The Lost Thing

This picture, I wonder. . . do I put it up on a Sunday?  Do people come to the blog on Sundays?  It is a beautiful picture, not to be wasted.  She looks to have grown too large for the frame, a sort of Alice in Wonderland thing.  Crammed in, cramped. 

I think I'll turn my attention to Cole Porter songs again.  I have a two CD collection somewhere that I don't seem to have downloaded.  One is playing on the radio just now, and it is lovely.  There is little that speaks to my sense of sophistication as does Cole Porter.  Or, perhaps, a good rendition of one of his songs. 

But damn. . . she's crowded into that frame. 

I have lost a lot of gut over the holidays.  It is a wonder, really, as I powered through them fueled by cocktails.  It was a sophisticated and mind numbing way, but now the time of daily cocktails must come to an end. Tomorrow I return to the factory.  I don't feel as though I had any vacation at all.  It is my fault, perhaps, for not doing anything at all.  But I have the sense of the season marked in images, static blocks of time without duration, of champagne and cocktails and rich bars and, of course, leather chairs and cocktail tables.

I guess I really didn't eat much.  I am wearing pants comfortably that I couldn't get into months ago.  And it helps that I am doing much more cardio in the gym.  I have not told you this for fear of jinxing myself, but I've been able to run a bit on my rehabbing knee.  Just a bit. . . but it gives me hope.  The old endorphins are popping again, and there is no better high than that.  And so, perhaps, endorphins over alcohol in the coming year?  Fingers crossed, old sport. 

Don't get me wrong.  I still have a belly.  And worse. . . (dare I say it--oy. . . shhhh). . . a back.  You know the one I mean, the one over the hips that causes a crease below the scapula.  It, too, though, is shrinking.  Oh, it could come back with the speed of light, but my new diet of meat and vegetables with very little wheat or dairy and plenty of grains in the morning and lots of water and no (goddamnit) pastries with morning coffee and no snacking on sweet things without thinking in the afternoons. . . well, who knew? 

And weight loss will be good for my knee. 

I've learned a thing in life.  I don't know if it is right or wrong and I am sure there is no right or wrong in this, but I've learned it.  And it is this.  When you lose one thing, you need to let go and try to find another (and I don't mean something like a belly).  Looking for the lost thing, that thing of desire . . . well, I've never found it very profitable.  The thing you lost was never the thing you thought you had at all.  Find it and see.  It is not what you remembered and longed for and cherished.  It is different and disappointing.  It is never what you remember.  Memories are pleasurable little lies. 

I slept an hour at a time last night but didn't wake up completely for a very long time.  Now the sun is up and the sky clearing and the day awaits with whatever it might hold.  I know a couple of things or three.  Brunch with a pal, the gym, and dinner with mother.  That leaves little time for much else.  And tomorrow, as I say, it is back to the factory.  I will have a new secretary and some old problems, but the landscape will be somehow different.  And I have a card up my sleeve.  I have lots of accumulated vacation time.  I will begin to use it.  It may be small trips, or it may be large, but I will be getting out of Dodge this winter and spring.  In that, there is hope. 

But really, has she grown since you began reading?  She just seems to be getting larger and larger.