capture it all.
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