If you rent a car in the middle of winter and there are no snow tires on the car and you’re driving in the snow, some time in the middle of the night, Blink 182 is singing a song about time and the dark angels that meet you whenever you have time and in time I’ll miss you but right now I’m pretending like you were shit while you were here, you’re boyfriend or girlfriend or friend or mother is reminding you over and over again that you should have asked for the snow tires and you are falling asleep, if you look out the window and see trees but none of them are particularly tall and so the dark grey sky with bright fracturing starlight is grinning at you in a way that feels safe but terrible and you’re grunting, you start grunting because you know that you’re about to slide on some disappearing piece of the road and not kill anyone but kill something about the way they think of you and so you start grunting because you’re sure the traction from the sound you’re making will stop some piece of time and the music sounds vaguely British but of course it’s just cheap nineties USA and the car runs out of gas and you start laughing and you freeze to death, is that your fault?
I keep blaming myself for everything.
I have one of those jobs that would be great if I was good at it but I’m not good at it so I’m just failing and learning and waiting to be better.
Someone gave me this job.
Every day. I’m fine.
I’ve put ten minutes aside now, and yesterday and maybe even tomorrow because I love writing and at the end of the day if I can still write something, if I can still write whatever I want and sign my real fucking name and give it to you and walk away and watch the world end via Dr. Phil or CNN or my nightmares, that’s substantial reason to wake up and get through another one of these long sequences of action-wait to fail-fail-recover.
I don’t think I actually recover until I set a timer and start to write.
My dog is chewing something, I gave it to him, I remember giving it to him earlier. It feels like a week ago that I gave him this thing he loves to chew but it was maybe four hours ago.
Let’s be stronger about time.
Let’s forget to complain about it.
Let’s sit on ice and chew on candy and drink wine and read old books that we love and listen to music that someone recommended but it’s such trash that it makes us laugh.
It’s not over. It’s not better, but it’s not over.
So. Set a timer. And ask it for something. Take that thing for the time being.
Have you ever set an alarm for three days from now? Just to remind you that three days have gone by? I’m going to do that now. I’ll write you a letter when it rings. In the meantime, thank you for tonight. Goodnight.
Rachel Ganz 