perpetual

Sometimes I want to be stranded in a small, appropriately-lit room with a book and a pot of coffee and another pot for when I inevitably have to pee out that coffee. (The pot will be in another, smaller room. Look, I'm not saying I want to be in a jail cell. Although...) Fresh oxygen will be pumped into the room every half hour or so, which is the only way I'll be able to tell time. Time doesn't really exist in this small, appropriately-lit room. Time just comes in the form of oxygen, of breath. So with no distractions and a healthy buzz and strong bladder, I read and read and read until my eyes fall out. But the great thing is is that my eyes don't fall out or even become tired or strained because this is my fantasy and in my fantasy I am indestructible.

Other times I want to live before books were born. I want to be in a cave or a hut or on top of a plateau looking for food or love or maybe both. Because aren't food and love inseparable? Eat your heart out and so forth. And so from this plateau I see neither of those things; instead I see time and how it stretches on and on and on. Not that I know what time is, at least not the way we understand it today. Actually, I may know time better -- I recognize it in its many forms, from the rising sun to the pockmarked sky at night. Time silences me. I sink my heels into the soil and plant myself firmly.

And then there are those times when I allow myself to dream of hopping fences and chasing trains. These are indulgent dreams and can lead me to places where I don't speak the language and can't find my passport. The clocks don't make sense, even though time should be a universal language. Is it not? Silly me. I should know by now that it's not. Paper-thin seconds pass differently depending on where you find yourself. But what if you can't find yourself? What if you keep getting lost in small rooms and on top open plateaus and inside of unfamiliar cities? Does it matter what you find on a map if you can't first locate yourself?

You are here. Here is the star. You are starring in your own life -- or at least you should be. But this time the star is missing. And now enters the understudy. The understudy has been waiting their whole life for this big break. The lights dim, the curtain rises, the play begins. The lines don't go as planned; in fact, they are abandoned all together. This performance isn't scripted. This performance is has no stars, no characters, only moments. This performance takes place in rooms and trains and ancient worlds before time, before books, before you were born. You get to decide. You get to decide when to come on stage, when to be born. Eat your heart out. Become inseparable, indestructible. Become infinite.