Just another day and nothing's any good.
-- Sade. King of Sorrow
In just a moment everything can change. And sometimes I dream those moments. I'm thinking about the difference between my ability to predict and my mood. It has been a long time since I felt that I lived on other people's schedules, the one thing I hate more than anything, but sometimes I get close.
In order to be free, you have to be the master of the one thing that is most scarce, your time. You cannot possibly have any more time than anyone else. We are all living, in a manner of speaking, on time borrowed from God. Our spirits reside in temporary vehicles that seem robust but come apart.
I dreamt that my family drove their car off a mountain 3000 miles away. I called their phones and nobody answered. Four voicemails I left in desperation and I couldn't stop that sinking feeling that suddenly my life had changed. How would I face it? How could I maintain? I wandered all around the planet on my imagined life insurance payday, but I knew I would be nowhere. It was just a day that brought it all about, just another day and nothing's any good.
At lunch we went to Porcelli's. As we were sitting down, my colleague and I for penne, the CNN monitor flashed a plane crash in Austin TX. It crashed into the building next to the FBI building. I hooked up my Twitter. Google News had nothing. I sent out a query and got no reply. I stopped my mind from asking a thousand questions and traveling around the world. Because last night my family was all swimming, their cellphones lay on sun chairs away from the pleasant splash. They didn't drive their car off the cliff and Osama wasn't behind the plane crash. It's just another day.
I'm still reading six books at once a chapter at a time. Last night Malcolm Gladwell told me that it's impossible to tell how good a college quarterback will perform in the NFL until they get into the NFL. It's impossible to tell how good a school teacher will perform in a classroom until they are in the classroom.
You can't predict the end of anything.
I joked with the Spousal Unit last night. My version of pessimism goes a little like this. Of course you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It is the moon. You're never going to get to the moon.
It doesn't seem funny now, but I'd have to be poetic not to spoil all of the implications. Being pessimistic about moonlight acknowledges that it's possible to get to the moon. It's like singing the blues. There is redemption in being the king of sorrow.
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