"An Hour And 20 Minutes..."

Format-Contests, word use, count OR time-constraint challenges... time limits - mind limits ~ people and self-imposed reach-for-a-brass-ring-through-the-cell-bars - to prove what?  Inadequacy-ability-mentality or the lack of just... humanity.  I guess when all-is-said-and-undone -Today I am 'something' that apparently yesterday or before the inquisition - I wasn't. 

I would guess you can see how I really feel about doing 'challenges' - just for the sake of another's aggrandizement... notice I didn't say I wouldn't - just how I FEEL about doing them.  Chuckling here.  OK, 90 minutes began with the first word on a blank page - go...

"An Hour And 20 Minutes..."

An hour and twenty minutes… sigh.  I’ve an hour and twenty minutes til what?  What will it all mean - then.  The sun might shine or it could be rain, snow, sheet ice.  The heat might kick on all by itself.  A light bulb may actually glow.  I’m listening to the ticks…

Tick…tick…tick - an hour and ten minutes now… Where does the time GO when you’re having such ‘fun’… even pins drop as if encased in molasses pools - soooooooo slowly, barely turning end-over-end-over-end.  It gives an entirely new meaning to a drip-brew coffee maker, and the mind!  The mind races - RACES, in circles yet spirals too… in and in and round and around… but the thoughts - fragments and incoherencies, lost and found then lost and found again and again… threads, so many, many threads - interweaving…weaving…fading into the next construct… tick… tick…

An hour.  Just an hour, another lifetime passed and past and yet to come… a whole damn hour…hour…6o more minutes… then 59… now 58…eventually 57?  57 more minutes… each a little eternity.  Light a cigarette… the flame doesn’t flicker; strange how flames don’t really flicker after all… it’s all in the eye’s sight, what we THINK we see.  Watching the smoke move, inhale and exhale… how does smoke dissipate - expanding and expanding into a universe, a growing ball - ever fading, fading, fading… do we expand and fade-and-fade as well?…

Is it 50 yet?  50, 50, 50… come on 50…will someone give me 50, 50, 50 50…SOLD! - to the young-ole man sitting there in the back row… yay me… 50 minutes… and counting, counting… down and up, and down, and up…

Electricity doesn’t hum you know… it’s the wires vibrating to the electrons racing within.  Some would say it’s the ‘holes’ that flow and electrons just keep falling and falling within… like watching the hubcaps on a moving car - seemingly turning in the opposite direction of the tires motion… like living on the edge of our own universe… like living at all… life at all… flowing, racing, following all the holes, falling within and falling over-and-over and all to get - where?  What was the actual direction of motion?  Where did we go?  Did we go at all?  Threads and threads and threads - weaving, coalescing, expanding, fading… fading…

Its so not easy to lose oneself and yet we try… and find… ourselves looking back from all the mirrors that never were… cascading from all the non-surfaces back and forth and back and forth til we realize the fractals we are… such a pretty design that captures imagination and goes on and on and on til… 35… 35 minutes… 35… then 34.

Strange how coffee too hot to drink is so damned cold the next instant of awareness… time isn’t linear to awareness ya know?  It has no set place to be or follow.  Awareness is NOW every moment you ARE aware, but not the one - the moments you weren’t.  I’m aware of being me - except when I’m not… threads and threads interweaving.  I CAN feel my fingertips… each ONE… and all of them at once… but not my toes… I can’t feel the smoke I exhale moving through my fingers… I can see it passing through but not feel it… but I AM aware of my fingertips and can still feel each one all at once… and I am aware of the smoke - moving… expanding… I’m thinking, am aware that I’m thinking I’m thinking…but what is it, what am I, in between moments of aware? Of unfeeling? 

Tick…tick… 22 minutes… 22… Roses are red, Violets are blue, eternities last just moments - who knew?  22… 21…White noise, echoes without awareness… what really counts? And why?  And to whom?  So many ‘whys’ we have… whys for everything and anything - some our own and some are other’s.  Wise whys, shy whys, lost whys, because whys… ‘it-doesn’t-matter’ whys that ‘mattered-after-all’ whys… and cold coffee… 18…17…

I wonder
at the emptiness
with each breath

because -
its what we do
its who we are
its all there is

its all I have -
just each breath...

to wonder with.

Chris

Author's Note

Feel free