Three Feet High and Rising

Time and tide wait for Norman. No, wait. No man, Norman waits for….time…Tide…no, that doesn’t make sense.

No man? No I think it’s Norman. Norman was a guy in my old writers’ group. Besides, Tide waits for everyman. Ask my wife. She says if it were up to me, the laundry would never see the Tide—or the Gain either. 

Gain and Tide wait for everyman, then a woman gets frustrated and does it herself?  No…it’s true, but still not what I’m looking for.

I’m having trouble today. My head’s a fuzzy mess. (Not the hair, the stuff inside.) It worries me. Everybody’s got the flu and fuzz is usually my first symptom. 

Am I coherent? That’s not really a RobBlog litmus: coherent is not an accurate test for day-to-day Rob. I think synapse-mittens are an accurate test. And yes my synapses are wearing Mittens.

I blame Michigan, at least for the right mitten.

I blame Norman too. Norman showed up every week with nothing to read except a list of excuses why he didn’t write anything. Usually “no time” was at the top of his list.  He never complained about the tide carrying out his work though. That’s because tide waited for Norman. If it grabbed his papers, he could walk out in the water and grab them. 

Time?  I think time waited for him too, it just wasn’t waiting where he wanted it.  It’s like when I go to the store for pig’s ears to make that silk purse I’m darning. Every time I go in, the grocer says, “No pig’s ears.” Oh, pig’s ears exist. They’re just not what’s in store. They’re waiting for Norman, somewhere else.

“Darn it!”

Darn MyQueen too.  Yeah, she spent this week home sick.  Her timing really sucks.  I mean, I just made it past all that “New Year’s resolution” crap. I started my year with my pockets clear of excuse lint, and my head filled with the yarn of yearning, ready to knit together mittens of ideas, and accomplishments.

I have needs.

MyQueen needs an assistant and a maid. “Cud-oo gimme a bok o’ tithue?”

She also needs a translator.  I suck at all of the above.  Still she is my love and I love knitting her needs. I sit on the couch and keep her company, cuz that’s something she wants.

“Wub my feet.”

“Oh, look at the time…”

It reminds me that time never comes to do the things I want to accomplish. I wait and I wait, but it’s a speeding train without a stop, boxcars filled with my unaccomplished cargo.

“Hey Rob! We’re not waiting!”

Rob’s dreams wait for no man, not even Rob.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming MyQueen for my unaccomplished complete-meants. Or the incomplete accomplishments. Or whatever fluffy conditions my fuzzy head weaves together.  Those are my unknitted garments. Their unraveling is my undoing.

It’s just that I get all ready to go, and then something trips me up. This time it’s caring for MyQueen, last time it was caring for something in the fridge, top shelf, next to the lunch meat…mmmm…pie…Next time, it’s—what was I saying?  I trip myself on my own cat’s cradle of unraveled yarn.

“No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's . . ."
"And?"
"No damn cat, and no damn cradle.”

Kurt Vonnegut wrote that. 

Norman didn’t.

I didn’t either. I want to take my ball of yarn home and wait for the next brilliant train of thought to come along. I won’t though. I can’t. Life is a day at the beach.

The struggle is not biding time on the shore waiting for the perfect wave. The struggle is catching a wave—any wave, and riding it as far as you can. Art and life aren’t waiting: they’re doing.

So I can knit my fingers into any excuse mitten my fuzzy head can create, or I can get out and write. Because while time and tide waits for Norman, nothing stops for Rob.