Other Things Worthy of Your Time
The Next Time
4/9/03
I was sitting around—more around than anything—with a feeling I really couldn’t put my finger on. In the back of my mind I was certainly reviewing roads not taken and chances passed up from the night before. Chances lost and gone forever…how sad. On the top of my mind I was feeling extremely bored and really couldn’t tell why. Maybe it was just an attempt to associate something with that feeling I couldn’t put my finger on.
I hadn’t eaten in half a day and there was food ready but I wasn’t hungry. Again, I was very bored even though there were things to do, some of which I’d always found to be quite enjoyable and bothered that I’d never had the time to do them. I was just that, very bored. No. I had a feeling I was bored—a feeling I couldn’t put my finger on.
It might have been remnants of a hangover but I didn’t feel particularly hung over. I wasn’t sickly and the sun didn’t seem that bright (another sign I was bored: it was Sunday, my day off from the rest of the world and I had actually found myself outside, looking for something to do). Had I been hung over it would have meant I had been drunk and that maybe that something I couldn’t put my finger on was something I simply couldn’t remember. It did seem that way since the things you can’t remember, when alcohol is involved, are the good things—and this seemed like it had to be. That was why it was so bothering. I could remember everything, but something still happened, and I missed it.
Now that I’d figured out that I wasn’t bored, and wasn’t hung over, I’d figured out that the only thing it could be is…something I just can’t put my finger on.
Every moment in time has a purpose. You don’t sit, doing nothing, and actually do nothing. Perhaps it was in that moment, staring at the wall, that you came up with an idea that, when put to use, thirty years later, changed the world, or at the very least made you a couple bucks. That’s a couple bucks. That’s something. Every moment has a feeling that defines it. Either it’s an extreme joy or sadness, or just a calm, relaxed, sullen tranquility (if you’ll excuse my adjectives) of that moment, when staring at the wall. Life is only one great work of art, filled with paint strokes, or one giant file cabinet filled with papers—depending on what kind of life one thinks they lead; as is time for that matter, since a lifetime is only one, brief moment in time—a feeling that defines that moment, and a paper signed by some great, cosmic secretary. What’s a file of unmarked papers worth but maybe kindling for some one else’s warmth, or an opportunity for someone else to sort through it—a time that they may enjoy or despise, but one that at least gives a feeling to that moment and names a paper in a file to put in their, big file cabinet of life, because, in any case, a life without feeling is only worth a second of thought to others, and completely worthless to the person who has to live it.
Every moment in time has a purpose, or at least it’s supposed to. This moment was different. It wasn’t an unmarked page in the day’s chapter. It had a feeling, and the page had a name. I just, of course, couldn’t put my finger on it. The page had been ripped out and I was left scrambling to find it.
There was a girl. There’s always a girl. Unless you’re a girl yourself that is, and even then there’s a girl sometimes, and that’s cool too. It was the second time I’d had the chance to spend the night with her (in a couple different ways) and the second time I’d passed up the chance. It wasn’t out of respect, which—don’t get me wrong—I had, but I was drunk, and she was wasted. The first time we had just met, and I was a good little boy (too shy to do anything). I went home very early. This time, I was bigger and badder, I suppose, and was going to wait until the dust cleared, and I did. The thing was, no dust was riled, and it really seemed like there should have been.
Now I’m sitting here with a number, gotten from her friend of all the sad places, and I’m not doing anything with it. The phone is in reach but something is holding me back. I don’t think I’m being shy, it’s just that I feel there’s something more that should have been done, something that can still be done, and I can’t—
- - p; -
--and never did put my finger on it.
That was long ago and I’m that much older and wiser now. Oh, how time has passed (and how terrible of a jump between time periods in writing this). That day I put the number down and let it disappear in a pile of paper, trash, or whatever else that I let it get mixed up in that it never should have. Of course I put it to memory, and still keep it there today. She was hot. Why wouldn’t I? The thing should be though, why wouldn’t I ever do anything with it?
There were other nights, other girls, and other moments; nights I repeated the same mistakes and those I finally got something right. I’m sure I married—of course I remember—it’s just that I don’t rightly care. I never cared after that. It wasn’t the girl or the missed opportunity—those come and go—but still, even today, that feeling I couldn’t put my finger on.
It got to a point where I thought I might have been heartbroken but that couldn’t be it. I offered no heart to be broken, not even a hand to be slapped away—and that’s when it occurred to me.
I’m sure there are monks in the furthest reaches of the mountains that have mastered so much of mind over matter that they can do amazing things. I know it. I’ve seen it in the movies—it must be true. I didn’t have to reach out far though, and was walking one day through a part of the city I had never been before, and may never be again when this is all said and done. I don’t know why I brought up monks but this was the closest thing I could come to associate it to.
Probably everybody that isn’t has made a crack at the handicapped or disabled in their time. Maybe even the handicapped and disabled crack a joke at themselves from time to time—you’ve got to think something while rolling down a hill uncontrollably or running into the side of a parked van continuously because your seeing eye dog wandered off to take a piss on someone else’s leg for once. I’m worse than most though, as I found my last comment to be quite humorous, maybe because I’ve never had to work very hard to stay in shape, or have never had to wear glasses to let alone struggle to walk down the street. It was a blind man, deaf, and probably retarded as well—cause they’re all the same in the realms of picking fun at—that told me the only thing I’ll have ever needed to know, and the one thing I will know after all of this, because it’s the kind of thing that sticks.
There’s more to life than the pursuit of wealth or even happiness for that matter. There are things that govern how we live our lives, and how we were going to live them all along. It’s not destiny—we choose our own paths through life, more than we know—but there are only a certain number of them we can follow. It’s not a choice between good and evil either, because there are a lot of preachers, the defining model of goodness, out there who have lied and cheated in their day, and are still good people, and there are truly evil people that didn’t have to be.
I came up with the theory that all time that ever existed, and ever will exist, exists, and always has existed—as confusing as that seems. God is God right? He can do whatever He wants to do. Period. Even without the ‘He wants to do’ part, because, He could do things, I’m sure, without needing to want to. There’s the theory that, everything that could happen, does happen, and we’re all just living a life that could have gone one way, and is still going that way as we speak. That makes sense. In some way, everything makes sense because space is infinite. That’s why it’s space. Can’t time be infinite too? That’s why, since there are infinite possibilities, there are infinite instances, and, like the alternate possibilities, they’re all happening alternately, as we speak.
Hate to condemn a religion or a belief on the way life goes about, but the current blue print for reincarnation is absurd. What in the hell human being, in their right mind, would ever be anything but a human being? There’s the whole thing about karma that decides what you’re going to be, but really (absurd again), the only thing for humans is humanity.
What if, instead (and since I believe in Heaven and God and all of that so—along—all of that) we are given the chance to live our life again? Not like a reincarnation into another human life, to live in a completely different time and place, but instead, we are given the chance to live our life, from start to finish—whatever finish we get each time around—starting exactly where we started the last time around, and getting to start out with the same choice that would fork off into all those choices that we made and would get to make, and all of eternity to go and start over again. Eternity: infinite time and endless possibilities. Think of them.
Of course there is just laying around, sinless, never sad, never anything, in Heaven, the ultimate Kingdom at the feet of the ultimate Creator. Since He is the ultimate Creator though, why couldn’t he create this scenario for you and let you go at it? To let someone always have another chance; never any worries and only motivation to see what lies next: that’s how life should be lived anyway.
We’re all somehow aware of this. We all feel like there is something out there, pushing us, making us go on, or making us want to end suddenly. How lucky are the ones that discover it. Even if they are blind, deaf, and confined to a wheel chair.
The man was drooling, wearing sunglasses, and sitting in a chair in such a way that it didn’t look like he had ever left its comfort. It was then I realized it wasn’t bright outside, he wasn’t sleeping, and he didn’t look very comfortable. He couldn’t have possibly seen me, as I found out, and couldn’t have heard me, as I also did. I didn’t think he smelled me so there must have been something that set him off. He didn’t call me by name. That would be entirely too mystical, and I wasn’t to that phase yet. My life had been too sullen to ever resemble mystic. He might not have even known I was a man, but he knew I was there. He knew I existed.
He asked me what was the one thing about today I’d change. I, a bit surprised, said I probably wouldn’t have tried the detour. I wasn’t exploring of course. I was lost.
He smiled, as much as the tension of muscles on his face resembled it, and then commented on, how, then, I would have never have had the pleasure of his company. I didn’t reply because, courteously, I didn’t want to say I wasn’t sure yet if I found pleasure in it. He read my mind, which, mystically—this time, might have been how he found me in front of him just then to grab his attention. It looked like no one had before grabbed it since he’d sat down in that chair. He said that whatever I thought of him didn’t matter, because if he could, he probably wouldn’t think much of me either. I stayed, and waited to listen, because maybe if he wasn’t being honest, he at least had the potential of being funny.
It was then he told me a story I’d have to sit down half the way through because of the length, and because I was so interested I twice forgot I was standing and nearly ended up in our friend’s lap. It was the kind of story you hear once and could never forget, the kind you could easily tell again, but the kind you want to keep to yourself. This is why I won’t tell the story again. I’ve never been once to keep things to myself though. I’d always found myself respectable to not yearn for the spotlight, yet I’d always seem to reach for it.
Briefly, it was a story about a life that could have gone a different way, and one that did go a different way then it was probably supposed to—if there is any way a life is supposed to. It was about a man who had once lived a boring, pointless existence, but hadn’t bothered to spend a second living that way this time around. It told of a person who let the world walk all over him, and could have let them walk over him again if he wanted to, but instead found himself driven to find something more, and leave the rest of the world behind. He could have chased wealth, or love, or knowledge, but chose excitement, because there was always time for those other things. Time was infinite. The possibilities were infinite. Time was of the essence though, and this same man who could choose to have it all or nothing was given the rough estimate of when he’d breathe his last breath. After his body would never let him walk again; after he could never see another face smile or frown; after he could never smile and frown himself, and after he could never hear anyone comment on it, he would die. Dead before his time should have come, yet old and broken, a shadow of the man he could have been, but happy because he accomplished everything he ever dreamed of…this time around.
I don’t know if he fell asleep or just stopped caring or wondering if I was there. I suddenly felt as if I wish he cared, but seemed to understand everything then, and didn’t have to care about it anymore. I’d never have to care about anything again, and could realize I never had to care about anything before really. I could have just moved on, living my life however it happened, never to the fullest and never having to want the least. I could be tired and rest; instead when I was tired I wanted more, always wanting to see what was next, and remembering—remembering it all so if given the chance, I could have done it differently, and would, the next time around.
- - p; -
It was the one moment we’d had alone. She was my first real date since I was bigger and badder and actually did those things now. She was combing her hair in the mirror and I walked in. I should have shut the door behind me. I should have, and if ever another chance like that I will. It was the early hours of the morning and she looked better than ever. Maybe it was because she looked natural, or normal for the first time, or because she greeted me instead of the other way around, or because we were finally alone. I knew I should have said what was on my mind—it was the most suitable thing to say. Instead, I made some stupid comment and got a giggle when I can only dream what I could have gotten instead. Never the sweet talker I guess. I won’t worry about that again. It wasn’t even ten seconds we had alone when the fag who was more motivated to get some than I was to get anything walked in and made an even stupider comment. Luckily, everyone saw it as that and there were no giggles this time. Still, the moment was broken, and the page was done wrong, ripped out, and tossed away.
I went home not long after that and even that soon couldn’t put a face to the strange feeling I had. I couldn’t put my finger on it, you might say. I got her number a couple days later and while I only jotted it down and discarded it, I committed it to memory immediately, because, well, she was hot. Now that number signifies everything I let go to waste the other night, as it just wastes away in my head. I’m going to put something to use in life finally. Here it goes.
- - -
Rejected. Must have made a wrong move. She was nice but it soon became only courteous, and it seemed like I was wasting her time. I brought up how we had never gotten any time alone, and my disappointment. Too little, too late. I got no comment and had to end, but expecting defeat, with the big guns. I asked if she wanted to do something again sometime. She said no, again—courteously. I said, oh well, maybe the next time around. We hung up, and I could finally go on to the next page.
NOTES
I live a sad existence. This is just one of many sad concepts of hope I have.