Everything beautiful is painted in melancholy

There is a heaviness after the holidays that comes with the anticipated return to routine. The snow has melted, uncovering a brown mush of a long forgotten autumn. Christmas trees discarded on the sidewalks, the forced festivities put away in that out of reach shelf in the back of the closet. I often feel like a pitiful child at the end of summer vacation, when a long break comes to a close and it is time to wipe the dust off my laptop and lose track of the hours counting down to the weekend. The weekends too, speed past like a smudge of trees outside the window of a fast moving train. A new year marks a new beginning. Isn't it too much pressure for one calendar day? It is too much pressure for any one person.

I'm detail oriented. When I talk or write to a friend, I describe the moment. I set the scene, location, scents, sights, sounds, what I am in the middle of or was doing right before. I feel it is important because the time and place influences my state of mind, the context of musings and questions. Take me out of the present moment and I am like an entirely different person. I didn't realize the extent of this until a friend brought it up, and then I remembered instances when I've been told similar things. I am detail oriented and some view it as a quality while others are annoyed or intimidated. I consider it my quality. 

I took myself on a walk when the sun already set and a cool deep blue tinted the horizon in a settling fog. I listened to the first chapter of Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto on my cell phone, and when I returned I played a part I liked without headphones for my husband while we drank tea and he slowly cut slivers of Camembert cheese for a Challah bun I shouldn't have eaten but did. As we chewed and listened, pausing with his hand in a package of wafers to quiet the plastic crackling while listening to the important sentences, the tunnel of trees on either side of the path came to me. The path I walked on while hearing the very same words read by the robotic US female local voice #1. Everything, almost everything, is in context of a memory. 

Everything beautiful is painted in melancholy because it doesn't last. I saw these words on a page in one of my diaries and can't remember if it was something I thought or read somewhere. Knowing me, I would have noted down where it came from.

In this moment, I am perched on the edge of a kitchen chair. It is not the most comfortable position and I could always scoot back. I don't know why I do this but I always have, probably because I used to work jobs where I needed to frequently alternate between standing and sitting. The light is dimmed and a candle is flickering in a cup next to me, a cup with a cat that appears to be sleeping in a fetal position with the words "Can't adult today" stylized around it. It is supposed to smell like green tea, but has a floral scent I can't put my finger on. My diary lies open on the opposite side, where I looked to get me going with this post, a book, another notebook, a small speaker, an assortment of wires and chargers within reach. The fridge just started rumbling in another cycle started off with a grunt, and there is an unnerving tapping noise in the heat pipe behind me by the window. 

ps: I am glad I have kept going with this blog. It feels like a cozy nook I've carved out for myself and gives me incentive to keep writing. I'm planning to build up the courage and share a little more about myself on here soon.