Days

Why does the positive have to add up to the negative - cancel it out, outweigh it?

Why is it that we make judgements on blocks of 24 hours and label them “good” or “bad?”

My day yesterday was so many things. I sat down and started to work, and within an hour was flooded with anger at myself, impatience at the process, helplessness, loneliness. I went to a museum and saw giant abstract paintings, watched a light rain fall in the sunshine on a pond in the sculpture garden, the drops illuminating like sparks as they hit the water. Time stopped. I spent an hour on hold with some corporate bureaucracy. I worked on a painting. I had a medium sized panic attack. I drank a cup of tea and stared, content, up at the hillside and the sky. I made dinner and snuck onto the balcony off of one of my roommate’s rooms to catch the tail end of the sunset. I watched a buddy I toured with almost five years ago perform an open-hearted set of his always poignant songs at a quiet venue and had a flashback to twenty-two. I drank a couple beers. I laid in bed trying to shake the uneasy rage that resurfaced from the morning, frustrated that I understood why it was there, why it was useless, but still couldn’t cut it loose.

That wasn’t nearly all negative. It was mostly interesting. It wasn’t all good. Some moments were painful. Some were contradictory, or overlapping, or oddly complimentary: Beauty and sadness, anger and understanding, fear and loneliness, happiness despite physical discomfort. I guess I could call it good, but why worry whether it was good or bad, if my life is exciting enough, or happy enough, or if I’m appreciating it enough. You’re not present with thoughts like that. You’re not savoring any moment. And what’s the measurement for any of this? Other peoples lives?! Who knows what they’re experiencing! You can’t touch their reality. You can’t get in there and feel it.

All I can say is - good or bad, yesterday happened.

And now it’s today.