#reverb10 - Day 3

Prompt: Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors). (Ali Edwards)

I'm often put off by "pick one moment" prompts, partly because if there's a moment, or moments when I felt most alive, chances are pretty good that I'm reluctant to put it on the internet for all to see. And the moment of being alive has such a cliched association with happiness. And sometimes I'm most alive when I'm cranky, or pissed off. But there's no rule in the prompt that says I couldn't discuss one of those cranky moments, is there? Or tired moments?

I can't deny that I am acutely and uncomfortably alive when writing a conference paper; that doing so captures both the highs and lows of living. There's the point at which I am unquestionably a living mess, the point at which the mess begins to transform itself into something coherent, the point at which I remember that I am a single living thing among many, and then, afterwards, the blessed release of wonderful, unconcerned lightness. I was in a hotel in Oxford, and so happily free of encumbrances that I almost answered the door to room service while wrapped in a tiny towel. And the moment when I realized what I was doing? Oh, yes, that was very much a moment of feeling alive, too.