The Floor Was Right There

October thirty-first. I got home at eight-fifteen, set my bag down next to the door, walked into the kitchen, and lay down on the floor. Not on the couch. The floor. There was no reason for this except that the floor was closer and I was done.

Tuesday sessions have been doing this to me more lately. I don't know if the routes have gotten harder or if I've gotten honest about how hard I'm actually pushing, but there's been a particular kind of tired at the end of the last few weeks that I don't remember from the fall clinic two years ago. The kind where you sit in the changing room for a beat longer than necessary and count it as rest. Tonight I apparently skipped the couch entirely and went straight to the floor, which I think means the climbing is working and also that I have no dignity left and possibly never did.

The water glass made it to the floor. That's as far as we got.

Gerald is looking good from down here, for what it's worth. I can see the underside of his trailing vine from this angle and it is doing great. The bowl on the shelf above the stove catches the overhead light differently from the floor than it does from standing height, warmer, somehow, the way light always turns out to be doing something you didn't notice until you're at the wrong elevation to have noticed it on purpose. I lay there for maybe twenty minutes. I had water. I did not eat Halloween candy because I do not have Halloween candy because I live on the third floor and no one has ever trick-or-treated up here. Both of these facts feel correct.

Happy Halloween. I hope wherever you are, you are either doing something fun or lying on a kitchen floor. Both are valid. Both are essentially the same thing.