I’d forgotten what the blank page felt like, that white hot hole of space in which it seemed adding words was impossible. Its was already full and spewing forth. Did you know that physicists have theorized that white holes now exist, places in the universe in which particles emit from nothingness? I know that space. My mind is a white hole, frothing out of nothingness. Maybe it’s an intermittent white hole. Is that a thing? Do black holes fill up? Will white holes ever empty? Do they swing back and forth over eternity like watching water boil at the bottom of a pot? Or the way clouds spontaneously form in a blue sky and then fizzle back into nothingness? Or a geyser spurts by the clock?
I’m on summer break. All year, I only tutored six students a week but it seemed like a heavy load. Remember back when you were in college and you felt you needed to catch up one semester and you took nineteen credits? That kind of load. I’m tired, so easily tired, but I’m going to miss my students. I only have two who are sticking to me over the summer and I’m taking a break next week, a whole week. What will I do with—
My phone just dinged. Who the hell is texting me at this hour? I hate that person.
These are crap thoughts, not worthy of offering you. I’m sorry to draw you inside this space and—
There it goes again, the single ding of a person who didn’t care that I’d accidentally took my phone off silent and texts me at 5:13 in the morning. Does anyone—
There it goes again. Who the hell has the audacity? I’m trying to fucking sleep here. Well, I’m not exactly trying to sleep, but I should be. They don’t know that I’m not still in bed.
Now, the cat thinks I should get up. Pet me, pet me, dammit, pet me. Why is it that every time I tell myself I’m going to go back to the focus of writing, I get interrupted multiple times?
Of course, I know I could ignore the cat and put my phone back on silent, but I’m sitting at my computer and I left my phone docked across the room. It’s a tiny room, but to silence it, I’d have to get up and cross the tiny room to get to the damned phone and I’d probably trip over the cat if I tried because I left the damn light off because the light just seemed too bright. Everything is so damned bright.
I woke up late this morning, 4:54, whereas I’d been waking up at dawn at 4:23 or so the previous mornings. What idiot made me move to a place where dawn pops into being at 4:15 in the morning near summer solstice? Right, that would be the me of thirty years ago. Every morning, I wonder why I live this far north during these three weeks near every solstice.
Now, I’m waiting for that next ding, that single ding, set too loud, that will send another zing through my chest. Waiting. Just what I need to have a little zing run through my chest at random intervals before 6:00 am. Now that I’m waiting for it, the damn thing sits silent, the fucker.
Thank you for listening, jules