A Side Trip or Ten
When you're stuck in a room for thirteen hours straight, everyday, talking about the same thing, for the past seven weeks, it's safe to say that your mind will wander. Minds too need space, need air, need cigarette breaks from their bodies.
Of course, being inundated with tight deadlines, these little beelines for sanity have to be brief in order for its absence to go unnoticed. I have this image of my mind, fading into the air a la Eric Bana in the drippy Time Traveler's Wife, and finding itself in the oddest places, naked and vulnerable, only to disappear again and return to my restrictive skull moments later. The mind has no control over where it goes or how it must return, but it's safe to assume that the force behind it knows to always rein it back into reality, just in time to answer the Director's question, or to question the unfathomable.
My mind been quite the jetsetter these past few weeks. It's probably racked enough mileage to take itself, maybe the heart, and maybe the spirit for a little R&R in the most exotic places imaginable - if only they could get away as well.
For people, physical journeys begin with an intention: I will go to the beach to hear the waves and nothing else. I will go to New York to watch a Broadway play. I will go to Coffee Bean to get outrageously priced latte. I will go to the bathroom so I don't burst right here on this couch.
For the mind, journeys usually begin with a question, and almost always, this question almost always begins with a What If.
In the past few weeks alone, here are examples of what may have jump-started my mind's side trips to the various corners of time and space.
1. What if my swelling pimple could talk? What would it say and would it have a foreign accent?
2. What if I got a full body paraffin treatment so I could look like Samantha Morton in the Minority Report?
3. What if that guard who always flirts with me in the morning actually is my soulmate, or a lover from a past life?
4. What if I could interrupt the conversation going on right now by screaming an expletive at the top of my lungs. Which obscenity would it be?
5. What if I were to fill my Dunder Mifflin mug with wine? Would anyone really notice when I'm already slurring and my lips have turned plum?
6. What if I attempted to spend the whole day communicating through song?
7. What if I attempted to spend the whole day communicating through dance?
8. What if I were still back in school? Or what if I were to go back to school?
9. What if we don't sign our contract? Or they don't even give us a contract? What if she doesn't sign her contract?
10. What if I fell asleep for a bit and woke up to find that I'm already 30 and still sitting on this god-awful pink couch still trying to figure out the fucking story?
**
My mind's still not back from number 10. The thing that worries me is that my heart, which has always been in the same place, has gone missing. I suspect it's gone after its friend.
Let's hope they find what they're looking for. 'Til then, I'll be waiting before I decide to make another journey myself.
Of course, being inundated with tight deadlines, these little beelines for sanity have to be brief in order for its absence to go unnoticed. I have this image of my mind, fading into the air a la Eric Bana in the drippy Time Traveler's Wife, and finding itself in the oddest places, naked and vulnerable, only to disappear again and return to my restrictive skull moments later. The mind has no control over where it goes or how it must return, but it's safe to assume that the force behind it knows to always rein it back into reality, just in time to answer the Director's question, or to question the unfathomable.
My mind been quite the jetsetter these past few weeks. It's probably racked enough mileage to take itself, maybe the heart, and maybe the spirit for a little R&R in the most exotic places imaginable - if only they could get away as well.
For people, physical journeys begin with an intention: I will go to the beach to hear the waves and nothing else. I will go to New York to watch a Broadway play. I will go to Coffee Bean to get outrageously priced latte. I will go to the bathroom so I don't burst right here on this couch.
For the mind, journeys usually begin with a question, and almost always, this question almost always begins with a What If.
In the past few weeks alone, here are examples of what may have jump-started my mind's side trips to the various corners of time and space.
1. What if my swelling pimple could talk? What would it say and would it have a foreign accent?
2. What if I got a full body paraffin treatment so I could look like Samantha Morton in the Minority Report?
3. What if that guard who always flirts with me in the morning actually is my soulmate, or a lover from a past life?
4. What if I could interrupt the conversation going on right now by screaming an expletive at the top of my lungs. Which obscenity would it be?
5. What if I were to fill my Dunder Mifflin mug with wine? Would anyone really notice when I'm already slurring and my lips have turned plum?
6. What if I attempted to spend the whole day communicating through song?
7. What if I attempted to spend the whole day communicating through dance?
8. What if I were still back in school? Or what if I were to go back to school?
9. What if we don't sign our contract? Or they don't even give us a contract? What if she doesn't sign her contract?
10. What if I fell asleep for a bit and woke up to find that I'm already 30 and still sitting on this god-awful pink couch still trying to figure out the fucking story?
**
My mind's still not back from number 10. The thing that worries me is that my heart, which has always been in the same place, has gone missing. I suspect it's gone after its friend.
Let's hope they find what they're looking for. 'Til then, I'll be waiting before I decide to make another journey myself.