Late at night, when the world is quiet, my Muse decides to lure me to the rocks of morbidity. The Muse creates doubt as often as it feeds me ideas. I tried to wrestle with some of these ideas in a blog post late last night, and wisdom had taught me to schedule the post rather than update it immediately.
Because I knew that this morning I would remember what I’d written and want to delete.
Most of it anyway.
What I’ve salvaged was this mini monologue from the film version of S.E. Hinton’s Rumble Fish. Benny, the soda jerk played by Tom Waits, delivers what is essentially the theme of the movie, which is about time.
Time is a funny thing. Time is a very peculiar item. You see when you’re young, you’re a kid, you got time, you got nothing but time. Throw away a couple of years, a couple of years there… it doesn’t matter. You know. The older you get you say, “Jesus, how much I got? I got thirty-five summers left.” Think about it. Thirty-five summers.
I’ve thought a lot about those thirty-five summers for the last thirty or so years, and I’m getting to the point where those perpetual thirty-five summers might not be so perpetual. They’re getting to be more of an outside number. Remember that thing I said about my Muse being morbid?
Time.
Time to start thinking about how to maximize those thirty-five summers.
uh oh, you’re reading my mind again….