Just one sentence

You know how sometimes you fall behind? Like, maybe there’s something you need to do. I dunno, something small, an it’ll-take-ten-minutes sort of thing?  Could involve updating something, a blog, maybe. Something. And yet you don’t do it? There’s no reason, and you’ve never had trouble before. You just don’t ever seem to get to it? Ever?

It’s not that there’s nothing to say. There might be plenty to say. Of course there’s plenty to say; there’s always something to say. There’s good stuff, heartbreaking stuff, fungus, polenta, all of it. And you want to write about it, you do, all of it, and sometimes you even lie awake composing things in your head. But then morning comes, and you get up and somehow just don’t have it in you anymore. You look at the computer and think, “nah.”

And it gets to the point that you are looking at your computer like a dangerous object, moving around it cautiously, like if you get too close it might just explode or shoot darts into your eyeballs.

And maybe one day you go to an anusara yoga class, a place that is difficult enough to go, what with all of those open-hearted people twisting themselves into pretzels and bending themselves in ways that, I’m sorry, are just not possible. But you go, and the instructor there talks about change, and the possibility that in a single instant, you might be radically different than you were before. And you are open to that possibility, you would like to be radically different in an instant, so you try it. Blink. See? Radically different! Poof! Just like that! Except it is not true, you are still you, exactly as before, and you are still not doing the things that need to be done. And while the instructor talks about embracing radiance and rooting your feet, and sweeping your tailbone and rounding your kidneys, and curling your shoulders around your heart, and hollowing your armpits, and extending your thighs and bringing your palms together, you cease thinking, “none of this is anatomically possible,” and begin thinking, “I’ve got to do that thing! I’ve just got to do that thing!” And then all of the pretzel-like people with the right yoga clothes and open hearts sense the dark, swirling mess that is your heart and your head, and they toss you out of yoga class, right on your ass, because, let’s face it, you are nothing but an imposter. A yo-poster.

And creatures are born, and creatures die, and it rains and rains and rains and rains, until all of New England is submerged in water, and people start wondering whether perhaps we should have started that ark already. And still, you don’t sit down and do that thing.

And finally, you start thinking, “one sentence. That’s all you need to do is one tiny little sentence. Just something. Because otherwise it will be nothing. And if it is going to be nothing, you need to decide that it is nothing. Nothing can’t just happen, it needs to be a decision.”

It is time to decide. Will you do this thing, will you write something? Or are you done? Decide. Are you a man or a mouse?

You are neither, of course, but one sentence, if that’s all it is, seems possible.

So one sunny Saturday, on what might be the first sunny day of the half-gone summer, with your husband and children at the playground, you finally sit down, thinking, “one sentence. Just one. That is all.”

And you sit on your sofa, everything quiet save for the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of a clock, a cup of coffee by your side, and you take a deep breath. Then this is what you write:

The cat did not have rabies.