Weekly Zephyr #105: After Unpleasantness

We were visited by a sudden unpleasantness

in our doings at our house this week, involving strangers*, and the unpleasantness peaked yesterday.

The peak of the unpleasantness struck, rudely enough, right on the heels of an unexpected triumph—a morning with a door in it that led somewhere totally new, somewhere I’d always wanted to go—the kind of triumph you text somebody about with many emojis and exclamation points.

*disclaimer in case anyone who knows us is trying to guess which member of our family was the source of the unpleasantness. none! none of us. not this time!

What went down on both ends, the good end and the bad end, isn’t the point.

BUT.

With regards to the unpleasantness (and any unpleasantness that comes in no higher than a six on the bummer scale), the moment a notable unpleasantness has subsided, the, what, it’s not an afterglow…

…afterfog? I like fog. Afterfog has something. Yeah, there’s a stillness to it because otherwise the cloud that’s sitting on the ground would have blown away or drifted off. But it hasn’t. The cloud is quietly sitting on the ground. So that’s peaceful. But it’s a cloud and we all know from metaphors that clouds are bad. They’re not but in a metaphor. Peaceful in the context of bad but afterwards. Afterfog.

…the afterfog, that grace period, when you’ve finished wrestling the bad thing but not so much time has elapsed that you need to get about your business again, is a little bit great.

You get to treat yourself. You know you do. You can of course treat yourself whenever you want but in the afterfog you know you have a treat coming. It’s medicinal.

If you can forestall being disturbed by new agenda items, if you have a “Do Not Disturb” sign you can hang on yourself, the afterfog is the perfect time to hang it. One might take a book into the bath, for example, but prescriptively, with less guilt than whatever guilt one might have in regular time.

I’m not suggesting anyone ever feel guilty for taking a goddamn book into the goddamn bath as is your right as a human being.

The afterfog is like being in a waiting room with a good book, but in reverse. You already visited the doctor and had some small, bad things done to you. Now you get some bonus existence before the nonsense resumes.

P.S. I am not in a bathtub but if I were I would be getting back into “Vladimir” by Julia May Jonas, which a) is fantastic and b) is written in the first person, which I realized I could do with my own novel, which I tried for the second time yesterday morning and suddenly a torrent of words showed up that seem like the right person is talking, which I texted Dave about in a fit of glory until another series of texts came in.