good timing

When you fall asleep on the couch watching TV, listening to voices and advertisements and compressed music, that's when there's nothing left and it's time to go. If you don't go now then you may never be able to, because chances to escape come only every so often, only now and again, and the longer you wait to do something like uproot yourself from where you are planted and comfortable, to spread your wings and just dive into space and hope there's air to catch you, to reach out from behind your water curtain and touch something on the other side -- the longer you wait, the harder it is. Which isn't to say I'm no fan of waiting, or that I believe rushing into things is ever a good idea. Patience keeps one calm, collected, in control, ready. But there is a thin line between patience and procrastination, and it's often when you're waiting for the perfect moment (to talk to that person, to say something clever, to voice your opinion, to realize your goals, to create something you love, to love someone you create) that your opportunity flies right past you like a sign you didn't see on the freeway -- hey, hey man, you missed the exit.

Yes chances come and go, and while it is important to acknowledge their passing (so that one may know that one wasn't paying much attention), it is about as useful to mourn their being missed as it is to throw bricks through the windows of your crush's parents' vacation cabin. Before and after are nowhere near during (which is where we are now -- during what? now is not the time to discuss that), that is to say, what you've done and what you'll do or what you haven't done and what you might never do are not really relevant at all to anything compared to what you happen to be doing right now, today, tonight, at 11:05 pm on June the 14th, watching the clock's arms roll by, at 11:05, dreading your next day at the job, regurgitating information onto a sheet of paper for the class, throwing money into a relationship that should never last (and even if it does it won't be good), twisting your elbows, rubbing your knees, going to bed to get enough sleep to wake up in the morning to got to the job where you get yelled at and told what to do or to go to the class where you get stared at and told how to behave or to go to breakfast with the other where you get blabbed at and told what to think and eventually you have to wonder where it ends or where it even began, but the beginning or end don't matter because you're always somewhere in the middle, so just get off that couch, cancel your vacation, quit your job, divorce your spouse, sell all your shit (so you can give the money to your kids), and catch the next bus to New York or New Mexico or New Place For You To Be, learn to play flute so you can make some cash busking during the day, meet some people who need help on their farm so you can make some new friends who will feed you and room you during your stay, and forget about what your parents think of successful because just look at them, they're old and dying and regret everything they never did and they have nothing else to say about anything and they live in a place only hospitable to lizards and cacti.

But first, turn off the TV and learn how to spend money in ways that don't benefit someone who doesn't need your money, because right now your money is all you have, and think about all the time taken from you and converted into dollars so someone else can convince you to give them all your dollars in exchange for something not  equivalent to a life's worth of time you'll never get back.

This essay can never end, and I can't remember where it began. I've been writing it my whole life, and therefore am only somewhere in the middle of it. I'll let you know how it goes.

(an experiment with freewriting, my first attempt in a long time.
only a few additions. i think this is something worth trying again.
until then, i've got a record to finish (release date 6/16).)