Sleeplessness engulfs me when my mind goes on the run. Thoughts speed through my mind at a ferocious pace, one I am scarcely able to keep up with. In those adrenaline fed moments, as the chase ramps up in my brain, I want to be able to sit down and hammer it all out...to strike a deal with my captures and vomit up whatever venom is pulsing through my veins, and I don't care what form it takes... words on paper, conversations, tears, hysteria, whatever. But the bargaining chip of self expression was abandoned at the scene of the crime, and I am over taken by this fierce inability to concentrate, even if I knew what I wanted to say, the words to articulate myself elude me; making talking damned near impossible. Forgetting what sparked the chase before I've reach it's end point. Wasting loads of time retracing the mental footsteps as my mind spins around it's hamster wheel, searching desperately for the clue that will proclaim my innocence.
Being on the run can get pretty lonely at times. There's an undeniable hunger for human connection, but it seems as though no matter how much I yearn for it I cannot manifest it. An urgency to both connect and disconnect at once. Like a fucking junkie whose just shot their very last morsel of dope, now high and searching desperately for the next hit... In times of even a little more mental clarity I can recognize this as the game my monkey mind plays with me, and that it persists for only as long as I'll allow it...
Everything seems so scattered and I fear I will never make sense of anything when I am in the middle of those marathon mental quests. Somewhere in the pursuit, the scene changes. Atop my bench I sit, in solemn judgement of myself as I hold court... what the fuck is wrong with you?! Judge, jury and executioner. The burden of proof is on me, each side presents it's case:
The jaded prosecutor shouts-
"The evidence is clear! LOOK at all this PRODUCTIVE time being wasted... an extra 6-8 hours a day...the defendant could be accomplishing things."
And the bleeding heart defense fires back- "not all productivity can be measured with linear and tangible parameters."
Witnesses are called, experts weigh in, and one by one, they are all consequently discredited.
And so, the trial trudges on for days. As does the self imposed gag order. And things get messy. Each side is thoroughly convincing. But all the evidence is circumstantial. When both sides have exhausted their arguments, the jury is dismissed to deliberate my fate.
Truth is, productivity comes in many, many, forms. Sometimes it looks the way I think it should...
in the form of measurable gains at work, or a clean house, or some
beautiful bit of creativity. But sometimes, it's disguised as 'wasted
time'. Encrypted in long hours of seeming idleness... but in all actuality this is when the raw assembly begins. Below the
surface of consciousness. Exhaustion strips away the guards I normally
carry around... the ones that I don't even realize I have until they
disappear in the long black stretches of night, somewhere between the high speed chase and subsequent hours spent in solitary. And in reality, there can be no deal cut. This goes one of two ways...and the jury comes back
Could it be? The jury is hung, a mistrial is declared. As I emerge, I feel the sun beat down on my skin, I gulp in the fresh air, and I walk away. I will most certainly have another trial, but today freedom is mine. I can't help but realize it's that point I was running from all along. There is no production. There is no progress. The crime is in murdering the present with the past and the future.
