To wake up and write, even if it’s gibberish, even if it’s meaningless or indulgent, to take pictures every day for 248 days, to do this with compulsive discipline takes a certain mindset, perhaps a little crazy. It also takes balls. Here’s one.

Murphy, like me, is a collector. She collects tennis balls. She has about 75 now. Luckily, well lucky for her, there is a tennis court down the street. She treads the ground every time we pass, looking for a new toy.

Now I know that I said, and very recently, that I had resolved, that I would resolve to live. Resolving to live was a big picture idea that I still stick to. But today was a small picture day of luxury and indulgence. It’s still a certain kind of living to get up late, to laze about, to change from one kind of pajama into another, to pick at my toenails, to think about the endeavor of cleaning out my belly button and then to give that idea up because it seemed too much like work. If I liked bonbons, which I don’t, I may have eaten some. So long as they were close by. It was foggy out and the air felt close and I kept under the covers and watched old Hitchcock movies. I spent most of my energy on making some tea and then drinking it.

And on a day like that you can’t hope for more than this ode to sloth, bad puns, and an out of focus tennis ball.

SS