Friday, 12 July 2002 | Opportunities

In this moment, there is nowhere to be. The opportunities I had for this hour have expired and are going on without me. And now that I'm here, in this space of free time that I work toward tirelessly, I don't know what to do with myself. There are so many things to do, yet nothing at all. So I'm just sitting here, somewhat paralyzed, taking it all in.

I have a wrought iron bed frame that has tall posts and horizontal bars. I've outgrown the frame; I'm ready to reduce my bed to mattresses with maybe a modest metal shelf that pulls it off the floor, though the horizontal bars are handy for cleaning my room. My clothes inevitably work their way from my body to the floor to the bar at the end of my bed before traveling the five feet to the closet. Right now they are in that space, in transit.

I can hear the faint noise of the TV in the far back room. It's odd how it's recognizable, though I can't make sense of any of the sounds. And louder than that are the tree frogs, surging and waning in some sort of incessant courting ritual. My cat is sitting on the bed, staring straight ahead, at nothing. I wonder how much time she spends doing that. Sometimes it's more obvious than others; sometimes she faces the wall, her nose inches from it, her eyes blank, as if to remind me that I regularly give her too much credit.

You know, what I really want is to have many lives, lives with which I can be careless or experimental, so I can sample all of the existences that attract me, so that I have time for moments of nothing without feeling guilty or uncomfortable. Like everyone else, I am a million people but able to be only one.