plays, films, stories, blog
sometimes
when my fingers won’t move briskly
I’m in the mood but lacking whisky
the summer night is super sticky
too fast to stop, too slow for quickie
the fan blows soft at the back of my head
something I love — sweet and strong — has fled
and through the blind, and bugged pane, a tiny light
tells me nothing’s right
this is how I free up time
to make a silly, frozen rhyme
A friend of mine recently explained that she had very little time. She went into great detail about her lack of time. In fact, she took quite a bit of time explaining her lack of time.
The conversation was very familiar. I’ve said the same thing, almost the exact same words, many times.
Yet, as I heard another person say what I’ve said so many times, it occurred to me that we both have the same amount of time. This moment, and then this moment, and the next moment — so forth and so on…
Talking about lack of time takes a lot of time.
Our refrigerator started dying. Gradually. I vacuumed its backside and that didn’t help.
A week passed between the time we noticed the machine’s diminishing performance and the time the repairman arrived. By then, the things on the inside were very close in temperature to things on the outside.
The gentleman who did the repair thinks it may have incurred some lightening damage. We’ve had quite a few electrical storms here in NC in July.
He fixed it. It cost a bit. Not nearly as much as a new one — and he said this twelve year old model will probably be around longer than a new one would have. The newer models — with all the great new features — only last six to ten years.
He worked on it for about two hours. He pulled it out, threw hot water, melted ice, changed parts.
But the pictures on the front of the freezer — eye level — never budged.
It occurred to me that they haven’t budged for quite a while. I think almost every photo has been there for ten years.
Aaron is a teenager. Emma is a baby. Clinton is President.
Napoleon Dynamite (2004 — possibly the most recent entry) is still sideways.
Why isn’t Sarah on there?
The door of my mother’s fridge also serves as a time capsule. It’s bigger, with more pictures — and they’ve been there even longer.
Amazing — as many times as I open that door each day. Those are some pretty solid magnets.
I guess the space on the front of a fridge is finite. First come, first serve.
Then it’s frozen solid — like the stuff inside.
