Wednesday, January 4, 2012

To the latecomers are left the bones

I have extracted this quote from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I finished just now in the waiting room of a hospital, because I connect with it. This whole day, I've felt like a latecomer. I woke up in sheer panic, afraid I’d overslept my alarm––I hadn’t–– and it's stayed with me all day, that feeling of I-don't-have-it-together. I can spread this feeling of anxiety like cream cheese over my life, relate it to any number of things. Yeah, I find it easy to be anxious when I’m tired. Small upsets magnify into macro, my positivity dwindles into a bittersweet memory of times past. I was listening to a happy song on Van Ness and I wanted to start crying. I held myself back, didn’t want to frighten the eighty-year-old I’d be picking up from eye surgery even if she could only see my blotched face with one eye. Have I told you I only got four hours of sleep? I feel exhausted, depleted, kaput. The kind of exhaustion a caged dolphin feels after hurtling herself again the grates of her submerged enclosure. I don’t want to be a latecomer, gnawing at bleached calcium, sucking desperately at marrow, I want the choicest bits, the dark pieces of meat KABAM! with flavor. I want to feast until there’s grease and bits of meat clinging to my face and my hands, all over my nice buttom-up shirt, I want it all. I want my name in print, I want to stand beside you on my own platform, I’m going to go home and take such a wonderful nap.

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