Plenty of Time

There is never enough time to do everything you put off all those years, all those idea you have that you'll get to one day. That is no new theme. I guess if you're making logical decisions about how to spend your time and are never idle just because it would take too much effort to get started, or underway, and you still have all these things you never got around to doing, that's okay.
I spent the summer writing about nonsense, and it didn't help my brain out at all. If it's to be strong then it needs to work hard.
It's after eight and kids are playing in the alley. They shout a lot. The buildings contain the sound, give it to me. Everything else is unusually quiet, though. I notice when the kids shut up. I can almost hear the ringing in my ears over the keys typing. THere are thumps vibrating from somewhere in the building.
Anna is on her way to TaeKwonDo, here on referred to as tkd, because I don;t like to type tae kwon do. We went to a barbecue party a couple of weeks ago on our bikes, it was really far out west. I didn't like riding on the streets, but it was worse riding with her. He bike is slow and she is overcautious. She will not ride through yellow lights. Twice she said she heard something fall off of her bike. I couldn't tell what it was, but I don't trust that piece of crap she rides so we more or less got rid of it. But now she has to walk to tkd in the dark, which is not good for my peace of mind so I go to pick her up at least, three times a week, which is nice. Her instructor promotes people into higher belts even if they are fat and out of shape and can't remember the moves very well, and I think it's to keep people coming back. She has complained of this also. Everyone wants to just say they are a black belt. One day a young guy wasn't in class because he got beat up. His tkd skills didn't help him at all, he said. He wanted to know why, and the teacher said it takes time. But I watch that class when I wait for Anna to be done and they mostly don't look like their hearts are in it. But maybe I just don't understand the way martial arts are taught and learned.
We went to make some dinner over at a friend's place, a couple we like to double date with periodically. Anna and Gavin were cutting vegetables, the knives were pointy and cold and hard steel, pointed at one another. I know it's because there is something imbalanced in myself that makes me feel this way, but while I watched them cut onions I had to force myself to trust Gavin not to stab Anna in the eye. He is a good friend and would never dream of hurting anyone, but because that possibility was there of Anna getting violently killed and because of what I think that would do to me I had to calm myself down. I always think about how easy it would be to seriously hurt someone in the kitchen. Then I worried as I watched her cutting the peppers, because it looked to me like she was not paying very good attention and that the knife wasn't very sharp, which is more dangerous that way. I thought then that that was the same thing, and I wasn't trusting her to take care of herself. I wondered if it also tied in with a lack of respect I had for her, which I suppose is possible. That is not a very good way to treat people, I thought. Like they are not even capable of cutting vegetables, like I would have to intervene in order for it to be safest and most efficient. And as I watched she cut herself on the thumb, and I saw the blood right away, under the soft orange light it was the exact same color as the pepper. Considering all that neuroticism I was flying with a minute ago I thought I would cringe or get mad at her or something, but I really just felt like it was no big deal. Still grasping at a way to justify all that worry I tried to think of when it would be a big deal but all I came up with was the days before immunizations and antibiotics, etc. Still, I don't think I'll ever not be nervous when someone points a knife at Anna, in even the most innocent of ways.
A number of years ago I ate a dose of mushrooms with a couple of friends and had a pretty dark trip. Another friend of ours, Sean, had recently been killed and this was the first time I'd done psychadelics since. It was night, there weren't a whole lot of people around, and Erik and Matt and I were hanging around and about Erik's apartment in logan square. I went through a pretty tough couple of hours, becoming convinced that people were all angry and greedy and lost and sad, and decided at one point that the only reason I shouldn't commit suicide was to remain strong for my other friends, in particular our friend Caroline, who was Sean's girlfriend. Around the time that I lost the ability to communicate with Matt and Eric I tried to shake off the effects of the drug by taking a shower, but I succeeded only in finding myself imagining the water to be my own blood flooding into the drain because of a picture my ex girlfriend had shown me before we started dating of her dead in a bathtub splattered in fake blood, and soaking the hell out of Erik's bathroom and ruining all his toilet paper because his water pressure was pretty strong and I don't think I shut the shower curtain all the way. I was still fucked up when I got out of the shower. Erik's kitchen was pretty disgusting, and because drugs always give you grandiose ideas about prfoundly fixing your life when you are in ino condition to act on them I decided that the only way to fix my disgusting life was to start cleaning it up right away, and I filled up Erik's sink and started washing his dishes and stuffing glad bags full of all the crap he had everyhere until Matt came out and said something like Man, it's his place, and I could see he was right, and I was freaking out. I tried to control myself, I tried to make a joke. I had this knife in my hand. It was serrated, and was forked on the end. It seemed to me to be the most ridiculous knife I had ever seen. "Look at this knife!" I said. "Look at this knife." I suppose at that point it was pointed right at Matt, or at Erik, or wavering at both of them, who were both standing in front of Erik's room on the other side of the kitchen from me. WBEZ was in the background, coming from Erik's alarm clock radio. I remember it felt like I knew her, like I could almost pinch her lower lip if I reached out to try because I could see her so well, and her voice represented what all of us in the whole world were feeling now that we were all forced to live in such an immoral a world.