I am unable to give you the rest of the piece of writing I gave you last week. A friend says I wouldn’t be able to enter it into a contest because of it being self published on my blog. If you know anything about whether or not that’s true, please let me know.

Excerpt from Emma: the Giraffe at the End of the hall, my latest memoir

Sleep is a wonderful thing, but I think I indulged in it too much this past weekend. I spent both Saturday and Sunday in bed with a book.

Today, I feel like I’m up to my chin in mud. What happened to the light feeling of rafting on clouds? Life spun a change and I am feeling heavy. It’s not a bad heavy. I still breathe freely and deeply. It’s just different not to have my toes tingle.

I send dust to the air and sneeze. My desk looks new again. I wonder if the action of dusting and cleaning, creating a clean space is equivalent to showering..do I get to start new after soap? I say yes because it is so good to feel like I am new again and not some lame robot with battery operated energy coursing through her body.

end of excerpt

“When you narrow your focus, the whole universe opens up.”

I narrow my focus to showering. I don’t like to shower. It takes an hour to do this. I don’t like sacrificing the hour to soap. But to be clean, I think, is a holy thing.

The body starts fresh and the mind follows like a tail on a kite.

I stare out the window. The bushes relax in the wind. The sidewalk is silent; no one walks on it. The side walk leads to a swimming pool. It’s been twenty-five years since I’ve been in a pool. I don’t like the sun or the chlorine. The medications I take cause me to burn easily and I would have to shower to rinse myself of chlorine. As I said, I don’t like showering.

But I do like a clean mind. A clean mind is not a greasy dish. It is not the oil stain beneath the parked truck. It is not the butter cream frosting on a wedding cake.

A clean mind is light infused with imagination. It is thoughts traveling through fresh air.

I will shower today. I will spend time with soap and shampoo. After that, I will dress in loose cloths and sit on my bed allowing my mind to skip beats and travel far.

Again, my mind will move and shift and play with language. A “p” moves me to peas. I will have peas with dinner tonight.