The Better Part of Valor....

The last bell ended today, and I knew I needed to go straight on home.  I've got that restless, itchy feeling that means I could do something stupid at any moment.  There's no moon, so I don't know what's driving it.  I feel like I could get in my car and push its poor little engine to the redline and drive it until I wound up....

Who knows?

New Orleans?   Except I'm not altogether enchanted by it.  There's a sadness there that deprives the city of much of its grandeur for me.

Memphis?  Maybe.  It is Elvis' Birthday Weekend, and I love me some Elvis kitsch.

Farther afield even....Bloomington.  Crimson and Cream.  Mother Bears.  Something at the Auditorium.  Winter's cold fist wrapping the campus in that brutal grip.   D.C.  Everything in the world I could possibly want tossed carelessly around for the taking.  Hole up in a museum and not come out until I've seen it all.  Or maybe nothing so dramatic.  Maybe only .... Show up on the doorsteps of friends who I haven't seen in years.  Go somewhere where nobody knows me.  Go to the airport with my passport and two changes of clothes and pick a country off a map.

These are the times, the moods, the impulses that lead me into folly, into the things that I can't take back.  It's better then that I simply finished up my grading, packed my bag, and slipped surreptitiously down the back stairs and away.  It's better, then, that no temptation was put in my path tonight, no inducement to make me tilt my head to the side and say, "You know what?  Why not?  Why.  Not."  

Even though I usually allow my head to rule my heart and logic to guide my steps, sometimes moments like this, these moments of sheer...whatever this is, frustration, impatience, boredom....break out, and I can empathize with my cats as they race through the house, as they claw on their scratching post, wide-eyed, sharp talons ripping, ripping.....

Because sometimes, although discretion is always the better part of valor, I just don't have it in me.  Maybe none of us do.   Maybe none of us can be all good all the time.  Isn't it a blessing when we're protected from ourselves during those times?