The View From Scranton

Long Gone Days

I hate wasted days. It makes my heart hurt, my head ache, my soul sag. Another 24 bites the dust. What have I done? Where have I gone? What have I learned?

Of my some 1344 days away every single solitary one of 'em was a waste. Every one. Despite the fact that I did my best to bide my hard time wisely. There were the daily correspondings, to the allegiant fifty (which made for 1344 hours wasted waiting for the mail bag), and they only left me longing for conversation. There were the scriptings and the stories and the notebook upon notebook of journalings and jottings. There was blessed Bully. To keep current with events I rose to NPR, then made believe that what happened in the world made a difference to me where I was. Or wasn't. To keep current with culture I read and reread The New Yorker (thanks Chris!), then imagined I was at whatever galleries' and museums' and cinemas' events were duly noted for the week. To keep current with soundings while down Philly way I tuned into Penn's excellent XPN; up in the mountains it was all Sir George Graham's big and brassy Mixed Big on VIA. To get operatic or symphonic or jazzed I mooded over to Temple's-own RTI. Each in turn made me close my eyes and see just what I was missing. Everything. No matter who I lettered, they still weren't there. No matter what I wrote, no one could read it. No matter what I learned or thought or felt, there was no one to tell. And no matter what happening, it happened without me.

Without Bully, and the kind, continuous correspondence, it would've been nothing but the sound of one man flapping, in the stale, windowless wind.

You get the picture. So when yesterday ended-up wasted it all came back to me -- the hurt heart, the aching head, the sagging soul. Worse was this was my first day of three-hour personal time. You read correctly: three hours. Till now I'd been allowed nothing but hour-long increments to myself. As always, I planned my time 'round that of the library; unfortunately I was misinformed about the library's time. One of my girthier colleagues told me this; the library did that, and I got stuck outta the blogosphere. I blame only myself. I've passed through the library's gates enough to know the times; I've been told wrong by cons enough to know what time does.

Off to Northern Lights (with permission of course), home of the only terminal available at that ghastly hour. There I waited. And I waited. Then I wrote. And I wrote. As fast as my feeble mind and crooked fingers would allow. By then my precious three hours were almost over. And when I was done I got hit with a surgeless surge of absolute ether. No post. No signal. No back. That left all that I'd spilled over Mike Albo's deliciously vicious The Underminer gone in the dustbin of memory and all that I did for the day done gone. Long done gone. Does doing get done when there's no done in the doing? I wonder.

posted by John Hood. @ 12:38 PM