Why not
I spend all my time imagining a series of what-if’s, spacing out with my earphones plugged uncomfortably deep inside my ear canals. What if that almost-fistfight at the Cebu Pacific counter had turned into something more than almost? What if I had been the last one to make it to the subway platform, and the only one not to make it into the train before the doors shut? (What if you were here, too?)
What if I didn't have to go home to endless lining up and getting angry? What if I had just kept my mouth shut (in more instances than one)? Even to the what-ifs of owning this or that shirt, having bought those shoes the first time around, etc.
The imagining follows me into the minutes before sleep when I’m wondering if I’m still that sensitive to caffeine and if it’s really just because of a small cup of caffe latte that I’m still wide awake. And then it follows me into sleep where I’d rather not be thinking at all. Because waking up from a nightmare (even one as mundane as being the only one wearing shorts in BC100) is always relieving, but waking up from a dream is not.
But between daydreaming and real dreaming, I can imagine all I want and not worry about the consequences. I think and think and realize I’ve wasted the day (or more) just thinking. But I’m not the kind who sees impulsiveness as freeing.
What if I stepped out into the deck where the plastic 88-peso (but supposedly accurate) thermometer tells me it’s hit a degree below zero? I’d been wondering since morning, and I thought I’d be squished with five other people in the backseat of the Equus on the way to the airport by 6 tonight without ever finding out.
But on some extremely rare impulse, I opened the airtight glass door, checked the air, froze for a minute, got my winter coat, and outside to the deck to just sit (and shiver uncontrollably with my bare fingers in extreme pain).
What if I didn't have to go home to endless lining up and getting angry? What if I had just kept my mouth shut (in more instances than one)? Even to the what-ifs of owning this or that shirt, having bought those shoes the first time around, etc.
The imagining follows me into the minutes before sleep when I’m wondering if I’m still that sensitive to caffeine and if it’s really just because of a small cup of caffe latte that I’m still wide awake. And then it follows me into sleep where I’d rather not be thinking at all. Because waking up from a nightmare (even one as mundane as being the only one wearing shorts in BC100) is always relieving, but waking up from a dream is not.
But between daydreaming and real dreaming, I can imagine all I want and not worry about the consequences. I think and think and realize I’ve wasted the day (or more) just thinking. But I’m not the kind who sees impulsiveness as freeing.
What if I stepped out into the deck where the plastic 88-peso (but supposedly accurate) thermometer tells me it’s hit a degree below zero? I’d been wondering since morning, and I thought I’d be squished with five other people in the backseat of the Equus on the way to the airport by 6 tonight without ever finding out.
But on some extremely rare impulse, I opened the airtight glass door, checked the air, froze for a minute, got my winter coat, and outside to the deck to just sit (and shiver uncontrollably with my bare fingers in extreme pain).