Charles F. McKenzie
The Horizontal Takes On The Vertical
Sometimes things just happen. Other times they just start happening. Like when ice starts to melt, or thaw. Usually the ones that require a slow process are the most interesting, but require a lot of patience from the one who is waiting on them to happen—or to have happened.
Take today for example. I’m waiting at a bus stop for a bus to come. (I could have been waiting on someone else to pick me up, but there is no one else.) I get to the covered stop by 7:25 in the morning and at fucking 8:09 there’s no fucking bus.
Well, today I chose to be a moderately patient person, so I wait a little longer. The cars and trucks and bicycles keep passing but not one of them is a bus. It gets to be 8:51 and I have seen no fucking busses.
Fuck it, I say. I’m walking. As I rise from the bench I realize I may have made it to my destination had I just started walking at the 8:09 mark. At least I would have been closer.
So here it is, the theme: I started walking and therefore made something start happening. The bus for all I know never fucking came to pick me up but I picked myself up off that fucking bench and got to where I was going.
Sometimes things happen and we don’t know why. But we’re there, right there, taking some degree of solace in the fact that we ourselves are always “happening”—kind of like objects falling from a shelf, avoiding in ignorance the hands that are so desperately trying to catch us.
