Perfect Day

October's fresh face and encouraging disposition has framed so many "Perfect Days" for me that I tremble with anticipation as it begins anew each year.

Though I know not what October holds for me this year, I can't help but smile.

That's because the simple remembrance of things from past Octobers often transports me into a quasi-meditative state of deep synchrony with everything around me.

This is diametrically opposed to what I feel at those times when - as Woody Allen joked - I chafe at being "at two with the universe."

I'm certain all of this "The Perfect Days of October" thing started because my hometown celebrates it annual harvest festival (The International Rice Festival (RF) in Crowley, Louisiana) on the third weekend of October.

The RF became my focus each year during the previous summer - when i would dutifully earn money I then earmarked for spending at the fair. You met your bestest friends and "best girl" there and luxuriated in spending time with them amongst the fall weather, the distractions of fun-but-crooked games, people watching, and the intoxicating smells and tastes of open-air cooking.

You were also lucky if - while you were spinning around on those dizzying carnival rides - you didn't lose those meals you ate earlier.

But by Sunday afternoon - you were left with a feeling of having just lived several "Perfect Days," and that was enough.

Those early, exhilarating experiences of a "Perfect Day" or "Perfect Moment" or "Perfect" anything captured and set into motion my imagination and focused my determination to have more of them ever since, and I continue to spend lots of time and energy creating them.

One definition of a Perfect Day that my mother "Sis" once mentioned to me was what she described as a triple wish come true:

You were doing exactly WHAT you wanted to do, exactly WHERE you wanted to be doing it, with exactly WHO you most wanted to be doing it with !

When you can add the WHEN and WHY parts in there as well, a Perfect Day can't help BUT occur !

This kind of "Perfect Day" is rare, however - for how often do we think / daydream about preferring to be somewhere else, doing something else, with someone else ? More often, I feel, than we are willing to admit.

Yet, there are people, events, and ". . . places i remember, in my life, though some have gone. . . " (as the Beatles sang) that echo in my heart still - whether it be from one, two, three, 11, 20 years ago and more - and those remembrances encourage me to create as many "Perfect Days" as I can.

Sometimes, I feel that that string of Perfect Days IS my life - or much of what I cherish most about it.