How it Goes

Now that I'm getting to sleep before the gray light begins to creep into the sky, I no longer get visits from the cat across the street. All through the summer, when I went out to fetch the morning paper, she would be up and about and would come over to meow at me and then nibble a bit of grass from my lawn. Then I would go back into the house and my cat would sniff my pant leg where the other cat had rubbed against it, and she would give me an accusing look. Now I fetch the paper in cat-free total darkness, and when I come back in, my cat is still sleeping on my bed and I have to move her before I can get in it, and she gives me an accusing look. The more things change....

I went rooting around in boxes and drawers for some things I know I have stashed away somewhere, but couldn't find what I was looking for. I have this idea in my head, and we all know how much trouble those are! The idea is that if I re-connect with something from the past, I'll be able to use the energy it generates to do something now. But I feel the need to have a tangible object with which to jog my memory. I know it's in there somewhere! I just can't find it.

It's November, and my head is filled with ghosts.

Time and Space and Stuff

Space is an interesting invention. It is useful, because you can put stuff in it. But sometimes, there isn't enough of it, or there is too much of it. There can be insufficient space for the stuff you want to put in it, or things can be too far away, because there is just too much space. This leads to problems with time.

Time is an interesting invention, too. Again, there can be too much of it, leading to boredom, or too little of it, causing one to feel harried. But the positive side of time is that it allows you to move through space and deal with stuff.

The stuff itself is the thing about which I feel most ambiguous. I'm aware of the fact that I use stuff all the time, and that I, myself, am made of stuff, but stuff has that unfortunate quality of deterioration. Well, to be fair, that seems to be mostly time's fault, but when things fall apart, I usually blame the stuff. After all, if it weren't for time, we wouldn't be able to deal with stuff in sequence. We wouldn't be able to arrange stuff in space properly, either, if there were no time in which to do it.

You can see that I have problems with all three of these phenomena. I think I like space the best, even though it would be pretty much pointless without the other two. Space without stuff of any kind in it would be nothing but a void, and, according to the physicists, the absence of stuff would lead to an absence of time as well. It's kind of difficult for me to wrap my head around the idea that time is actually a by-product of stuff, but there it is. The use of space requires stuff, and stuff inevitably leads to the existence of time.

It is mainly the stuff that I have a problem with, too. It hides itself in the little folds of time it creates and I can't find it when I want it. By the time I do find it, I've usually forgotten what it is that I want to do with it. Besides which, the stuff tends to get musty while it is creating time, and the more time it creates, the more depressing it is to smell it once it is found.

Anyway, this is all to say that I found apiece of paper I'd been looking for, and the paper itself contains words about time in a particular place shortly before the words on the paper became recognizable stuff. Now that I've found it and thought about it for a while, I'm confused. What am I going to do with this stuff about that time and place? I have no idea.

I'll probably do something with it, though, and that thing has a good chance of being stupid and embarrassing. I'd probably be better off to just forget the whole thing. But at this place and time, I don't think I can. Stuff will ensue. Which just goes to show that you can't get away from it all. Time and space and stuff will conspire to trap you, no matter what you do, because the doing can only take place in time and a place where there is stuff. Reality: can't live with it, wouldn't know we were alive without it.