I’m Just Saying, is All…

I’ve got a lot more time on my hands these days. These past ten days or so, I mean. Ever since the time I was a little girl, it seems I’ve had 9 or 10 things that I was supposed to be doing at any given moment of any given day. So if you’d ever seen me just sitting there, doing nothing instead of dashing willy nilly from doing one thing here to doing another thing there, chances were better than even that in some little nook or cranny, way, way back in the back of my mind, I was racked with guilt about all the doings to do that I should have been doing but wasn’t.

No more.

No timelines no due dates no clients no bosses employees bedtimes alarm-clocks or orders. No contracts or appellate briefs drug tests interviews expectations no no nope no no. Nuh-uh.

Back in the day, back when I was forever dashing willy nilly from doing one thing here to doing another thing there – that is, back before ten days ago – I would very occasionally take a mere moment (but only a moment and no more than that) to wonder what I ever would do if I did not have to do all the doings that I should have been doing but wasn’t.

And now I know: I’d wonder. When there’s nothing else at all of any sort at all to ever do, I wonder.

I wonder where all of that past dashing willy nilly has got me, other than the obvious right here and right now. Seriously, I do.

I wonder where I’d be this very second if I’d dashed willy nilly a bit less often. Would I be over there? Or would I still just be here, like a tetherball destined to go ‘round forever tied to the same damn pole?

I wonder if the 99% effectiveness boasted by birth control pills means that people screw up a lot when trying to remember to take them every day, or whether – if taken precisely to the tee as directed – I can expect to get pregnant an average of once every hundred months.

I wonder if anybody ever really wins.

I wonder when each of the folks that I know will die, in what order they’ll be biting that particular big one, like actors in some late night monster movie, until the original cast is whittled down to just one or two at the end. Until, come to think of it, the movie is over and the cast is all gone.

I wonder which of the many, many guesses we’ve guessed about what happens to us when we die is accidentally closest to being true.

How many times will I end up having sex in my lifetime? Should I have kept better count from the start? If yes, why?

I wonder, if the Coyote ever caught the Roadrunner (perhaps by switching the brand of equipment he utilizes in the chase), if that Coyote would actually eat the little dude, gobble him up and then use the bones to pick Roadrunner remains from his big Coyote teeth. And when he wakes up the next morning, what would he do then?

I wonder if I’ll live to discover a piece of recorded musical noises that are better than The Microphones’ Mount Eerie, a chunk of aural magic so potent that time’s bottom falls out and for 45 minutes I’m not even me.

I wonder if “House” is going to be good again this season.

I wonder if tomorrow I should go and buy a pet cat.

I wonder if I close my eyes and try with all my might, if I can make myself believe in something – anything at all – when I open my eyes back up. I wonder if I might even believe something that someone else once wrote about how the world got here and why there’s a sky. I wonder whether it involved a turtle.

I wonder how many of these here tadpoles would have survived long enough to become toads if I hadn’t rescued them from that puddle alongside the road two weeks ago.

I wonder if I post this on my blog if everyone will incorrectly think it is my half-assed attempt to write something poetic and profound and lame, which will automatically get it dismissed faster than a blog post about an attack of sky sperm. I wonder why I’m not posting more to my blog, now that I don’t have anything of any sort at all to do all day but to sit around and wonder. Although, if you think about it, two hundred thousand-plus page views indicates to me that this thing already sucks many too many moments from the hours of my day.

I wonder if St. Teresa in the cloister went to the same place as Gautama under his tree went to as my aunt at the revival went to as Leary with a head full of magic mushrooms went to as an old medicine man chanting went to as Alice down the rabbit hole went to as George Fox in the bloody streets of Litchfield went to when he went.

But wait. There’s a little bit more.

If I concentrate very hard and spend a couple hours each day trying, can I convince myself I’m colorblind for a little while? Can I use the same method of concentration to dream a new color that no one can see except me?

I wonder if my call really is important to them.

I wonder how old I’ll be when I finally say, “These damn kids today and their _________.”

How many more days do I have until the crow’s feet come?

Is my computer slowing down because it has reached the ripe old age of 8 months? Do my iTunes files take up so much room as to impact the speed of my other programs? Do tiny creatures with froglike pouches under their chins and multiple arms sneak into my CPU in the night and rewire everything unbeknownst to me and then stand in the dark corners of my room laughing at me as I pound the desk in frustration?

I wonder if anyone’s ever been really convinced of anything by getting beaten, slapped, insulted or bombed.

What, if anything, would I not do for a laugh?

I wonder if I’m wrong about absolutely everything.

I wonder if I should go rent an RV, maybe take a drive across the country, find a job out West somewhere, out in the desert where the air is still clear and people mind their own business. Maybe something where I can get down and work with my hands and get soil packed beneath my fingernails, dig down into the earth and see what it can still grow.

I wonder how long it’ll be before Greg figures out I’m an idiot.

And right now, this very second, I wonder if I should be doing something – you know, updating my résumé or something constructive like that, instead of wasting time sitting here wondering about so much useless stuff. I’ve got a lot more time on my hands these days, you see, and it could be that my mind is beginning to consume itself.

I don’t know for sure. I’m just saying, is all…