The sun will come out...
Tomorrow is just some keyboard drool away. I’m fighting it again; walking the thin line between days. A single moment of maybe, of doubt, of just for a second, and another slice of life vanishes. I feel that I’ve lost so much already, but in reality I gave it away without a passing thought.
“Oh precious time, how shall I waste thee tonight?”
Perhaps I’ll try to stumble out words while I feel the need. If not now, perhaps they’ll never exist. I scratch at the thought in my mind, tearing it out sliver by sliver. If not now, they will never exist. Perhaps later will not exist. But it is so dark, and it is so safe, and it is so comfortable and I’m so very weary.
“Just a wink, I promise I’ll be good in the morning.”
Endless plans with your million demands for these hands that still quiver as they move, trying to prove that I can do what needs done. I need some direction. I need a to-do, filled with the feeling of you, whoever you are, wherever the stars shine on you like they don’t for me, inside this deep, deep, deep. The black is my home tonight, like it’s not been for so long. Since before the gong, when the cane came in and pulled away the audience from before my eyes. Exit stage left; I did; the stage left, so I sat, and waited for it to return… and burned.
Somewhere past these curtains, the future lies, but if I made them darker it might never come. I could be here where I can lie all day, safe from fear, safe from expectant me and reality. Night-time let me stay with thee.
I want to be adrift, but on the ocean, not this chair, not this view, I want… the things I don’t deserve. The things I should demand, that fill my endless plans built on the sands of time that slip, like an eyelash, from the cheek of the future, and no one got to wish.
My plans are sublime. I give them imperious titles starting with “Operation” then build in contingencies, and steps, and goals, and starting points, and then I forget how to get there. So I look at them from afar, like mirages, shimmering and seducing, offering the taste of the promised riches beyond. But they’re less real than the riches themselves. At least the riches lie in the real world, so far out of reach as to be imaginary, though not as fake as the dream paths that lead there. If only the start were here, and the second stage an hour away, instead of nestled up beside some distant tomorrow. A compass seems a wonderful thing, until you remember you’re adrift, and its whispers are only of the directions you’re not heading.
I’m lost, and waiting for the smoke monster to come give me the flashback episode treatment. That’s precisely why it won’t come. Instead, I’m faceless starving beach-dweller #3. I wasn’t even there last week, or the week before… in fact, was I ever? I’m sent to live in the jungle. Maybe If I’m lucky I’ll find a hatch, with a button. At least that would give me something to do.
I know what I have to do of course, and procrastination isn’t it. That’s why I feel the need. I turn on the old time-waster, and it’s like someone’s switched off the light. Everyone else has left the room, and I’m the little cockroach that’s come out to play. I’ll outlive the Universe they say… and I’ll do it alone.
The inspirational things are there, right where they need to be… but instead of inspiring effort, they inspire hopelessness. Everything is so far away, so luscious, so impossibly splendorous… suns will die before I reach any of it. I look at the light on the letters. I look at the glistening black surrounds, the shining backs of my hands resting neatly on the home keys. I don’t think I was built to do what I’ve always wanted to. If I were, I would have done it by now. That’s the definition. The doers and the don’ters are two different peoples. My people sleep.
Operation Widget Cranker – Stage 1: identify the next widgets to be cranked.
Operation Widget Cranker – Stage 2: crank widgets.
Operation Widget Cranker – Stage 3: repeat from Stage 1... forever.
I’ll get things done at least. I’ll live at least. People will stop worrying at least. The widgets that need cranked will be cranked at least. Time will pass.
Where are you!?! I’m beginning to doubt. I’m beginning to doubt that you’re even out there. Perhaps you’re not. Or maybe it’s that Bhutan thing. She won’t give me the answers. The world sleeps, and I so dearly want to. But tonight, I can’t. Tonight, I have to find an answer that doesn’t sound the same. Even my headphones are now telling me to go to sleep. This is the challenge. I wish just once I knew all the rules. Ah well, if I break `em I bought `em.
How hard can it be? How hard can a comfortable existence in the wealthy West be?
My head is starting to throb. The light irritates my eyes. My decaf has no life giving properties. My fingers are slow and clumsy. My legs are tired and aching from their adventures in the garden today. They threaten to die out of spite if I sit any longer. My mind is hiding somewhere, waiting for me to count to a billion in a language I don’t know. I’m hungry.
Somewhere inside I watch a metal city of skyscrapers with walkways, flying cars, glass walls that turn opaque at the touch of a button. Everything glistens and shines as the sun beats down on it from unpolluted blue skies dotted with clouds made of perfect puffy white. Children play in 45th floor parks, climbing soft green trees planted in a rich soil fed with lemon fresh compost. They laugh and run, and couldn't hurt themselves if they tried, not that they would. A shiny wrapper slips from a pocket. It floats effortlessly on the breeze and starts its descent. For an instant it catches the sun and shines like a star. Then the twinkle is gone.
We've gone too far now. It will never see the sun again. It lands on the top of a sports cabriolet. Once it caught gazes, then the wind, which blew through hair that thought it would live joyously forever, the sound of the engine roaring in appreciative ears. Now, it catches rain. The rain pools, then slides out through the many holes and drips down onto what once were streets. Now they're something else. Wingless cars rot by the million here. Stuffed with paper, cans, corpses, and every other type of refuse they form gigantic dams that fill entire neighbourhoods with the rising waters that have nowhere left to go. Somewhere they trickle out, and a current forms, pulling matter along, making the dams bigger, making the water rise. The current tears into the metal bodies of all manner of abandoned machines flaking off sheets, and chunks, and flecks as it goes.
The dark orange flecks disintegrate and dye everything they touch, staining the very water itself. A man comes into view, floating on a raft of bedroom furniture. He's old, his hair grey, he doesn't have long to go. It's me... and I'm searching, desperately, for some kind, any kind of food to let me live just one more day, here, on my rivers of rust.
Time to write.
posted by 3³ | 1:16 am
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