Big

What I’ve noticed about today is that people have changed in size quite a bit. I remember going to museums & seeing clothing on 4′ mannequins…Napoleon’s uniform on what is now a child-size frame. It’s happening again. Some furniture requires a running start & a bit of a leap to mount. My feet don’t touch the floor. Chairs pull up to restaurant tables approximately just below my boobs, making eating a shoulder exercise. I am too small for today’s accommodations. I may have shrunk, (which I call condensing) but I think the allowance is now for modern bodies – which I once read are larger to accommodate the new spirits occupying them.

It could be that I frequent the older spaces where seats are so worn that unless I sit mid-banquette, I’m sunk into the time warp of former occupants.

Having been a short person all this life, it seems silly to just now be noticing. Once I was considered petite. Now I’m hardly considered at all & that’s okay too. Did my spirit shrink?

Nah. Like I said, it’s just condensed. So much has burned away & I don’t mind being a nightlight where I used to spotlight. I stretch on rising, like the cat. I wish I had a tail to flick about. I buy new makeup & think I look different when it’s just coloring the wrinkles. I allow more to go on in which I do not participate when once I’d have been leading. I’m more interested in reaction than action, I guess I could say.

I once thought about writing a story where a ‘modern’ woman picks up her dry cleaning to find it’s all fringe & paisley, a headband stuffed in the pocket. When she leaves the cleaner, it’s the 60’s again outside. The Summer of Love is fragrant with patchouli & sounds like Jimi & Janis are performing in the city parks. I kind of missed the 60’s as I was still in high school for most of them & lived in an isolated area where we didn’t have much of that hippie stuff going on. I don’t recall any beads hanging on my teen mirror, yeh? I think my teen reaction was being mostly embarrassed by it all.

There’s been so much going on, whole decades have clocked by & each one felt like the one where I was meant to be, with energy concommitant to effort plus a bit more. Now it’s a bit less but I’m enjoying life within such a different framework. And I don’t use dry cleaners, my life having turned into a wash n wear with wrinkles. This allows for so much more hands-on time.

I’m still into stories: still reading a book a day for the most part tho I have to struggle with tired eyes to encompass it. I’m back on computer most of the time but have more public interaction than I ever did at corporate offices. So much of the environment is changed; it’s all I can do to “input” it, “process” it & provide “output.” Work relations are a product in & of themselves, as opposed to ending an assembly line with a carry-off item.

If I were to ask, “where did the time go?” I can honestly say I have no idea & I’m still only attentive to a small part of eternity – the one I’m actively involved in. My here & now has compressed to paying attention in the moment, while being aware of the bigger pictures playing out on world screens. I’m not jaded, by any means, & far more interested in purview than preview, compunction possibly more than compassion. Maybe I shouldn’t say that out loud?

The me’s from before are no more. I am not so important to myself, but I’m paying closer attention. If I examine my unexamined life I had a lot to say along with a lot to do. I had more lives to support than I care to remember & maybe I used up that part of my humanity.

There’s a strangely localized detail to be found in existentiality.