25 Random Words Used In Present Tense Story 

Lizard – meal ticket – naughty – alphabetical – bean dip – telepathic – greeting card – hop – inject – justice – kite – landscape – plumber – quest – petunia – pneumonia – Mississippi – vestibule – oatmeal – sweet potato – wheeze – chin – vaporize – craft store – octopus 

My quest begins today. I suppose I could call it my once upon a time day. When someone finds this journal, hundreds of years from now, perhaps preserved in the muddy depths of a dried up and long-forgotten Mississippi river, they will know that today I am taking flight, like a kite.  

Today, I stand in the vestibule of a new beginning, ready to adorn a new cloak (metaphorically that is) before embarking on the rest of my life. I want to make a difference. I want to make it different. At least, this is what I contemplate over a bowl of oatmeal. There is something inherently simple and grounding about oatmeal. It is soothing, and I believe that as such it can be a cure for most ailments. At the very least, it brings comfort. 

Speaking of comfort, I must remember to get a greeting card for my neighbor who is fighting pneumonia, each wheeze taking a little less of his breath, day by day. This expressed concern for others, too, is instrumental to the new landscape of my life. Like a flower, say, a petunia maybe, returns the attention to the things that are essential, simply by virtue of being there, seeing it.  

The mundane. I must remember to embrace the mundane. The plumber just arrived, to repair the misbehaving faucet. He works alone, managing to reach all the valves and turn one left as he tightens a screw to the right. Or maybe it’s the other way around. He has the dexterity of an octopus. I like to watch him work.  

The mundane also consists in navigating the day in between meals. It’s that simple, really. This morning, oatmeal; bean dip with sourdough bread and a salad for lunch. I feel like steak and a sweet potato for dinner. Noticing one’s feelings, that in itself is delicious. Life is like carrying around a meal ticket every day, only, we forget to say thank you when it is served. We take it for granted. We might as well inject ourselves with liquefied food. Could we tell the difference? Yes. The mere thought of it restores to eating its utter uniqueness.  

I imagine a world where, in order to taste everything, we live and act and eat in alphabetical order every day. One letter must follow another at the beginning of the name of each meal and each task. This is how we decide what’s next. Then, we stop to contemplate the littlest accomplishment. A lizard knows this. They’re always motionless after each meal and upon reaching each new branch or rock. They do not know the alphabet, but they know how to pause and rest their chin long enough. Sometimes longer.  

The craft store is open late today. Ah, there I go, again. I hop from one thought to the other. Enough to make a lizard dizzy. I vaporize my thoughts upon each moment, randomly. Yet somehow they are strung together, like ideas shared in a long, telepathic message. They descend upon me.  

It feels naughty, really, to indulge in so much inner conversation. It is an assault to silence. What right do I have to be so scattered even as I embark on a more peaceful journey? It is hardly fair to the process. Is there any justice in it? Yes. I believe there is. It all boils down to the mundane and taking note of it as it passes; for its passing is but an illusion and the noticing and naming of it grounds us in the present. All of this, and I am barely out of that vestibule.