Last Tuesday, my friend, Sam, surprised me with a visit to headquarters during blog hours. He'd been at the pool. My pool, I like to say, though you should all know when I say I'm "swimming," that what I'm doing is sitting at a computer in a cafe across from a pool, dry as a scone. Sam came in around one or two. His hair was wet, and when we squeezed, I checked him for chlorine. He hoped he'd washed it all out, he said, and when he said it, I sniffed his 6th chakra and flashed back to a Pert Plus commercial from the 80s, where ladies who had enough time to swim every day but not enough time to condition after shampooing found their lives salvaged by a shampoo and conditioner in one. Green tile. White towels. Ladies locker room. The tilted head towel dry. Fresh faced smile.  And it's gentle enough to use every day.

I decided to pretend it was still Sam's birthday and that his surprise visit to me was actually my surprise brunch for him. He agreed to this, and ordered something like breakfast and lunch in one. We talked about things. Stuff that happened, stuff that was ninety seven percent going to happen. In the middle of it, Sam described a feeling I have had but never before named.

"...well we were going to watch it, but then it was getting late and he was like, guys, are we really about to put on a two and a half hour movie, because it seems like that's not what we're doing, and I was like, yeah, probably not, so we ended up playing Mario Kart 64 on the Wii 'virtual console,' which we had somehow never done before, even though it was right there, and I thought, god, this could be my life all the time. I could do this every night. Why didn't I do this until now?"

I promptly identified several other instances where this thought has emerged. Discovering a simple and delicious combination of sandwich ingredients. Buying flowers for the apartment. Yogurt and figs for breakfast. Playing my viola. Sitting in, instead of walking by, the park across the street. I didn't tell Sam all of them. "I bet I'll feel that way about swimming once I start doing it. One day I'll be so into swimming that I won't believe I lived next to a pool for 5 years and never used it."

"What about the bathing suit thing?"

"Yeah, I don't know, I'll have to get over the bathing suit thing."

"There are lots of different kinds you know."

"Yeah, I guess."

There are 3 ideas in here that I can see. The most obvious one is how mind-bendingly common it is to miss what is right in front of us. So much of the time, the good thing we want feels much further away than it is, so much so that we don't reach for it at all. It seems like it should be harder to get to, I guess. For example, I am like this about mopping my floor. I don't mop my floor unless I have an entire day free to do it. Mopping my floor takes 20 minutes, guys. And every single time I say to myself, "Huh, that was fast. And now the floor is so much better. I should do this every week. Why don't I do this every week? I could be a person whose floor is always really clean. Those people are awesome."

Idea number two, a more interesting idea, I think, is the notion that we, and when I say we I mean me, as soon as we experience something nice - a moment of calm, beauty, delight, satisfaction - the first goddamned thing we do is LEAVE that moment where the good this is happening and jump to all future moments where the good thing ISN'T, in order to try to schedule the future moments with the present moment we are then ignoring. You see how crazy that is, right?

I can't remember what I thought Idea number three was, but number two is plenty for now. What is it that makes us so insecure? And I guess I'll just go ahead and say me. Why do I feel so terribly uncomfortable not knowing the future? Am I the first person to ever be in the dark about it? I am not. Has my experience not shown me that 1) I can access a reasonably satisfying pleasure if I would do the things I know to do that make it happen and that 2) even if I don't do anything I know to do, once in a while, and fairly regularly, I will stumble upon a moment of well-being? It has. And it has shown me that the moment will go away. And another one will happen. Actually, I guess I do know the future, in a way. I just don't know the details.

The thing I find truly baffling is, after ages and ages of evidence that 100 percent of feelings are temporary how come humans were born craving eternal love? Why do we want forever things? What is up with lifetime promises? Why does change shock and traumatize us? Where did I get the idea that I should have security and commitment? I find this utterly amazing. Nothing in my experience has shown me that that is a reasonable expectation, and yet, I am constantly dodging my very best moments by trying to re-book them.

After the birthday brunch with Sam, later in the evening last Tuesday, I did exactly that thing. The night was cool enough and warm enough and I took a walk in it. By accident or alignment, things came together and I felt happiness, I think. My very first thought after the happiness thought was that I ought to recreate the events leading up to the happiness feeling again the following Tuesday, which is today. So far, I have done almost everything I did last Tuesday, and I do not feel the same at all. Later on I will be doing more or less what I did in the evening last week, and it, too, will not be the same.

Can I change the subject? This is bumming me out.

A long time ago, maybe 15 years or something, and you know, it feels really weird to say shit like that, but anyway, some time ago I remember my sister getting really into the Yeast Connection diet. I mean, REALLY into it, which, like being gluten free or raw vegan or whatever, is the only way to be into it at all. My fiance at the time (haha, yeah, what? I'll tell you later) was on some Sugar Busters thing, too, and the Eat Right 4 Your Type deal, so like, everything was contraband, and life sucked a little, because I was constantly having to defend my reasons for not having reasons to eat what I was eating. At some point, Katie asked me, how, if I didn't have any rules, did I decide what to eat. I told her a lie that turned out to be a good idea.

"I think about what it would be like to eat that thing every day of my life. If my life gets better, it is a green light. If not, it is a yellow light."

"Huh. Are there any red lights?"

"No. I don't think so. I think red lights are a red light. The rules are, take it easy, change things up."

"That seems like a good way to do it. I have been making a list of the diet and exercise program that would be perfect for me to do every day, so I don't have to think about it. I'm going to do a little research and then once I find out what the best foods are, I can make recipe cards for variations of the ingredients on days that my schedule is weird and I can't do the same thing."

"That's the opposite of what I'm saying."

"It is?"

"Yeah. I'm saying THINK about what it would be like to eat a thing every day, but don't DO it. Do different things."

My point. I have an actual list of the things I wish I would like to include in my hourly agenda. Some of them are chores, some of them are pleasures. A few of them are people. I look at that list and I get my mind blown on how perfect life would be if I would just do what the paper says. Just put the shampoo and conditioner in one bottle and use it every damn day, Karen. Daily, moderate practice coupled with regular vegetables and socializing at intervals make for temperate moods, steady love, stable work, you'd think. But this is not how it breaks down, friends. It doesn't break down like this at all.

At 7:16 a.m. on Thursday, I texted Sam to tell him that "this could be my life all the time" was going to be my theme song for the week, and then I kept it with me. Every day I watched myself grasp moments, some of them memories I tried to revive, and some gloriously present suspensions I abandoned to re-book for later. I did some same-things with different results, I did some different-things with same results. None of it made sense except the changes.

Today it is Tuesday and I am in the same cafe. I didn't get to keep my regular table because I had to run out around ten for a bit. No one surprised me for lunch. It is hotter this Tuesday, but I don't mind as much as I did some weeks ago. Tonight I'll go to dance rehearsal, like last Tuesday, and I'll practice moving through space balanced on asymmetrical crutchwings, which is - holy shit, so much better a metaphor for what I am talking about that I can't believe it got lost under Mario Kart 64. Next Tuesday for sure I'll write to you about dancing on a moving surface. I mean, unless things are different by then.