Passing Time
Feb. 7th, 2007 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraNot a good day yesterday. Not a good day at all.
Feel like I'm doing twenty to life in a prison cell upon whose walls they – "they!" – are projecting intensely realistic 3-D videos of my house, the store, the afternoon drive to Colton to pick up the kid.
The only place that feels real is the beach. When this part of my life is over and done with – which one way or another it will be – I will owe a special debt of thanks to Milo the dog. Watching him prance and play on the sand keeps me sane. It's my reminder that there is joy in the simple fact of existence.
I am writing my acceptance speech for the Bardo Award ceremonies now! "Nominations for Noblest Life Lived Under Extremely Trying Circumstances: Nelson Mandela For 'Twenty-three Years In a Windowless Cell Fighting Racial Injustice!'"
Applause. Camera cuts to Nelson holding hands with Oprah. She's in purple Dolce and Gabana.
"'John McCain for Five Years In the Bamboo Pit!'"
He's holding hands with Laura Bush.
"The envelope please. And the winner: Patrizia for the Year of Living Dangerously!'"
Cut to Scenes From the Life: our heroine fielding yet another unpleasant phone call from a persistent creditor. "Yes, I know I owe you [insert amount of money that is actually not that huge but is beyond my present capacity to pay]. I have every intention of paying you and I believe I will be in a position to do so in the foreseeable future. Why, no, I can't give you a definite date. Can't you just trust me because I'm beautiful, sensitive and kind and I actually wept when Leo got shot in The Departed – I mean, that poor guy. First he drowns on the Titanic and then fucking Good Will Hunting takes him out –"
Use the time you have now, I keep telling myself. And I've made some progress – particularly on that mountain of papers all of which need to be sorted and filed and kept on record in the event that tax information is suborned at some future date.
But I'm not really thinking linearly right now. Big projects? Website redesign? Redraft of the business plan? Fugeddaboutit. Instead I Google ex-boyfriends and serial killers – no overlap there – and fantasize about projecting myself backwards in time to that exact moment when I made the Bad Choice that culminated in this Bad Present Tense.
String theory and numerous Twilight Zone episodes argue that this is possible. Assuming there was one bad choice.
If life were a piece of music, you could play it over and over again until you get it right. I remember this as the first line of Joyce Johnson's wonderful Kerouac memoir, Minor Characters.
If I didn't make it up, then it is my second favorite opening line on all of literature, my favorite being L.P. Harley from The Go-Between: The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
This, too, shall pass. This too.
Feel like I'm doing twenty to life in a prison cell upon whose walls they – "they!" – are projecting intensely realistic 3-D videos of my house, the store, the afternoon drive to Colton to pick up the kid.
The only place that feels real is the beach. When this part of my life is over and done with – which one way or another it will be – I will owe a special debt of thanks to Milo the dog. Watching him prance and play on the sand keeps me sane. It's my reminder that there is joy in the simple fact of existence.
I am writing my acceptance speech for the Bardo Award ceremonies now! "Nominations for Noblest Life Lived Under Extremely Trying Circumstances: Nelson Mandela For 'Twenty-three Years In a Windowless Cell Fighting Racial Injustice!'"
Applause. Camera cuts to Nelson holding hands with Oprah. She's in purple Dolce and Gabana.
"'John McCain for Five Years In the Bamboo Pit!'"
He's holding hands with Laura Bush.
"The envelope please. And the winner: Patrizia for the Year of Living Dangerously!'"
Cut to Scenes From the Life: our heroine fielding yet another unpleasant phone call from a persistent creditor. "Yes, I know I owe you [insert amount of money that is actually not that huge but is beyond my present capacity to pay]. I have every intention of paying you and I believe I will be in a position to do so in the foreseeable future. Why, no, I can't give you a definite date. Can't you just trust me because I'm beautiful, sensitive and kind and I actually wept when Leo got shot in The Departed – I mean, that poor guy. First he drowns on the Titanic and then fucking Good Will Hunting takes him out –"
Use the time you have now, I keep telling myself. And I've made some progress – particularly on that mountain of papers all of which need to be sorted and filed and kept on record in the event that tax information is suborned at some future date.
But I'm not really thinking linearly right now. Big projects? Website redesign? Redraft of the business plan? Fugeddaboutit. Instead I Google ex-boyfriends and serial killers – no overlap there – and fantasize about projecting myself backwards in time to that exact moment when I made the Bad Choice that culminated in this Bad Present Tense.
String theory and numerous Twilight Zone episodes argue that this is possible. Assuming there was one bad choice.
If life were a piece of music, you could play it over and over again until you get it right. I remember this as the first line of Joyce Johnson's wonderful Kerouac memoir, Minor Characters.
If I didn't make it up, then it is my second favorite opening line on all of literature, my favorite being L.P. Harley from The Go-Between: The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
This, too, shall pass. This too.
