Because I’ve never held up the small talk on my own, the Trader Joe’s checkout clerks always ask me if I’ve got anything else interesting going on later on Saturday after I buy my groceries.
I usually tell them, “Oh, Ingles. I’m doing the whole circuit.” We laugh a little. One of them replaces the spoiled items that I have idiotically put in my cart. They have an energy about it, and I thank them for all of it, and I leave.
If, though, I was being honest, on this particular Saturday, I would like to have said, “I’m gonna go to Ingles. And once I have every exact thing on my list in my car, I’m going to go home and stock my beautiful fridge, which has the little lights that come on automatically when you open the door (isn’t that wonderful? The lights turn on automatically when you open the door.) And I’ll close the door, take my hat off, shake my hair out, maybe comb the front of it a little because I like to look presentable all the time even if I never, ever see anyone, and I’ll make myself a cup of tea, and take it into my studio, and I’ll write.”
How am I doing it? How am I writing? It’s a great mystery. But it’s also quite simple: I am handling my stress through a thousand means. I’m pretty settled, pretty stable. And so with a fridge full of groceries, I can write.