Monday night. Tuesday morning. 3 am. I can’t sleep. I was in bed. I got up again. It’s brighter than it should be outside. I don’t know why. With the fan off, all I can hear is the pestering trickle of the aquarium. There’s a blade of light across my ceiling. It slices in where the curtain doesn’t quite close.

Have you ever felt like you are going to wake up tomorrow and everything is going to be different? Something remarkable will happen and it will shake you out of your ordinary. My ordinary has gone all flat. Dusty. Tired. There is no greater crime in life than wasting time. Yes, it is ours to waste, perhaps. But it’s an affront to god, to life, to the privilege of being here. And every day I wake up, I have a little less time.

It’s a horrible thing to keep living as if you’re waiting to live. As if you’re still waiting to pop, to sizzle, to contribute, to, at last and finally, be awake. And it’s also a horrible thing to keep hoping that something is going to change that. But, tonight, just now before I gave up my bed, it isn’t like that. I’m not wishing something would change, although that’s true, I am. I feel it is going to change. I’m having a, whazzit, a presentiment.

It’s not as if I have got everything all wrong or backwards, either. I’ve lived. I’ve had some joy. I’ve contributed. And I haven’t always felt flat, spoiled, dusty. This feeling, at least in its extremity, is mostly new. I’m not altogether missing out on life waiting for it to happen either. And it’s a common ailment wanting more out of life. There’s always more to want. Wanting is dreaming, dreaming is ambition. Nothing wrong with any of that. Living your life like your job is done isn’t right, either.

It’s the waiting. It’s the staleness. It’s the spoiling that’s wrong. Waiting for change is a mistake. I used to be bubblier. I used to be, well never effervescent, but more, anyway. I rattle my cage with a feather now. A very large feather, yes, but no one will notice. I want to make noise more, disturb more, destroy more, create more, react more, act more, be more, say more, do more, effect more; not just wait for more. More does not come for the waiting. More is not a queue. Wanting does not have a priority sequence.

It’s time to make a move, isn’t it? But what’s my move? I haven’t got any moves, have I? I, perhaps, had moves, but I spent them all. Or at least I felt like I did. My life is stale and apparently stalemated. But it’s a trick. I know. I’m only stalemated if I believe I am stalemated. I will find my move. And for a while I will be too chicken to take it and then I will be too bored not to take it. And then, at last, I will take it. Of course I hate the fear. A risk, any risk, might set my heart to beating again.

Meanwhile, I’ve lost the ebb and flow, the wax and wane, my ocean stopped and sits still. But this middle-aged calmness, this placid stillness, is impotent and forceless.

SS