Yesterday,
All my troubles seemed so far away.
Now it feels like its opposite day,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.
In my recent unemployment, I have renewed myself to my acoustic guitar, learning some of my favorites from yesterday like Bob Dylan's Knockin' On Heaven's Door, the Eagles Hotel California, Patience by Guns 'N Roses and yes a few Beatles tunes. My fingertips have grown callouses again. I held them up to the brief sunlight this morning, taking in their odd white transparency as compared to the pink glow of the strumming hand.
I also noticed how it didn't take long for the ol' guitar chops to come back. Within days, the rust shook loose and the notes lost their muffled twang. Playing Hotel California in the morning is a better breakfast than a Denny's Grand Slam. I've noticed how quickly the body and mind regain lost form. I love the guitar. I love putting a fresh, brassy set of strings, putting up that E chord and strumming away. I now understand why guitarists fall in love with their instrument.
Today, I prepped the necessary paperwork to begin my new contract job and had numerous phone calls with folks prepping for my first day on Monday. I still have so much to do – still have to look up bus schedules, should really get new shoes, adjust day care schedules, etc.
I find myself, despite the constant financial and stability worries, beginning to miss having this much time to myself, but let's be straight, money talks. Yeah, we'd love to live in a fairy tale, idealistic world where money doesn't matter, but when it's there, taking the pressures off, it sure as hell helps.
So I have a job for the next 6 months or so, why did today feel like I was frozen in carbonite? Why, during times we should be thankful and full of celebration, do we find the time to play games? I said, they said. My way or the highway. Enormous amounts of pain and angst all for the smallest, insignificant little personal victory. Why spend a whole day together, but apart? Why does every first thought in our free minds always center on selfish goals – I want, I want, I want.
I'm as much to blame as anyone.
It seems time is a slippery device. With one face it mesmerizes us, hypnotizes us into boredom, into apathy, and with another face it makes us realize just how quickly it has passed and we haven't paid attention to how much we have lost. I remember Odysseus' adventures. He had to deal with the sirens of time too. He had a great solution - bound himself to the mast, so as to force his entire being from succumbing to the sirens' song.
Sometimes we have to do that in our lives, with our family, our kids, our husbands and wives. Instead of ignoring the clock or disbelieving in time, we need to strap ourselves to its mast, recognize our place in time and how much more of it we have to spend. How else are we to make the most of what time we have left? If we take our eyes of the clock, we'll forget it's there.
Wow. Welcome to Incoherent Babbling 101.
What does this have to do with my new job? Nothing. What does this have to do with being a kid again? Probably nothing. But while thinking about this on the trip back from Target, I decided what I was going to do today to feel like a kid again.
Ride a scooter.
So there's me, a rotund Kevin Smith look-a-like, whipping loopies in the driveway on a pink, kiddie scooter.
Yes. You heard right. Pink.
At first, I felt ridiculous, especially after this strange, strange day, but with every loop and with the slick glide of the wheels sending me zooming around (I worried the whole time that I would crush that scooter under my weight – I envisioned a giant scientific bathysphere at the bottom of the ocean, crushing in on itself under the enormous pressure), I felt more and more free. I guess scooters do that. The wind in your hair. The grit of the open road. Some people have a mid-life crisis and buy a Harley. For me it's a pink, kiddie scooter.
What is wrong with me?
But you know what? The entire time I spent zipping around on that scooter, I felt like time wasn't in control of me. I felt it looking down on me and cursing, “Damn you! How dare you defy the mighty hands of time!”
Oh, yeah. That's me. Time-defier. Time fist-shaker. Time flaunter. Take that time!
Digging the scooter.
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