Sisyphus grows up. Or regresses. Your call.

I had an odd moment today, odd but pleasant.

I was sitting there this afternoon, pretending to read, and I was steadily growing hungry.

I swatted away the feeling like you might bat away a fly, but this niggling little feeling kept returning. And it was not a generalized feeling of hunger but a specific craving.

Waffles. I want waffles. With syrup.

Dude, I told myself, you can't have waffles, it's the middle of the afternoon! You need to have a snack, and then eat dinner.

But I don't want the leftovers right now. And I want waffles, insisted my gut.

Hmm. I have waffles. And I have syrup. I bought it on Saturday as a whim, since I never eat waffles usually.

But, dude! You can't just eat waffles! At 4 pm!

Why not? responded my gut. It's my fucking house. I am a grownup and get to do whatever I want. Who's going to stop me?

And here's the moment: suddenly, like a cloud breaking open and shining a heavenly sunbeam on me with choirs of angels singing, I was filled with the most incredible glee. Yes! Freedom! I can eat motherfucking waffles! At 4 pm! It was this sudden, extremely sharp emotional flashback to that moment when I had first moved out and had my own place and it hit me that nobody was going to care if I didn't come home! I could stay out all night and no one could stop me! I felt so exhilarated, so grown up, having this intense feeling that I had back when I was, what, 20? 21? And that sensation of being young and bright eyed and full of possibilities and the world is all your oyster and the angels are singing Gloria Deum Gloria Domine eat the waffles eat the waffles but I'm not actually listening because I'm turning to someone twelve years ago and saying, whoah, we don't have to go home just because the bar closed --- let's go watch the sun come up over the ocean and Proust may have had his madeleines but I have a little frozen disk of pastry embedded with blueberries and I am right there in that moment.

And I eat the motherfucking waffles.

(You know that if I didn't have teaching and driving around tomorrow (not to mention all my writing I need to get done) I'd be out at the bars tonight, even though I know I can't make it out on the town for an entire night. I have other stuff to blog, too. I'll be back. Maybe I'll post something before I go the the graduation thingy.)