“The trouble is you think you have time.”
- Buddha
“Do you have the time, or does the time have you?”
- Pete Miser and The Five Fingers of Funk
Like the fading gentry in a Chekhov play who sit around philosophizing, unaware that change has already placed them on the mantel, time does not exist for the Spectacular Failure.
Or more precisely, time never ends. Never runs out. There will always be more time.
One of the many possible epitaphs — and if he plans it properly — the last words of the Spectacular Failure: “I am just getting started.”
Either that, or: Look out below!!
Just getting started.
The only explanation for the inert sigh exhaled during those exhaustive evenings wasted doing nothing — years of evenings spent quite literally doing nothing — that will always be his greatest regret. “There will be more time”.
And during all the hours, days, weeks, and years the Spectacular Failure devoted to the concerns of others and other people’s needs — and not to his own selfish passions — again: “There will be more time.”
The relentless slate of obligations, events, and other marks on the calendars — both pre-determined and contrived — to keep you distracted and disoriented, the almost amnesiac repeat: “There will be more time.”
Always, “There will be more time.”
Mustn’t there? There has to be. More time to come. Yes. There always is. It just won’t always include having you around. We all know this, and perhaps none more than the Spectacular Failure. Yet, he never really seemed to do anything about it. Watching his toes in the sand on a beach. The water coming and going. Arriving and receding. Feeling comfortable as he sinks into the sand.
Even in the flashes of urgency, when inspiration occasionally possessed him, getting him off the couch. In those moments of frantic creation that fooled him into a fleeting moment of transcendence and “belief in himself” — inevitably would leave behind only incomplete works, scraps of ideas, and unfinished thoughts. All with the purposeful intent and certainty of returning to them later, because “There will be more time.”
The beginnings of all the ideas, stories, plays, pieces, and essays — creations of all sorts — captured in new notebooks, on the first and second pages. To then sit only to be replaced and buried under a brand new notebook dedicated to another brilliant idea that might have an amazing conception, but inevitably, like all the others, is essentially stillborn.
There will be more time.
His back straightens in the chair when cracking the cellophane off a new, replacement notebook. The inspiration and promise of a nice new notebook to sit atop the other, old, failed notebooks of the past. Like an archeological dig in reverse. There are very few things the Spectacular Failure loves more than buying notebooks. He has dozens of them. All very nice. All very expensive. And all very empty.
The Spectacular Failure is a master of beginnings. The rapid release of a thought. Thrown into the deep end of a larger idea. To sink. With the energy gone, he marks the page with the ribbon and closes the notebook. He will return to them later, he tells himself. In time.
But then, again, always, to begin a new thought — never returning to older ones because, of course, there will be time for that. It’s a lie he knows that he is telling himself. He knows that once put down, it will never be picked up again. With this awareness, he sits to write knowing full well that today — this moment — is all the thought will ever get. When the pen is put down, the book is done. The act was never about completion. Or rather, the incompletion is the act.
“Incomplete” is even an exaggeration. All those writings and creations will never see another word. The stacks of notebooks, like tombstones, sit on his desk and will never see a third page. The life of the Spectacular Failure — with all that writing — will leave only one word behind. The word that was assigned to him in kindergarten and the word that will remain long after he is forgotten. Echoing like the song of a long-dead griot. The one word he could never bring himself to write:
Potential.
Empty, unfulfilled, never receding nor ever arriving. Potential. The word teachers say on “Parents’ Night”. What is muttered under the breath when meeting your fiancé. Potential. The only word on the rejection slip. Used by those who respond to things they don’t understand blithely with: “Interesting.” Shorthand for “nice try.”
Browsing the shop for a new notebook, the Spectacular Failure imagines the potential.
Interesting.
Next: Missive 52: Funeral for a Friend
Previous: Missive 51: Nobody
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