Interlude

People sometimes say “So-and-so’s days are numbered” to mean that a person is running out of time and will soon be getting the boot or the electric chair or something. And it’s one of those expressions that only really works when you don’t think about it, like “I could care less” or “Close only counts in horseshoes and handgrenades.” (It also counts in darts and relationships) I’m sitting here now staring at my calendar that will not stay on the wall for more than an hour no matter how much scotch tape I use, and I’m thinking, hey, all these days are numbered. If our days weren’t numbered, we’d have no idea what day it is and we’d often get confused and irritated and take swings at people in the bakery or wherever. So I don’t really get it.

When I open the refrigerator at home, I try to do it really fast because I want to see if I can open the door before the light turns on. It never works. I’ve come to associate food with disappointment because of this. It’s infuriating to think that no matter how far I get in life, I’ll never be faster than that light.

Perhaps all the stars in the sky are just window lights from some far off building where some people never sleep and others always do.

I decided that if I could go back to any historical period, it would be to 1987 because I can’t remember what I was like in 1987 and I think it might be important.

Listening to the piano and acoustic version of “3 a.m.” by Matchbox 20 and wondering where my musical taste went, I suddenly get the urge for Premium Plus crackers, and am happy to discover there is a box of them on top of my microwave.

Is this the ‘prime’ of my life? When exactly IS a man’s prime? Do we get to pick? I hope it’s not now. I’m not really doing a lot that’s very interesting or worthwhile so I’m thinking maybe I should delay my prime for a couple of years until I can be a mountain climber or a lion tamer or something exciting like that. OR A MAGICIAN. Yeah, that’d be cool.

When I walk through the library or down the hallway in the Arts & Social Sciences building, my shoes make a squeaking sound on the floor that sounds kind of like a little baby mouse with whooping cough might sound. I get embarassed about this sound, and I’m currently debating as to whether I should get new shoes or just stop going to those buildings altogether. It’s a tough debate.

So they light the building up so nicely into the late hours of the night, and I never realize how cold I am until I move, and why won’t I let myself forget the way she looked at me that night.

Do you think if you live long enough, everything in your past will start to seem trivial? It’s kind of building up to that, isn’t it? When I was a kid the biggest and most important event in my life was when I realized my parents had let me ride a GIRL’S BIKE to school in Grade 1. Some older kid had commented on it, and I came home in tears feeling like I would forever be tainted by this godforsaken girl’s bike. But then my dad hung it up by a rope in the garage and used spraypaint to put cool flames down the sides and suddenly it didn’t matter if it was a GIRL’S BIKE — it was the coolest set of wheels on the block.

So I’m thinking I just want to live in a single bedroom appartment down by the harbour in Halifax with a nice view of the ocean and I want to sleep until noon every day and spend my nights writing stories about robots and loving some girl who wanders into my life and finds absurd things funny and has soft soft hair. I don’t think it’s a lot to ask, is it?

Back to the grind.