the finer line

It’s funny, the sorts of things we find productive.  Some of us simply have to walk fast to feel like we’re getting things done.  It’s the pumping of blood that does it.  Urgency alone is all some of us need.

Others need to stay very still and try their hardest to look into the distance where inevitable nothingness lives.  Thirty minutes of this and they feel they’ve done a good days work. 

Some poor souls need to fuck or spike a vein or empty a bottle to feel any sense of achievement.  Everything else feels like a mess if they’re not doing one of these.  But in fact it’s the other way around.

As for me, I think doing the dishes is getting something done.  Or cleaning up the office before sitting down to write a few inconsequential words.  Making money does little for me.

But I like to watch people make money.  Or go the grocery store to see what foods people buy.  That’s the residual information I need.

The homeless folks were all gathered under the bridge downtown last weekend.  Some were sprawled out in a faraway limbo.  Others were helping each other with their pity.  The afternoon seemed to mean very little to them.  Another Sunday.

A life like Siddhartha’s always appealed to me.  But the western world snuck in and gave me some kind of pre-birth cancer.  I’ve been trying to make something productive out of it ever since.