My Future is Shaped Like a Giant Key

1. How Many Days You Owe Me

Fact: Millimeters can be converted to inches by dividing the number of millimeters by 25.4. This simple conversion can be performed on any number of fine websites that offer to do this for you at no charge.

I have not taken a math class since I was 15. Well, I took one in college, but all of the tests were essay. This is true. I just lost interest in math , largely due to the fact that the answers to all of the questions were in the back of the textbook. I thought that if someone else already had the answer, there really wasn't much point in me trying to figure it out, now was there?

I can't say it's a decision I've ever looked back on with any particular sort of regret, although recently, despite the vast resources available to me, I can't help but wonder if I hadn't chosen to shut off that mathematical part of my mind, if maybe now I could reconcile the days you owe me. I've Googled it. There are no conversion charts for this. No magical formulas that exist behind websites. No blank boxes for me to type in good days divided by number of sleepless nights times mornings waking up next to you over the square root of hours spent waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Days you owe me.


2. The Ultimate Mix

I've undertaken the task of making the ultimate mixed cd. One of all of my favorite songs. Not just my favorite songs, but the ones that mean the most to me, the songs that are so much a part of me, that I wasn't the same person before I heard them. After three attempts, I think I've made it there. Twenty five years of emotions and time past and signals received and received, siphoned down to eighty minutes and etched onto a thin piece of plastic.

If you ever decide to do this yourself, I recommend you begin by medicating yourself heavily.


3. Business, Unfinished

Dear Unfinished Business:

I've realized recently, that while I may never be finished with you, one day you will be finished with me.


4. Signals Lost v. Signals Received

Here's the thing: I've gotten good at waiting. I'm quite practised at it. The thing about waiting is that sooner or later the things that are coming for you come. And they come all at once, and so quickly, that it's hard to tell from all that's clamoring towards you what it is that you are meant to be receiving.

And just in case I miss anything, there are phone calls, e-mails, chance meetings, just to say- we just wanted to make sure that you were still there, to tell you that we aren't letting you go now-

18 May 06- this.

There it is in the corner. And everywhere I've gone since then they've been following me, these oversized keys, jangling next to me, and not waiting- ready- to unlock something.