I’m not home much these days. I spend most of my spare time in Norwalk, dropping off a friend to work at 6:30 am and then waiting until 3pm when he’s ready to go to his doctor appointments.
By 6:40 am, I’m usually next to a Starbucks. In the car, I chant my 11 minutes of Kundalini yoga meditation and then wrap my tefillin and daven shacharit in the parking lot, standing towards the rising sun.
I have breakfast of a couple of hard-boiled eggs and a Balance bar and a piece of fruit. Then I chew gum for a few minutes and walk into the Starbucks and order my first iced-tea Passion with two Splendas.
The staff know my name and my order.
My first drink of the day costs me $2.10 and then refills are only 50c. I usually get three.
Following the directions of Julia Cameron, I write out in long-hand three pages of what is on my mind. Here’s an excerpt from today:
I walked under the gum trees and smelt Australia. I stopped, turned off the concrete sidewalk, and went directly under the four trees, looking for fresh eucalyptus leaves.
I found one that was still a bit green and I crushed it in my fingers and then brought it to my nose and smelled the land down under. I closed my eyes and waxed sentimental.
The pale bark of the trunk lured me and I walked over and caressed it. Then looking around to make no one was watching, I embraced the tree.
I used to do that a lot when I was shomer negiyah.
With my crumpled eucalyptus leaf in my hand, I read Rabbi Hayim H. Donin’s To Pray as a Jew and then Richard Ellmann’s magnificent biography of James Joyce — the best literary biography of the century according to Anthony Burgess.
I make some blog posts via my Blackberry on YourMoralLeader.Blogspot.com.
At noon, I drive back to the office complex and park in the shade. I eat lunch — three granola bars with spoonfulls of peanut butter — while listening to KPCC.
Then I find a cool piece of concrete to nap on — my head on top of Ellmann’s book — and then after 40 minutes, I’m off to the Norwalk County Library to read about "Nabokov in America."
I take my time with the Lolita chapters.
It’s 2:30 pm. Time to head back for one more quick nap and then the long drive home.
