honey

I'm on the schedule at work today until 6, but Linda let me go twenty minutes ago even though I desperately wanted to take the table of two guys on a business meeting, one of whom looked like a European biking-backpacker and the other of whom looked like a rugged Australian outback guide.  Desperately.

I finished reading The Help, which galvanized me to write.  That's how I know it's a good book, or a good poem, if it makes me want to do it too.  It doesn't happen very often anymore.

In fact, I've realized over the past two days that I've been avoiding writing for a few months now, even this whole year.  Academic papers are easy to write, and I even enjoy writing them; but there's less of me in them and therein lies the appeal.  Like Eminem said, way back when: I got some skeletons in my closet and I don't know if no one knows it, so before they throw me inside my coffin and close it I'm gon expose it.  Not that my skeletons are particularly grimy but there are definitely some bones in that closet I've been meaning to clear out for awhile now, I just haven't been ready to grab them and pull them out quite yet.  Maybe I'll even bleach them and string them onto a really pretty necklace.

Too far?  What I'm getting at is: emotional baggage.  So many of us are still carrying around what feels like literal tons of pain and I've been saying for awhile now that I'm worried no one will want to share mine with me.  What I'm realizing now is, I just feel guilty sharing it.  And I know a bunch more people who do.  As Liz said last night, "I think we're all kind of starting to realize the gravity of love and heartbreak."  Beautifully put, and painfully true.

I'm a little bitter, sorry to say.  And I want to sweeten up so I can get on with my life and carry honey with me instead of oil.  This is important because it comes up every time I speak to anyone, especially someone I've never spoken to before.

But I've still got some, even if I try to stretch every bottle to ridiculous extents.  Honey is one of the hottest items in our pantry.  This morning I had it on toast and in both tea and yogurt (yes, separately).  Unfortunately it's very expensive, especially the pure local kind which, I've heard, assuages allergies to local irritants (and anything that eases allergies sans side effects is starting to look REALLY attractive right about now).  Maybe, if I wasn't plagued by apiphobia, and if I had more time, I could get my own hive and harvest my own honey and eat as much of it as I possibly could.

...Or maybe I should just skip the middlemen and become the queen bee myself.