Return of The Great Procrastinator
Yesterday, I found the cupcake that changed my life. It called to me, drew me in, on a day when Mayona and I had a conversation about magnetism and the shifting poles of the Earth and other planets. She and Theresa and I had just seen Al Gore’s film about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, and we felt like also staying for a second movie but needed to pass 45 minutes so we strolled the shopping center there in Emeryville between movies. And there it was. I saw it from above. From our second story perch at the Bay Street AMC Theaters, the first thing I noticed was Teacakes, a wonderful little shop on the corner of the outdoor mall. I found my way irresistibly to it, and there were the cupcakes of my dreams. They looked like cartoon cupcakes, the most irresistible of all, with lovely light pink frosting. I bought a vanilla cupcake and was transported immediately to cupcake heaven. I waited all my life for that cupcake. The frosting was ever so fluffy and soft, and deliciously sweet and tasting of Madagascar vanilla, and how else can I say it? - Heaven. I have arrived. That cupcake, in all its wonderful indescribability, has left me a changed woman. It was a stone dropped in the pond. The waves are lapping at the shore, and there grows a wildflower or two, which will drop seeds of their own as the seasons change. Who knows where those seeds will blow? Just as the cupcake drew me in (and I found it to be the most utterly delicious taste treat I could ever imagine, even though I was on a puppy-belly full stomach already from La Mediterranee lunch followed by big movie popcorn), it pushed me forward too, into new realms where I could drop everything and just sit down and write, like I used to, just write, because I have something to say, some bit of my life I want to record for posterity. I don’t have time for this. And is that not the point? How can I afford or manage to sit down and write anything, let alone some schlock about a silly cupcake, when my mail heap is piled a foot high, my email box is up to 300 items, my to-do list is unmanageable, my priorities are chaotic, my fingers continue to be chewed, my everything, everything, everything is behind, behind, behind? What can I say? That cupcake was poetry. And I need poetry in my life.You don’t walk away and say, “Naa,” when a cupcake like that calls to you. And you don’t wait for the desk heap to be all neatly cleared before you stop to write a poem. You can’t put off going to the beach and reading in the sun with a dear friend just because your checkbook remains to be balanced. You never know when the polarity of the Earth will shift. Bon appétit, life!