Three Weeks Out

September sixth. I registered for a class. That sentence looks smaller on the page than it felt in the kitchen this morning, which is probably the right proportion for what it actually is, a circled line on a brochure, a tab closed, a confirmation email sitting in the inbox. But there is something about the gap between signing up and showing up that I have never quite figured out how to spend. Three weeks. I have already looked up what the room is like, whether there is parking nearby even though I take the bus, and what to wear, twice, for a class whose dress code is, I'm fairly certain, 'whatever.'

after

The prints are still leaning against the kitchen wall. Gerald's vine is doing something new with the September light, which is lower than August's and hits the shelf at a different angle now. The windowsill arrangement looks like it always looks, but fall light gives it a different quality, more considered, somehow, like it has been thinking. I stood at the counter with my coffee after I closed the registration tab and looked at the cord and the photographs and Carol's small object and I thought about how the cord didn't ask me to prepare for it, how I just tied the first knot and the rest followed. That is not a lesson I seem to be able to carry forward on demand.

Three weeks is long enough to talk myself out of it and back into it at least twice. I know this about myself. The brochure is closed on the counter now and I am leaving it there, which is either wisdom or procrastination and I won't know which until the first session. Either way, the line is circled. That counts for something.