In The Static

He had about 4 hours and 30 minutes. He, like Jack London, was going to use his time. What else did a man have…but time? Christians have it backwards he thought: salvation isn’t the afterlife, salvation is life. He imagined god looking out over eons and eons of unborn pondering whom to birth and throw into the world –to save…from never experiencing. This birth, he thought, this is salvation.  He was getting off track: 4 hours and 30 minutes. He thought about saying it in seconds, 16200 for more force but then thought better of it. If time is so precious, how it is relayed or conveyed, be it months hours or seconds should be beyond the point. Wouldn’t other people recognize that their time was finite and then act accordingly? Who seriously makes plans for the afterlife? One can’t even set goals in the afterlife because they would be attained the moment you thought of them because isn’t that what heaven is, immediate wish fulfillment? Hankering for hot and sour soup? Done. Hole in one? Gotcha. Famous movie actor? Yep. Absurd he thought. Again, getting off track. 4 hours now and going to use it, and in a profound way. Gonna help humanity, or at least watch some good tv. No, no tv he thought. Gonna die someday and here I am with a good chunk of time to myself and I’m thinking about Game of Thrones re-runs. Christ, I’ve already seen them; at least start a new series…House of Cards? No! No tv! Ok, here we go…profound…deep…maybe back to that Christian bit? Where the hell was his niche? If the Coen brothers can write about Jeff Lebowski fitting in, why couldn’t he, he thought? Fit in…somewhere…in some way. Was it fame he was after? Is it fame that verifies your quality? Sure seems that way. You don’t get on the 6 o’clock news by just picking up your kids from daycare. He’d read Maslow, hell, he’d read Buscaglia but self actualization was becoming more and more a pipe dream that began floating away in his early twenties. His early twenties, he thought: I was after it, working hard, putting in the hours, feeling the satisfaction that comes with hard work…and he wanted that feeling again…that feeling of being pulled…as if unwilling…as if…there was no choice. Seemed strange to think of those times in his life that, ex post facto, while rewarding, were the times when he seemed to lack autonomy. Was it like the poets that Plato referred to and how Clapton described Stevie Ray Vaughan as an open channel, just a vehicle through which the gods communicate? If this was the case, he just needed tuned, like a radio, past all the static, till the needle finds the station, flush. But shit, he thought, what if this is life, for most of us, trying to find the station but never hitting it flush and always being in the static?