“If I Were Anymore Backwards, I’d Be Going Forwards”

I can whole-heartedly guarantee that I was the only fool walking through Capitol Hill today with a smoothie in hand. Damn, it’s cold. The snow has stayed for two days now. I’ll repeat that:

The snow is sticking to the ground. It’s not melting. Snow never stays on the ground in the city.

“Rejuvenator. All soy with spirulina and echinacea, please.”

“Oh, thank God you’re here.”

“Dead day?”

“Uh, yeah. Your throat still hurt?”

“Mmm hmm.”

Yesterday’s smoothie was such a sweet delight: a frozen French kiss on my fiery throat.

The smoothie boys and girls have gotten to know me pretty well as smoothies are a regular part of my ramp ins and ramp outs. This girl in particular has really cool energy. She used to live in the building next to ours.

“Sometimes when I’m sneaking a cigarette out the window, I watch you taking out your garbage,” she once confessed.

I wasn’t sure how to respond.

Anyway I was en route to Madison to load up on carrots, apples and ginger. It was so cold that my toes and fingers hurt by the time I made it up the hill; by far the coldest I felt in my 4 years in Seattle.

This walk reminded me that I want to reference my last blog about the notion of ‘time running out’.

In order to do so, a preface:

The cool thing about walking thru this neighborhood is that it’s full of a lot of artists: people who get off on expressing themselves. This comes in several forms. For example, the guy on the end of the block has a tree in his yard that has a ton of empty beer bottles on it that hang from fishing wire.

He also has a lot of big, fat happy cats and is really cool.

But a lot of people display stuff in their windows. Of course, there’s a fair amount of political stuff. One guy has an ad for the psychiatric center that he was hospitalized in scotch-taped and facing outward for everyone to see.

Now, I ask you, does one really wanna advertise that?

But, en route to Madison Market, is this one window that for months had a small rectangular yellow piece of paper taped to it that said, “I love you.”

I interpreted it as a kind, loving gesture sent out to all the passersby and it gave me a little warm fuzzy every time I passed it.

Then about a month ago, it changed. It now reads, “I love you. Where are you?”

The once all-loving gesture transformed into one of desperate longing. (I no longer feel the warm fuzzy.)

This brings me back to ‘time is running out’.

First of all, what an ass-backwards idea. It is an utmost impossibility as 1) everything goes on forever and 2) time doesn’t exist.

Now, keeping this in mind, the other day whilst on a stroll thru the neighborhood, the internal conversation of my mind was along the very lines of, “Pick up the pace, time is running out.”

Work harder. Do more. Make money faster. The walls are closing in. The vultures aren’t just circling: they’re starting to swoop. Etc. Etc.

I literally said out loud, “Time is not running out. I define my own relationship with time.”

What happened next is no bullshit. For whatever reason I turned my head to the right and taped to a window were the words:

“Time is Running Out.”

I came to a rather abrupt halt and stood in front of the window, mouth agape.

“Did I just step inside my own conversation?”

A chill ran up my spine. I smirked and continued onward.

Again, I glanced to the right and taped on the third window down were the words:

“You’re not listening. I SAID Time is Running Out!”

At this point, the smirk faded a bit.

And then it crept back.