I want I want I want

the tannin in the water like a lake full of root beer
Lake Prince 4/26/14

I want to learn how to fold a tiny paper crane. And plant a moon garden in containers. Maybe take piano lessons from my neighbor. I want to rip canvas off stretchers and bind them into a book the size of an atlas to house my abstract paintings. I want to write a poem. And publish another zine under my Extra Pickles Press concern from another lifetime ago. I want to cook a duck breast for dinner on a soon Sunday. And next Wednesday stop at Doumar's for a limeade on my way back from making the bank deposit at work. I want to mark x's, in big fat marker, to count down the days to Ann Arbor or Bust 2014 in October. I want to listen to The Civil Wars next album, the new one they haven't made yet, the one I so very much hope they get to eventually. I want to discover that someone, somehow, leaked the TCM 2014 Summer Under the Stars schedule somewhere on the internets so I can see if Jean Arthur gets her day this year.

And I want to write whatever I want here. Whenever and whyever I want.

I want I want I want.

No apologies for this all this wanting, which, for all its quantity, weighs not very much at all. As I knew it would, the new job jostled loose some fossilized and possibly irrational guilt I had around about my working life. My free time is bought and paid for now, truly free and clear, mine to do with whatever I want.

There's that word again.

* * *

Saturday. In his little boat on Lake Prince. We listened to the Beach Boys as he serpentined slowly, methodically, into and out of quiet, sun dappled coves along the shoreline looking for bass, while I sang along and watched turtles gather on fallen trees, and wrote, even though I never once touched the spiral notebook and pen I brought along.