I guess that in the end, all you can really say about your life is that it is a piece of a puzzle, one infinitesimally abstract part that fits in to the larger picture, and that it has no blunt edges (If you examine it and shift it around a bit, like some moon rock or gelatinous mass). Instead, there is this shape to it, and you live within the boundaries of this shape, see.
Now I'm no expert on this. Don't go following me around like I'm some sort of long overdue prophet on the loose or something. I have no followers. I'm no more than a puzzle piece myself, trying to make myself fit like the rest of us; like the lazy kid upstairs. I can hear him rolling his chair around on the hardwood floor in his bedroom. He's a weird kid if you ask me, not a kid at all really - in his late twenties - has a job at a Rite Aide store, lives with his dad. He spends every waking moment at his computer, has no plans or ambitions and he likes it that way. I honestly don't think he ever sleeps.
Now here comes another piece of the puzzle, Rufus, my dog. He's confused I guess, because it 430am or so in the morning and he sees that I'm up and he makes an appearance. "Hi I'm here," he seems to be saying. How about a little food? Don't you think a nice meal would set us all straight right now?" Then he goes away. I think the navigation of his puzzle piece would be so much simpler if he could speak. Instead he wags his tail and stares like some cow: pathetic. But then he probably thinks the same of me with having to walk on two legs instead of four, an admittedly bad design.
Anyway, you try to mold this piece, try to give it shape, which you know is futile, but you try anyway because you don't know the final outcome of the pattern. Some say the pattern is pre-determined, others says it is completely happenstance how it ends up looking, but the point is it fits with all the other pieces and you never get to see the final pattern. It might be cool if you did, a kind of sneak preview of the end.
You might wonder, why am I up at 4:30 or so thinking about these things and - bear with me - I have a perfectly logical reason and the reason is this: Paul Simon.
That's right, Paul Simon of Simon and Garfunkel. I was lying there in bed thinking about that song, "Late in the evening." I could not get that song out of my head. I was consumed with it.
Here are the first set of lyrics:
"The first thing I remember I was lying in my bed
I couldn't have been no more than one or two
And I remember there's a radio coming from the room next door
My mother laughed the way some ladies do.
Well it's late in the evening
and the music's seeping through..."
See? That's what is keeping me up. That and the kid upstairs, rolling his goddamn chair around, and the dog and next thing you know I'll be putting on coffee and the wife will shuffle out to the kitchen, asking me what in bloody hell I'm doing up so early, and the birds will start making a racket. I'll slip some toast in the toaster, shower, shave, get dressed.
All this busy work will seem like for ever, but it won't be - it'll be a blip. None of it will make any real sense, it will all be quite ordinary and then I'll go to work. I'll feel like shit, because I was up so early, but throughout the day I will have vague feelings of well being, the same exact kind you get with muscle relaxers. Work will be foolish, a veritable hallucination of all these puzzle pieces trying like hell to fit and ultimately it will be a scream, a real joy ride, because you and I both know it's not real.
For the time being, before coffee becomes an issue, I'll go back and try to sleep. Nothing renders sleep less possible than trying, another irony in the great puzzle of life.