Those days when nothing gets done

You set out a list of things you wanted to do.

Create this, talk to that person, do the exercises, pay the bills you were meant to pay at the start of the week.

Yet nothing happens.

Or at least that’s what it feels like.

But that’s a lie.

Traffic crawls along.

Steam floats above a cup of tea.

Your heart beats at a terrific clip.

Birds dance around the skies.

A bee crash lands on the table and the kookaburras laugh.

Bacteria in your gut turn food into shit.

I got up from the toilet the other day and looked around in amazement.

Not at what I’d produced but at all the intricate systems that went into such a movement.

The food starting from seeds growing into trees into fruit.

A single cell turning into an animal.

Rays from the sun hurtling through space racing to Earth.

Penetrating the soil, the grass, the leaves, my eyes.

Farmers picking the fruit, harvesting the vegetables, butchers carving carcasses.

Drivers transporting the food to the markets, to the stores, to my front door.

Cooking the food and sharing it with others. Praising the cosmos for such wonderful gifts.

Sitting round the dinner table commenting on which bite to save for last.

Silence dotted with slurping means the food is good, conversation means the company is good.

The best dinner parties roll through waves of both.

Then without asking a symphony begins.

From the moment food enters your mouth, levers all throughout the body get pulled.

I’d be a fool to try and understand them all.

Evolution in all its light, showing off one of its most fundamental creations.

The digestive track.

Each individual human a unique and elaborate donut.

A hole on one end connected to a hole on the other.

From the mouth to the throat to the stomach to the intestine, small or large, I forget which comes first.

Crawling through the darkness, sliding through the wetness.

Unless you’ve eaten too much, you’ll hardly notice.

Yet hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of cells each performing the roll they’ve spent millions of years adapting to do.

So in the morning you can wake your girlfriend up with funny sounds, go into the bathroom and let the cycle complete.

Oh if only I could remember on those boring days.

Those boring frustrating days.

Those days when nothing gets done.

Or at least that’s what it feels like.

A lie.

Because magic’s all around.

Even in taking a shit.