Oil and bog and fire (bookmark edit)

Lagavulin, neat, smouldering in my throat and back through my nostrils as I breathe out after taking my sip. The pace is set by the drink, by the stoking and the ebb of heat. I ain’t dead. Not yet. Not today.

In the middle of my high stress day, in the middle of a moment that I have carved out and defended for weeks, the phone rings, and there’s one more priority intrusion and I get angry. I get so angry, because I need this moment, I need a moment to process my fear and lick my wounds and I need it. I need it.

And then I’m still listening to the issue on the phone but what I’m thinking is a prayer. A plea to God, the universe, fate, destiny, Ronald McDonald and any deific or planning force that is out there to hear: Please.

Please.

Just give me one day where there’s only one thing to deal with at a time. Not perfection, not superpowers, just the chance to focus.

I hang up the phone, frustrated and angry and upset and violated in that my little moment has been overturned. Trying to return my mind to the moment makes it feel like it went into slow motion and I spent hour-long seconds there.

And then I get an answer.

There’s an actual answer. Maybe even from God, the universe, fate, destiny, Ronald Mcdonald or whatever other deific or planning force that was out there and has heard.

No.

It doesn’t work that way. There’s always one more thing. It’s the cost of being alive.

Do what can be done. Live with the rest.

Don’t whine.

And that was enough. That was enough to step out of the anger and just deal. And if the universe happens to sound an awful lot like me, well, whatever. I’m sipping and thinking. And I ain’t dead.

Not yet.

Not today.