We've got rough patches and easy streets. Weeks that move like months and days that last a year. This past week, I've known each stretch. In the spirit of William Stafford's Things I Learned Last Week, I offer my own (puny and profound) nuggets:
Things I Learned Last Week
1.
Athleisure is mostly leisure.
Is everyone exercising, or just wearing lycra and driving to the store for more Cheetos?
2.
Baby bangs favor no one.
I know because in 1999 I tried blunt, super-short bangs and my already-full face took on funhouse mirror proportions. It was the longest growout in history, rivaling that of my current bad hair situation: short-in-the-back, long-in-the-front, otherwise known as the reverse mullet or the midlife mom cut.
3.
It's not cars or coal destroying the planet — it's cows!
No really. My sources are legit: a former cattle rancher, National Geographic, and the documentary Cowspiracy.
4.
I'm not alone, and poems prove it.
Ada Limon shares my love of quiet (and my disdain for phone calls):
The Quiet Machine
I'm learning so many different ways to be quiet. There's how I stand
in the lawn, that's one way. There's also how I stand in the field
across from the street, that's another way because I'm farther from
people and therefore more likely to be alone. There's how I don't
answer the phone, and how I sometimes like to lie down on the
floor in the kichen and pretend I'm not home when people knock.
There's daytime silence when I stare, and a nighttime silent when I
do things. There's shower silent and bath silent and California silent
and Kentucky silent and car silent and then there's the silence that
comes back, a million times bigger than me, sneaks into my bones
and wails and wails and wails until I can't be quiet anymore. That's
how this machine works.
- Ada Limon
from Bright Dead Things
5.
The answer is gin.
On those gravel-in-the-shoe sort of days (or weeks), gin and a friend provide solace and grins (emphasis on friend, because drinking martinis by yourself is just sad).
Your turn: What have you learned?