My day off

The best times are almost never planned. This afternoon, for example. On this temperate January day (I'll remind you last year, we were iced in for a week!) I took Cinc to the dog park for nearly two hours, and sat on the tables with the other regulars and conversed with a girl I'd spoken with a few times in the past. Her faithful companions are some of Cinco's favorite playmates, a burly female rottweiler named Monkey, and a wire haired mutt that resembles Benji from the movies. Benji and Cinco are well matched, Cinco bigger and more muscular, but both with a voracious appetite for chasing and wrestling. As she left, she turned to me and said "My name is Laura, by the way." I like making new friends. I drove home, and as I walked in the door with a tuckered out pup, my housemate Pii asked if we'd like to meet the dog he was sitting, and of course we oblidged. Dante and Cinc were natural companions, and ran around the backyard and into the creek together as Pii and I talked. Midway through the romp, there was a bounding of paws and Jenny and here dog Hugo appeared from around the conrner of the apartment complex next door. Jenny and I have crossed paths during nighttime walks of our dogs, and Hugo, a 5 month old great Pyrenees mix, has grown almost as big a my dog. The three dogs run around together, each with white muzzles and blonde fur, looking almost indistinguishable from each other. Pii goes back inside with Dante and Jenny and I stay out talking, then are met by Mason, Hugo's brother, and his owner, a girl whose name I can't recall. The dogs cross the creek, which only a few days ago was a roaring river thanks to the pouring rain for the past 4 days. They are led by Cinco, the ringleader, and I guess I'm a bit more lenient with his afternoon outings because the other girls try to get the group to cross the creek back over to us. As we do so, I see my neighbor Rusty and his seven year old son Jack walking towards the creek. Cinco and Russ and I sat on the rocks of the creek and talked while Jack explored, and after a suspenseful leaf-boat race between Rusty and myself, Jack and I engaged in an "EPIC" (his favorite word) nerf-gun battle. By his rules, it ended with: me- zero points, him- three points. Of course he won. 

If there is one thing in this world I can do, and love to do, it is talking to people, and making friends. It's good to remember how it feels to be young. Life ain't so bad, huh. :)

Under the bridge

It is so apparent that I lack any type of patience or willpower that the normal man develops by the age he can fit the square block into the square hole. I am driven by feverish wants whose unattended aims turn upon themselves and throttle towards the ground. My mind must remain...in control. But I don't want to live my life subdued...I don't want to live my life with the knowledge that growing up, being an adult, means you have to be unhappy. I want to open and my eyes and see my dream...I want to close them, and say I've lived.

The Gap

We're driving home and I'm listening to his dreams and far fetched wants, all the never-going-to-happens  and could-be's are filling in the blanks and adding depth, like shading to my mental drawing. As we stop, I think to myself that a hundred million hypothetical dollars is so worth watching this man poke his smiling face through the door, and gleefully proclaim "I'm going to go buy a lottery ticket!" He slams the door and I watch his back as he runs through the cold gas station, zigzagging across the parking lot with a youthful enthusiasm, so uncharacteristic of his age. A sigh and a smile. Sometimes I'm the old one.

Futures

I've been brooding lately, mulling over my potential and skill set and conjuring career plans. A new year, a new direction. Whatever that direction shall be, I needed one, by the start of the year. Call it OCD.  And then it hit me. At first I laughed, and wrote my sister and amusing facebook note about it. We grew up with the same obsession, she'd understand. Yet as I wrote, the more attractive this idea became. Until it actually began to make sense. The varied topics, the far away places, political undertones and scandal. I could be an actress of an unconventional sort, immersing myself in a character I'd make as real as myself. Do whatever it takes. Tie in my love of written words into my desire to make a difference, serve justice, and ignite a spark within people. Step on some toes. Solve mysteries. Perhaps I'll become and investigative journalist.

Guinness goes with everything

I wake to a paw in the face. Why, Cinc, why? Persistent whines tell me he's needy, perhaps to go out, perhaps to play, but the lack of sunshine here brings with it an unenthusiastic start to the day, assuming a certain premature drudgery to an otherwise untainted and ripe day. I know it's not the day's fault I hate it so, but from the horizontal position in my bed I can see it already promises to be colorless and insignificant. Born only to pass the time. Why bother at all, I muse.
I lead the dog downstairs, for my first signs of life have stirred him into a frenzy, a bouncing firework of energy to which I am the match. I open the door, and his boundlessness heads for the small patch of leaves he favorites every morning, and bends, back arched in sweet relief, nose sniffing.  I watch from the door, and my foggy comprehension affixes itself to a likewise desire within myself. After calling the dog back in, I head to the bathroom, already assessing the order with which I will complete the morning tasks. Waking up is a process I've not yet perfected, but the rigid order of objectives is the scaffolding to which I cling for deriving success and satisfaction from the dredging smear that is today. Oatmeal, microwave, bathroom, coffee, retrieve and season oatmeal, water dog, water self, vitamins, eat, drink. In the space of a few minutes, the haze clears, and the caffeinated satiation sweeps the morning cobwebs from the corners of my mind, clearing space for a mild degree of optimism. The promise of a new day. Optimism is the revered owner of my mind, the bustle prior to its arrival hellbent on ridding the streets of this morning's lackluster thoughts and hopeless negativity, the shooing of unaesthetic street people out of my square frame of mind, watching with crossed arms as their draped figures shuffle out of view, muttering of the inconvenience, and of their eventual return. I resume the task list, it's denizens varying more in complexity as I add them one by one, their completion, the key to a successful day.

Alex Martino: Malibu Beach

Into the Hills