Visual Cliff

This is ramblings for you Midnight Marauders. This is what's left after today because I decided to stay in instead of go out dancing tonight. This is why I still can't sleep because I refuse to take pills for that sort of thing anymore. This is for those of you perhaps reading with one eye open, tucked in with some sleek device. This is me without many boundaries.

This is me on a Visual Cliff.

*********

Today at lunch Liz asked me the question that I fear more than any other

What do you want?

And I didn't skip a beat telling her that I have no clue. None whatsoever.

Frankly? That terrifies me - but I also find it exhilarating.

I rattled off a handful of places. Los Angeles. New York. Amsterdam. Hawaii. Miami. Atlanta. We settled on Atlanta as the most intriguing.

But I am Peck's Bad Girl, so there is no telling how that could turn out.

*********

Nina has this habit of telling me things about myself that I wouldn't let anyone else say without reading them the riot act. I guess that's what I pay her for.

She likens me to Scarlett O'Hara - fiddle dee dee and all of that. And though I wouldn't shrug at using my drapes to make a fantastic gown, I think I am more Holly Golightly.

I remember distinctly that very scene where I identified with her. She was having a surprise visit by that pseudo handsome neighbor boy and in a scramble to get ready. She had him zip her up, I think. She was putting her hair into some sort of glamorous french twist and couldn't find her shoe and she got fancier and fancier even as her conversation and searching grew more hectic.

She was getting ready to visit someone in Sing Sing.

Oh, I don't know when it was that I first saw that movie. 10 years ago? Maybe more?

But it started way prior to that, you see. And I do exhibit some symptoms. So I will partially accept this label, this Peck's Bad Girl syndrome, for as long as it takes to feel I've shaken it. Or at least made it a pretty gown out of my curtains and gotten it into a cab to Sing Sing.

Maybe then I'll buy some furniture and give the cat a name.

Or so I was thinking.

**********

I'm no expert, but there's this thing that happens with babies. When they fall and look up at you and if you're all lighthearted and "hey there little foot, took a tumble?" they kinda dust off and get up and go about their business. But if you're all freaked out and gasping or rushing over, they start bawling like they broke a bone or something.

You know that thing? I'm googling left and right but all I can find is The Moro Reflex and something called a Visual Cliff. Both interesting. But neither is the thing that I was talking about just now.

But that got me started in another direction. So maybe this makes sense after all.

I'm up against a Visual Cliff, you see. No real danger - just a vague sketch of an edge that could *maybe* *possibly* be something I should worry about.

And then in a single day 4 of my friends tell me that they are concerned for me. And all of a sudden I feel like that baby and I understand now why they cry when they see that worried look on our faces.

A lack of faith is tragic. Worth crying about. More so when you are the cause of it.

*********

What do I want?

That's the Visual Cliff, I think. This should be a simple enough decision. I just have to stop looking back over my shoulder, as it isn't doing me much good.

Onward, upward and hopefully to sleep with me.

G'night.