Yep, time is fleeting and you gotta stop to smell roses or whatever but there's no roses anywhere near me. Some people garden and pretend they are Zen and some people exercise and pretend to have life answers. We all know, at least I know that having a garden is peaceful because it's quiet and you are outdoors doing shit where no one can bother you and when you exercise you feel better taking care of yourself, neither one is an answer for everything but it's the answer to something. Why doesn't everyone do it? Because they are doing other things, hopefully not for selfish reasons but usually it probably is. Perhaps we all know we should be doing something more worthwhile. We should all be doing something more productive, when you are working too hard you are missing out on the roses, when you are tending to the roses you are boring. Nobody likes the gardener and nobody likes the fit person telling everyone how healthy they feel. No, you need to stay miserable and stay in your place, you need to keep on shoveling crap into your gob and you need to spend more time on your smart phone.
I don't believe any of this of course. I'm processing. Whatever kind of processor I have I think it's outdated. I would love to have some kind of octa-core with crazy gigahertz but you can't upgrade in real life. You can try to improve, you can try to process differently. God knows I have. I do the equivalent of seeing all of the icons on the home screen turning white for a moment until finally you see those icons again for what they are. I am at a point now where I can analyze what is happening to me in the now or why I am reacting a certain way. I sometimes think back to childhood and why I behaved a certain way. I'm talking about those times when you do not feel safe, when you are away from home and family. Those times when you are in a foreign place and you know no one. How did you behave? Were you outgoing and loud, were you quiet and bashful? I was always the one that kept to himself, that quietly observed that prayed and hoped that no attention came my way. Did I crave attention? Did I want to be the life of the party? Sure, I think so. I would daydream about playing some kind of up-tempo piano jazz number in front of the whole class, or being able to juggle. When you are a kid juggling seems like a neat thing to do, it's not until later that everyone hates the juggler. I wanted to do something that made everyone laugh and in my imagination I never got embarrassed and my cheeks never turned red. I loved the laughter and I loved the adoration but in reality I was just sitting there in my seat doodling.
When it came time to stop doodling and to start listening and to start doing the work, I couldn't. I wouldn't. I continued doodling. I drew all over my schoolbook's paper cover, remember those? They would pass them out at the beginning of the year and everyone would wrap their books, some were really good at wrapping books, it was like this pristine present that was perpetually wrapped for the semester. For others, they absolutely sucked at wrapping and their books looked like something that had been trampled in a stampede. I was average at the art of book wrapping. When I was finished it did not take long to begin the drawing, a face here a doodle there. Lizards's holding shotguns telling an unseen opponent to "Drop that hatchet, jerk!" or spaceships, lots of spaceships.
I lived in my head, in my imagination. Maybe that's why it takes awhile for me to process. When someone says, "I need you to..." or "You need to do..." and "Jason, look out!" I blink my eyes and wonder where I am because I was just there, in that place in my mind. That land where anything can happen that was way more interesting than anything anyone could tell me. At least that's what I assume. I really don't think it's a conscious decision. There were so many times when I was jarred out of my internal moment by the sound of everyone in class opening their books to a certain page or they would all be putting their books away and reach into their desks for a sheet of paper. I felt like I was underwater and I had just come up for air and the boat was gone. I would look around puzzled and panicked. "What did I just miss? I am sorry, I was gone! Please catch me up on what I missed!" I would have to play catch up, if I didn't have paper, I would have to ask for some from some other student that sat near me that seemed relatively harmless, someone nice. I would ask, "What are we doing?" Someone would say, "Spelling test." or something like that and I would think, 'Crap'. I wish I had studied, I wish that I had prepared. I wish that I didn't feel this way right now, unprepared and clueless as to what we are doing. You would think I would have learned, you would think that I would have changed and learned my lesson but I did not. History repeated on a daily basis and it still happens even now but I try much harder to not let it.
I try. As the new year comes I try harder to listen to the roses more than smell them, I try harder to keep them in my periphery and also focus on the rest of the garden. Vine ripened tomatoes. I always laugh when you see some restaurant commercial like Olive Garden or even a pizza place like Papa John's Pizza and they always make sure to mention that whatever crap you are there to eat has "Vine Ripened Tomatoes". Thank goodness.
Happy New Year!
by Jason Walstrom
