Life of Fox
(Author’s note: this entry was brought to you by a delicious bottle of Australian Gewürztraminer/Riesling – I apologize for the inappropriate use of grammar.)
The other morning I woke up dressed in my sister’s clothes. Rolling off her couch and into the washroom, I was shocked to find the reflection of her gray blouse staring back at me in the mirror. Taking a moment to critique the fashion piece before questioning it, I noted that the fit was all wrong: the cut around the neck was much too low and my red chest hair was by no means a replacement for great cleavage. After I was content with my “what not wear when cross-dressing” assessment, I then began to question why I was put to sleep in the wrong gender. Fortunately the answer did not take me to long to figure out; because with one sweep of the tongue, I discovered that what I thought was lipstick (naturally completing the ensemble) was in fact a $24 sangiovese-merlot.
In The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle writes about how our lives follow a similar track as roller coasters do. When they climb, so do we. On the up and up, it is during these times that we feel our day-to-day existence could not get any better: we meet “the one,” get the job we always dreamed of and discover that instant coffee can taste just the same as drip. But of course what goes up must come down. And when gravity takes over as the roller coaster inevitably falls, we are strapped in for the ride with no clue where life will turn or when it will slow to a stop.
Evidenced from the latest series of last call charges on my VISA bill, it appears my twenty-something ride is nowhere close to being over. If last year my life was checked into the heartbreak hotel, then this year it is an out-patient at the Betty Ford clinic. Returning my sister her shirt with a humiliated smile, I felt fatigued at the fact my name-tag still read “hot mess.” Maybe it was just my liver that was clouding my judgment at the time, but for the first time I actually felt like my life was in dire need of a change; and not just from Bombay to Hendricks, but from someone who goes to bed at six to a person who wakes up at a quarter passed that.
The last time I worked 9 to 5, I swore I would never go back to clocking in Monday to Friday again. The words of Pi Patel in the first chapter of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi could have not been closer to my own: I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted thought it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he is not careful (6). Except now that I have gotten rid of the tie altogether, I think I want it back. And so I have started to look for daytime work in hopes that I will start getting to bed at a more decent hour. Either that or I will just get an earlier start on my hangovers each day.
