Dear Ruthi,

For a good chunk of time on the drive to Florida I thought about pool – another one of my used-to-bes. It’s an exaggeration to say I spent more time in pool halls than I did lecture halls in my years at university, but not much of an exaggeration. And I got good. I’ve been itching to play and I wondered on the drive, if I’m still a descent shot. Undoubtedly I’m rusty, but will the balance and physics come back fully and quickly? Or do I have to start over with those mechanics and angles you speak of? I’m not interested in starting over. And I wonder if there are any nice tables in town.

For a skilled player, closer and angled can be much better than straight but far. And perhaps meandering is about going left in order to head right, but that’s also exactly how skilled pool is played. You shoot to the left to send the ball to the right. To find any sort of flow, you best learn how to put a spin on it so as to set yourself up for the next one. 

What am I talking about?! I should be going to bed not putting shit words down because it’s my turn. That’s not what I’m aiming for.

You talk about the things you’re not good at and I speak of the things I used to be good at. I wonder what happens if we speak into what we want to be good at. Where do we want to end up? Sure let’s sink the next ball, but what’s the shot after? 

I don’t want to run to stand still anymore. I don’t want to take potshots at a white ball and hope for the best that my stripe goes down. I want to run the table. And I want to feel the skill, the power, and the pleasure of the grace of the game played well. I want that excellence. I want it back. I want it forward. I’m so sick and tired of looking and hoping for some meaning in the mundane. Fuck mundane. Give me greatness.

Give me a cupcake that is not only gorgeous but is the best one I’ve ever tasted – the icing, the cake – flawless. Excellence. And I don’t even like cupcakes. Enough with this mundane bullshit of a life of laundry and food prep and picking up all the shit and the social coordination of really little people who really have no right to a social life despite what our current parenting culture has to say on the matter, and then the fatness and the frumpiness and the bags and the embarrassment. I’m done. 

Until tomorrow, when I get up and keep doing the same old shit.

There ya go. That’s me unfolded. Day 24. Happy Lent.

With love (and a whole heap of anticipated regret),

Jules

(gotta love profanity and pretty, pink, pipped posies)