I spend five days riding the same bus to the same place. Tuesday it took 25 minutes. Thursday it took twenty.
Today it took forty-five and change. I forgot to check the time once I sat down, and was probably a mile into the trip before I thought to do so.
When I walk the same distance, it takes me 30 minutes every time.
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I spend other times counting the hairs left at the bottom of the shower after the collected water at my feet has time to drain again.
The waiting for the water to drain can take anywhere from 1 minute to five, depending.
What it doesn’t depend on, I’ve noticed, is the number of hairs that I collect from the cover. There is no correlation that I can speak of there.
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I spend 3 days a week watching movies that have more function than form. Their form is so boring.
A predictable foray into flesh quite unlike my own.
Sometimes it takes viewing 6 or 7 or even 10 different scenes, different bodies themselves, before I can settle into the proper interpretive mood to let function follow the form of my body in a slight, staggered convulsion.
Later I’ll lay there with my eyes closed and think about bowls and pills and bellies full of fine toast and jam.
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I have a collection of 259 books holding space on my bookshelf.
I have not read all 259 books holding space on my bookshelf. Those that I have read, I read often.
By reading, I do not mean reading they way that they teach you in school. I mean I collect and reframe on the shelf in my mind where they take on a differing kind of difference that makes it mine.
The Weather by Lisa Robertson is a very different book on my mind’s shelf than the one that holds space on my bookshelf in my apartment.
I doubt there’s a single word similar.
But I love The Weather by Lisa Robertson. And I read it often.
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I have 38 different versions of the song “Moon River”. I usually only listen to 4 of them.
The version I like best is the longest. I have to wait for 6 minutes or so of silence before the hidden track finally plays.
I’ll always listen to the silence. The anticipation makes it feel more important than a pop song should.
The waiting makes the two-minute wail that follows all the more heartbreaking, leaving me breathless it’s so full of breath.
