...just don't get deep into the gratitude, okay? Because either by the dawn's early light or the electric candles we all have, it gets (and stays) pretty stark. I have a getting up and going to work routine that is so old (this is where you say 'how old is it?' We'll need to rehearse, Starbuck, before doing that again) my routine has a routine. Small ruffle (this is the only blog that has a drummer, remember?).
Yours may be different but in one key way, it's the same: even though our eyes are open and we purport to be awake, we're on auto-pilot and going through the motions. If you've moved your razor, or toothbrush or other prep hardware or software, you realize, with a start, when your hands don't pick it up and you step into the now and have to actually wake up. This morning, my evil twin, Skippy, took over and it's a miracle you didn't see the news crew at my house from your house. Seriously.
I have a driver's license, a Triple A and AARP membership cards, all with my birth date (which is why I love my library card, not just because Otis Library still has that newly-renovated library smell, but also because the card doesn't list my age) but in my mind's eye, I think behaviorists call it resident self-image, I don't believe the license or the mirror. I'm a rock and roll kid with an attitude to match.
My eyesight isn't what it once was--of whom is that not true, I suppose, so I have to work a little harder now in order to see the handsome and talented daredevil and all-around great guy that I am when I stare into the mirror (and modest; I always forget that I'm modest). Speaking of modesty, my routine after awakening involves removing my night shirt to wash my hair (I eventually head to work in gym clothes and shower at work after a half hour on the tread mill or the cardio bike or the mechanical bull (just checking to see if you were still reading)), so I was shocked, so shocked I almost swallowed the dental rinse I swish around in my mouth while lathering my face and using a metal blade to shave it, when I peered into the mirror and there was this old guy, covered in skin that was not only the color of grade school lunch room mashed potatoes, but the look as well. Eeeeew!
This guy in the mirror didn't have any brown hair, like it says on my license-not a follicle. It was all grey where there was hair at all and lots of scalp where there used to be hair. I almost swallowed the dental rinse (and in my previous lives, I'd have mixed it with something and swallowed it without a second thought) when I flashed on what was different this morning. Why my now had arrived so abruptly.
Sleepy-head Skippy had put my eyeglasses back on after washing my hair--so there's this face, practically smothered in lather with two glass frames perched atop the white aerosol mountains. That I shave without my glasses helps explain the rate at which I go through styptic pencils--I thought someone was robbing the medicine cabinet and using them to write very long letters home to Mom. Talk about a prisoner of the routine, eh?
I suppose that explains the lip gloss on your left earlobe, right?
-bill kenny
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