paying later

I want the smell of a grill in my nostrils. Charred bell peppers, onions, chicken. “Is it done yet?” I want to be fully immersed in that moment’s entire purpose, which is checking if the food is ready. Flipping and sizzling. Just me and the food, ensuring light scorches all around. I want the kind of light that happens just after sunset on the beach in summer, clear and luminous but purple and hazy, suspending you in time, lapping up the entire sky.

Yesterday I told my therapist I wanted— needed— my brain to be simpler.

He laughed and told me that brains are meant to be sorting, synthesizing, shaping, searching. That the brain never stops these motions, it’s quite literally human nature. That they will do this forever and ever. The brain doesn’t make decisions, he told me, your gut does. You have a feeling, an emotional reaction to whatever your brain is presenting you with, and that’s when your brain stops the madness and says ‘Ah yes, this is the answer! This is what you’ve been looking for!’

Brains are actually sort of dumb that way, I’m realizing. Just scrolling through embryonic ideas, concepts real and fake, true and false, loud and quiet. Mulling over minutae in perpetuity.

Mine tries to do everything perfectly, even though it knows by now that that’s the very reason for its own dysfunction. It literally can’t help itself, poor thing.

-

If something is wrong, please God, let it feel sharp, intense, acute. All I ask is that it slices cleanly, that I can point out the exact spot on the epidermis where the blood is pouring from, that there’s an obvious reason explaining the hurt.

I ask that pain always be clear and obvious, even if it’s a lot to handle. Especially when it’s a lot to handle.

-

Last week in Rome I went to this wine bar that is ‘my kind of wine bar’ which means that the service is relaxed and there is little performance to the space. It’s a big room with a lot of bottles and scattered chairs and tables. Most importantly, it’s charming because it’s clear that humans made it, and not because they tried to make it charming with trendy curves and squiggles and cutesy menus like every new spot in the Lower East Side and Williamsburg. And most most importantly, the wine is a normal price, not a freak number like $17 a glass.

I stopped in for a single glass to kill a half hour and I tried to pay right away and the woman said “no, no, pay later. Always better to pay later.” She smiled, certain of this.

I thought about it for a minute and felt confounded because all I ever do is try to finish tasks, like paying the bill, as soon as possible. I am a machine built to handle tasks first, enjoy myself later. This is the holy order of me. I hate asking for the check, waiting for the check, dealing with the check. I hate knowing that I can’t leave if I haven’t paid the check yet.

You eat the vegetables on your plate first so you can enjoy the starches and protein. Duh!

But paying later simply means living now, is what the woman in the wine bar implied. It can be that easy, actually. I think. I hope.

-

Loose ends keep showing up on my doorstep. They’re endlessly bothersome, at best, and when I'm weak, they’re a legitimate threat. Hence my growing desire to focus on the nuts and the bolts.

I want to focus on questions like, What am I feeling right now? I want to operate by asking myself, So that event is over, what would you like to do next?

I crave harmony in my choices. I am tired of the paralyzing need to mull every single goddamn thing over.

It isn’t so complicated, what I need to focus on. On slicing the bell peppers, one at a time, a simple chop one after the other. On listening to the current moment, deciding what it calls for. On ignoring the impulse to do the future’s bidding. On honoring things as they come. On paying later.