So you want to be a rock ‘n’ roll star.

[Pilcro & The Letterpress cords (Anthropologie) + vintage Key West t-shirt + vintage squash blossom + Jeffrey Campbell fringed booties. Photos courtesy Lizzie Oglesby!]

Noted while riding bike this morning down Monument Avenue: old man on sidewalk with hands in pockets, standing stock still, surveying successful set up of sprinkler unit jackhammering away in his front yard. And I thought, when’s the last time I just stood in one place and surveyed the hell out of something awesome I’d done?

Still working really hard on “being present”—a notion I’ve been reassessing since Arax noted it here. Still sucking at it, too.

It sort of hits me like a lightning bolt when I am feeling present, though. Today I was pumping gas, without the added awesomeness of being 10 minutes late for something—the first time in like 6 years, I’m pretty sure—and there was this bird singing away on a telephone pole. I watched him for a bit while waiting for the receipt to print. I usually call that receipt printer an SOB, and not in an inside voice. So that felt present-ish.

That dude made me want to be old [briefly]. Because being young is such a bloody rate race: Maximize! Minimize! Crucial adjustments! Notice this! Forget that! Only young once! Sleep is for chumps! Moisturize, vitamize, less bacon—pfft.

Kind of makes me want to get old… and stare at my damned sprinkler.

But only if I can still fit in these pants. And pants peeing remains strictly a novelty, not the norm.

-Carey

p.s. Specialist of thanks to my dearest LO for the photos, the first person to actually do photo shoots of me—in Lennon sunglasses, back in the day! Her prompts are still as effective as way back, when she’d tell me to picture her hot cousin to get me to pull a serious face. Tito shirtless… mmm.