Humor Me

I wonder if I've been too intense of late. Too serious. Too attached to my thoughts. There comes a time when everyone is too involved with their own minds. It's time to shuffle the deck, to loosen up. Winter is such a serious time--something about the starkness and bone chill that creates such an edge. I'm all for going inward, for confronting every mood, every trial of the heart. But I also know when to say when, and then to pull back and get unserious. Dance around the house to obscenely loud music, spend some time among the trees, goof off, relax. When I was in college and studying in Leiden, the Netherlands I used to take the train into Amsterdam. It was just a 20 minute ride. There was one night that I was returning to Leiden late, on the last train that ran there. I was so tired I thought I could just rest my eyes and they would open when the train pulled into the station. The next thing I knew I was being nudged awake by a conductor. In Luxembourg. On an empty train that was parked for the night. In a station that was closed. I remember thinking of all the other passengers on that train and what I must have looked like asleep like a pile of bricks as one by one they had to pass by me to exit the train at the stop that should have been mine! That kind of ridiculousness. That kind of loosening up. That's what I need.