Yellow Light

The yellow light comes at around four o’clock every day. In the narrow passageway between the livingroom and the diningroom at the foot of the stairs leading up to the bedrooms, sunlight streaming through the windowed doors to the patio meets the light coming in from the kitchen window. The glorious color resulting from this concatenation lasts for about fifteen minutes. If I can arrange to be sitting in a chair having a cup of coffee and enjoying a cigarette, and observe this manifestation, all is right with the world for another day. I’m a simple man. It takes something as small as that to keep me happy.
However, if I’m busy or somewhere else at that time of the afternoon, and I miss my light fix, I feel lost and the day seems wrong, which implies that perhaps I am not such a simple man. If I put such store in this one poetic moment, maybe I need to get a life, as they say.
Day after tomorrow, I leave for New York, and although I can visualize the details of my apartment, I wonder what I will find there. My brother and Charlene have lived there now for more than two years, and they had made changes before I went home last time.
I have my present firmly fixed in my mind’s eye. Please let me recognize my past and keep it in perspective, and not let it interfere with my future.
Time plays a game with or without our sanction. We are the chess pieces. Whenever we stop to observe, we are on different squares from whence we began, never forgetting we are looking to mate to win.

Flying Home

It’s 10:00 pm Sunday, and I have lived alone here for a week. I have finished my summer course and this Thursday I will be flying to New York. I have spoken to A pretty much every day via Messenger (sometimes with webcam) and/or phone. He seems to have gotten through his first week of classes without too much ruckus and this weekend he went to visit his family in Ontario, near Los Angeles, I think. I haven’t had any difficulty being here by myself. During the week I had homework assignments to keep me busy, and I did a bit of house cleaning and washed some laundry.
I have done some work preparing for my upcoming classes, but no personal writing. I read Philip Larkin’s A Girl in Winter and think it will become one of my favorites. It was so appropriate for my time right now. I need to get some more of my books from New York because when I get in a melancholy mood some of them help me regain my perspective—my personal perspective, that is, which I know is kind of tepid and old-fashioned, but I don’t think that will change much at this point in my life.
Tomorrow night I’m supposed to meet Calvin for a drink and some conversation—looking forward to that.
I can’t believe I only have three more days here!

Alone

It is 6:30 on a Saturday. My first day completely alone here in Mexico. A has gone to San diego for a month-long course. I have Module 5 left next week of my Capacitación en Verano, and then on the 15th I am going to New York. Both of us should be returning to Tuxtla on August 4th. Without a friend here, I am bored already, and the 15th seems so far away.
I know I have complained quite a bit about the situation here, but this morning I was more upset to be facing this time alone. Of course, I can read or write without interruptions. I am sitting around too much lately. I have put on weight. My goal is to lose some of it during this novel adventure. I have vowed not to eat any red meat for a month, but now I’m longing for a burger. I have vowed many things over time and have found it difficult to follow through. This is something I kind of have to do, however, as very few articles of clothing fit properly. A month is not very much time to achieve a goal, but it could provide the spur I need to make some headway.
I need to keep busy to avoid feeling sorry for myself. I know many of my problems are of my own making. I just have to discover the way to unmake them. Easier said than done.