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Tuesday, December 27, 2005

It tolls for thee and tolls and tolls...

I enjoyed the Christmas Holiday. Although, I'm having some issues right now regarding the passage of time. I sometimes get locked in on the fact that we're just careening forward from moment to moment with no stopping. So much so that I don't enjoy any of the moments along the way. Which makes Christmas tough. Or was it Christmas being tough that caused me to feel this way. I do have a strong tendency to obscure the things that really upset me with bizarre metaphysical problems.
For instance:
In the past, when I was extremely angry and hurt by two separate females on two separate occasions, I didn't allow myself to get upset at them. I found that it was easier to obsess on (in one case) that female's past and (in the other case) fear of death. Both occasions left me reliant on psychiatric medication for a while.
Could it be that I'm upset about something else that I'm extremely frightened to admit being upset about? Probably. Because you know, to admit that I'm scared about certain things, might lead to admitting I'm scared about certain things. I'm thinking that the obvious issue is still my age versus the things that I've done in my life. Now, if I was fully invested in some sort of belief in something more than this life or in there not being anything else outside of this life--
(Someone's honking outside my window and I want to kill them. I'll bet it's a cab driver.)
then I could--
--honk again. Okay now I interrupt this blog to make a stink. And here's what happened. I opened the blinds and looked downstairs. At this point I'm in a long sleeve t-shirt and my cotton briefs. The shirt is dotted with powdered sugar from the Christmas cookies that I finished off in bed. Down in the circular driveway of my apartment building was a silver PT Cruiser. Which, by the way, is the same type of car that the wife and I were forced to accept as a rental this Christmas vacation in Kansas City. The immediately spotted me looking down at them. Was it the glowing white powder on my shirt? Or the fact that I was staring at them while wearing my underwear? Hard to tell. Anyway, they started trying to talk to me. At this point in the retelling, I imagine that this part of the story could have turned out badly. What if they were just trying to mess with me and then kill me? They know where I live, you know.
Anyway, I decided to open the window and talk to them. For some reason my voice snuck out of my throat against my will in a little grunt that seemed to be ridiculously loud. I didn't ask myself for this grunt. But there it was. Grunting. So, in an effort to make sure that it was my grunt, I decided to speak to the people in the PT Cruiser if only to match my voice with the grunting voice that had just escaped me. Yep. It was me. It was my voice. I'm so loud. Especially when I just woke up from a nap, am obsessing about the passage of time and I'm blogging.
So I asked them what they were trying to accomplish. Then the opposite of what I expected happened. It was a meek, young eastern european immigrant woman being extremely apologetic about the noise. Apparently she left her cel phone in her sisters apartment and didn't trust that her sister would be able to hear her calling on the P.A. or something so she was honking at her. Sure. I don't understand the logic either, but she appeared to be in a quandry and didn't know how to resolve it. So I asked if I could let her in the building. She said please and thank and I went to look for my pants.
It was at this point that I remembered that "Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans". (John Lennon said that in "Beautiful Boy".)
I went downstairs and opened the door for her and her brother who was wearing a really nice suit. Maybe they were stupid or maybe they were self-centered. Maybe they usually had the "help" drive them around. I don't know. All I know is that they said they were sorry for bothering me. I acted as if I wasn't upset...or at least that it was no big deal. We parted ways when the elevator got to my floor. I wished them a happy new year and headed back to my apartment.
It was at this point that a few things occured to me. The first of which was, "Don't ask for whom the PT Cruiser honks. It honks for thee."
Then all the things that occured to me as I was obsessing while driving my trolley in circles all day.
1.You know, maybe it's the fact that driving a trolley in circles all day is a really unavoidable chronological reminder. Instead of feeling the same as I did in the morning, I feel 8 trips to Lincoln Park later.
2. You can't have accomplished anything until it's in the past.
3. Just because you aren't currently experiencing something, doesn't mean it's not real. For instance, John O. saw a cab get towed with the driver still in it. He thought this was awesome so he chirped me on the nextel to tell me about it. That event is just as real as the stuff my other messengers (eyes, ears, etc.) were telling me about. Which means that it's okay that time passes because experience is just one small set of messengers telling you stuff you don't really need to know in the first place.
4. The older you get, the less time you have but the more you have done. Which might be why I'm obsessing over time right now. I just got older and I keep doing the same thing over and over again.
5. Worrying about the passage of time and how to live life is like going to a swimming pool and holding onto the edge of the pool instead of swimming because you don't want swimming time to ever be over. This is of course nonsense because the pool closes at six regardless of how long you hold onto the edge of the pool so you'd better just let go of the pool and swim in it.

No wonder it was a little difficult to hold conversations today.

I got the Dalai Lama's new book for my birthday and for Christmas. I sold the Christmas copy to my aunt. I should read that book.

I will probably feel much better after I get a good nights sleep. I haven't been able to get one since Christmas Eve Eve due to a cold I caught. Oh and also if I could take a dump, I'd probably feel great too.
And if I could accomplish something big...HUGE...I would just relax about the passage of time. It's as if I need to catch up with the time I've spent trying to accomplish stuff by accomplishing all the stuff I wish I'd been accomplishing all along.

Boy Forest Gump still gets me every time, by the way.