l i f e
lying in wait
contributions
christopher@30seconds.org
It rained lightly today. Looking back at these pieces it seems I always start with the rain. The type, the time, etc. Well today is no different in that it rained. Coming home from work down I-85 traffic was light and when the clouds broke around Burlington I watched one raindrop roll horizontally across my driver's side window like a tear. It was held there by the aerodynamics of the car going 80 mph. It was pushed against the glass right in my line of site, eye-level. It rolled by slowly. After the rest of the window was dry, it kept on rolling. A minute later it was broken up and gone.
I wasn't thinking of the rain though. I was thinking of something I read. Something I found. It was like I was a kid in the attic at my grandparents house. I was hot and sweaty and there were olive drab footlockers to be gone through. Boxes to be ripped open. Colored fabrics to touch, to rub against the side of my face. It was like that today.
Today I skipped lunch and went looking for a piece on the web. Typical...and then not. Not unusual to find me on the web, but very unusual to find me going after a specific piece. Most of the time I wander around. Most of the time. I've a few places I go all the time, I won't name them, but you could guess...probably. This site wasn't one of them.
I'm very familiar with the site, but I have to admit I don't go there much. And I definitely wouldn't go there looking for something specific. Something I already knew the plot to. A story I could already tell you the buildup, climax, and denouemuet without ever reading it. Yet I had to find it...and in finding it, I found something else. Something unexpected. Something perfect.
I began to think about time and where I was when the perfect thing was written. When the ideas behind the perfect thing were conceived. What role was I playing in things. Why I was passive. I began to count back years and countless ISP providers. Very unstable relationships indeed. Bad equipment, poor staff, but what did I know...that's what I began to ponder.
As I sat in my office facing a monitor full of code I quit doing my job. I was thinking about the author of a piece of writing. Who she was. No mystery really, she's there for us all to read and to know, but do we really go that far? Do we try to get that close? Can we? Can I? Is all the room full now?
Probably.
Today, while it was raining outside and I was ignoring my work there were very vibrant images in my head. I should've gotten in on the ground floor. Why did I only read those years ago? Why was I hiding? Who from...
Oh, let's be real. Let me be honest. I wasn't hiding from anything or anyone save myself, the same person I'm inclined (on occasion) to hide from today. I was happy to write without an audience because mine was the grandest of all. In my mind I traded conversations with the great ones and they read my work. Especially since no one else would...not really. Not beyond my writing groups, or classes when I was in college so long ago.
No I had Dostoevsky. Chappell. Hemmingway. Larkin. Updike. I had Roman Emperors and the basis of the religious South.
I also had my music. It was thumping back then. I was drinking a bottle of Merlot and a six-pack a night, playing guitar and singing to anyone who'd listen. Yeah. The web was a side-show.
No one around here worked in its medium. Not many do now. But that piece...it brought me back though all that right to the present, raining, lunch hour. I don't know why. I could try and tell you, but what's the point. Everyone's gonna get a feeling different than mine. My feeling is so small and so late...
And that's the rub of it all.
What was I doing?
What am I doing now?
Sometimes I tell myself. Know what I think?
I'm lying.
Lying in wait.
goodnight 6.11.98
