The Circle Game

I’m still in my coat and scarf. I was sitting on the ugly floral print couch that for some reason still calls our living room home, but I have just relocated to the basement where the sound of the furnace is drowning out the sound of the television. I just got back from Shanelle and Mike’s house. The drive was filled with music, as driving for me almost always is.

Today I feel uncharacteristically free. Almost giddy. I want to do things differently. Be different. I want to care less about some things, and more about other things. I want to learn how to do certain things instead of just…dreaming about it. Like the guitar. I want to learn how to play. I want to learn how to make food so delicious even I will eat it. Currently, there is one dish I make that fits that description. And truly, it is delicious. I made it for nobody today, and it was good. I think I will find the perfect pancake recipe next. And then maybe…a new kind of cookie. I’ve already perfected one kind. I want to learn to be good at things I am only mediocre at. Maybe I will start writing again. I haven't wanted to lately. I want each day, no matter how dull, to feel like a triumph. Big moments—thrilling, red-letter moments—don’t actually come along that often. I don’t want to live for these moments alone, only to feel dissatisfied in between, as I have been for the last few months. I want more days like today, which was admittedly dull, but not…boring. Not at all.

It’s like all the stars in my universe are realigning themselves to a place of greater balance.
For some unexplained reason, I feel I have come back to a starting place of sorts. Like I have come full circle, and I am back at the beginning.

I felt it yesterday, as well, but it made me want to scream. I wanted to shake my fist heavenward and cry, “Why have you brought me back here? Again! When I have done so much!”

But today? I take comfort in the familiarity of being at the beginning of something. Being back at the beginning. This place is like an old friend. What makes it bearable, and even pleasant, is the knowledge that one really never can come full circle, because time goes round in more of a spiral. You go up or down, and you may even end up right above or below where you were just a little while ago—which feels like the beginning. But it’s not, thank heaven. “We can’t go back,” says Joni Mitchell, “we can only look behind from where we came. And go round and round and round in the circle game.”

This is motivation. This is the absence of melancholy. I welcome it. The absence, I mean.