The thin slats of the wooden blinds slice the afternoon light into narrow strips and lay them across the wall. Outside the window, a winter tree blurs and spreads, and inside the frame a cream-colored curtain is drawn half back. On the old bench sits a single blue striped cushion. Down to the small rug on the floor, this corner looks long used and still uncluttered.
Looking at a scene like this, your shoulders drop a hand's width without your noticing. The breath you draw in grows a little longer, and your eyes lose focus somewhere around the tree outside. Your hands, forgetting what they should be holding, rest on your knees.
What a busy day leaves in the mind is usually impatience more than fatigue. The sense that what you started has to be finished follows you into your rest, and even while sitting you find yourself counting the next things to do.
What if you picked up a book within reach, read one page, and closed it. Leave the hand that wants to turn to the next page where it is, and it is fine to keep the cover shut and look toward the window for about three minutes. Call it making yourself one task you don't have to finish.
There is also a way to move those same three minutes to the night, lying under the covers with the light off, the book you read one page of and closed set by your pillow. What to check then is the jaw. Whether the back teeth are touching each other, or whether the upper and lower are slightly apart with only the tip of the tongue against the roof of the mouth, feel for it quietly in the dark. How the jaw was during the daytime moments when your shoulders came down, at night you get to look once at what passed by unchecked.
The closed book waits quietly over there, and the light moves down little by little along the slats of the blinds.
