Odpoczynek

I’m couchsurfing right now. That’s the view from my bedroom window, and I have a door that I can close to take a nap, without having to worry that three or four other people will come in during and start rustling around in crinkly plastic bags, unpacking fake Dolce&Gabbana sunglasses, rip off Prada purses, and copy Rolex watches. Ahhhhhh…! Traveling has renewed my appreciation for doing nothing. I’ve always been a fan of it, but people look at you funny when you tell them you’re not doing anything on Saturday night, a holiday weekend, for your birthday, or as a career. People want answers, and “nothing” is not enough. So, you either start doing something, or start making stuff up. It’s exhausting. Actually, you can also just let people look at you funny. I guess that’s OK too.

I really gained a respect for doing nothing in Los Angeles, where a social life can be expensive and hard to get to in traffic. I protested on Friday and Saturday nights, opting instead to take walks, read books, and get in bed by 10:00, so much so that I couldn’t manage to stay up later than that even when there was something I wanted to do. When people would invite me to do things after 10:00, I would spend the day getting psyched on it, and almost always without fail I would cancel at 9:30. Thus began the phase in my life in which people started calling me grandma. I embrace it, welcome it, and love it in fact. You all go out and lead interesting lives. I’ll stay home and knit you some socks.

I also have a renewed appreciation for chemicals. Early on I ran out of a few key ingredients for the recipe of feeling fresh and clean; shampoo, conditioner, and deodorant. In London I picked up some natural deodorant, and in essence what I actually did was toss my five pound note into the toilet and flush it. Regardless of the fact that all it did was make me feel slippery, I was religiously rolling it on, at the bare minimum there was at least some placebo effect. And my hair, it didn’t smell, but it was awful and twiggy, impossible to brush, and I just let it go on like this for a long stretch because I couldn’t find the right stuff. Someone told me Koreans are lacking some enzyme that causes you to have body odor, so they don’t need deodorant. They really hit the jackpot on that one, but it was a bad deal for me because I couldn’t find any of the real stuff for a month, and then I kind of forgot what deodorant was really suppose to do. Finally I’ve found some with real Alzheimer’s causing, effective, and flowery smelling chemicals in it. It’s stupendous. I also got back in the swing of things with my hair and I’ve been walking around absentmindedly stroking it. I look insanely vain, but I don’t care, it’s too damn soft to not pay it any attention. I used to sort of have a suspicion that none of this stuff really did anything, that they were just selling us goo to smear on ourselves that would give us cancer so then we’d have to go to the hospital and pay for that too. That could still be true, but at least I know for certain now that I’m getting what I paid for. Yay for chemicals!

Did you see Harry Potter? I’ve got to admit, Neville Longbottom’s speech at the end got me all choked up.