The clock on the wall said 3 o'clock, and I was inclined to believe it. Time zones are funny things, especially when you're horrible at math. Cross enough of them in a short period of time, and they start to mess with your head. Your intuition tells you one thing--the time you think it should be, the time it feels like, but when you're that sure of yourself, there's always something to prove you wrong. There's always a clock ticking out the beat of the world, and everyone believes what the clock says.
There are always internal clocks, I suppose. I used to wake up at 7 o'clock every morning when I was going to school. It got to the point that even on the weekends, when there was no need to set an alarm, I woke up at 7 o'clock. When summer came, I woke up at 7 o'clock. When I stayed up until 3 in the morning, I woke up at 7 o'clock. It had become my routine, something ingrained in my unconscious mind that willed me awake at the same time every morning, whether I wanted it or not.
But the mind can be fooled--maybe not by anything in nature, but mankind fools itself all the time. We invent things to change the way we perceive our environment and survive in this world. In the beginning, Earth was all there was; then somewhere along the line, we invented maps, and suddenly, the world became something that could be conquered and divvied up behind intangible borders. We were fooled into thinking that control, and the power that comes with it, was the most important thing in the universe, so we set out to control other aspects of nature. We built dams to halt the flow of mighty rivers and flood dry land with new lakes of our own design. We built monuments and skyscrapers to rival the heights of mountains, and we constructed complex systems of irrigation that let us grow gardens in the deserts. All of this brings me back to my original point--our most devious scheme of control ever. With the invention of time zones, man's conquest of time was complete.
I'm so bored.
I'm tired of reading, so it's only by writing the most inane shit I can think of that I am able to keep myself occupied. It doesn't hurt, though. I need the practice. When you listen to professional writers doling out advice to all the wannabes, the thing they always stress is the importance of sitting down and just writing, getting as many words on the page as you can (albeit in an orderly fashion, of course). In other words, if you want to write, you have to write. So that's what I'm doing.
Hopefully, we'll be loading our stuff onto the bus sometime in the next few minutes. According to my ticket, we're due to head out of here in the next fifteen minutes. Near the counter is a small table with a clunky, old PC sitting on top of it, and a piece of paper has been taped onto the side of the monitor with the words INTERNET TERMINAL printed on the face in a large Courier font. The computer itself was secondhand junk, but it worked. When I finished reading Calvino, I went online to check my bus route. I went with the absolute cheapest rate I could find, so even though I knew where points A and B were, I had no idea where the line between them would run.
There were about a dozen tiny towns that popped up on the resulting schedule, and I'd never heard of any of them. There in the middle was Phoenix, Arizona, the only other city I recognized between Roswell and Los Angeles, and I'd be spending an hour there before switching buses. Aside from one last transfer in San Bernardino, California, for the last leg of the trip to LA, all the other stops were fifteen minute intervals to pickup and drop off. The total estimated time is twenty-two hours.
Great.
That still leaves one whole day before the this invisible machine exhibit opens in LA, and I have no idea how to spend the time. Sounds fun, right? I suppose it would be if I had any idea of what to do once I get there. Usually, I have these things thought out ahead of time, but since I was relying completely on fate and faith, I'm left clueless. It's not like I can just walk around LA with my head in a book the entire time. Frankly, I'm worried that what happened to me here in Roswell will happen again in Los Angeles, and I have a feeling it will only get worse.
A monotone voice rings out over the PA system telling the waiting passengers that they may now board the bus to Phoenix and LA. That's me. Time to go.
There are always internal clocks, I suppose. I used to wake up at 7 o'clock every morning when I was going to school. It got to the point that even on the weekends, when there was no need to set an alarm, I woke up at 7 o'clock. When summer came, I woke up at 7 o'clock. When I stayed up until 3 in the morning, I woke up at 7 o'clock. It had become my routine, something ingrained in my unconscious mind that willed me awake at the same time every morning, whether I wanted it or not.
But the mind can be fooled--maybe not by anything in nature, but mankind fools itself all the time. We invent things to change the way we perceive our environment and survive in this world. In the beginning, Earth was all there was; then somewhere along the line, we invented maps, and suddenly, the world became something that could be conquered and divvied up behind intangible borders. We were fooled into thinking that control, and the power that comes with it, was the most important thing in the universe, so we set out to control other aspects of nature. We built dams to halt the flow of mighty rivers and flood dry land with new lakes of our own design. We built monuments and skyscrapers to rival the heights of mountains, and we constructed complex systems of irrigation that let us grow gardens in the deserts. All of this brings me back to my original point--our most devious scheme of control ever. With the invention of time zones, man's conquest of time was complete.
I'm so bored.
I'm tired of reading, so it's only by writing the most inane shit I can think of that I am able to keep myself occupied. It doesn't hurt, though. I need the practice. When you listen to professional writers doling out advice to all the wannabes, the thing they always stress is the importance of sitting down and just writing, getting as many words on the page as you can (albeit in an orderly fashion, of course). In other words, if you want to write, you have to write. So that's what I'm doing.
Hopefully, we'll be loading our stuff onto the bus sometime in the next few minutes. According to my ticket, we're due to head out of here in the next fifteen minutes. Near the counter is a small table with a clunky, old PC sitting on top of it, and a piece of paper has been taped onto the side of the monitor with the words INTERNET TERMINAL printed on the face in a large Courier font. The computer itself was secondhand junk, but it worked. When I finished reading Calvino, I went online to check my bus route. I went with the absolute cheapest rate I could find, so even though I knew where points A and B were, I had no idea where the line between them would run.
There were about a dozen tiny towns that popped up on the resulting schedule, and I'd never heard of any of them. There in the middle was Phoenix, Arizona, the only other city I recognized between Roswell and Los Angeles, and I'd be spending an hour there before switching buses. Aside from one last transfer in San Bernardino, California, for the last leg of the trip to LA, all the other stops were fifteen minute intervals to pickup and drop off. The total estimated time is twenty-two hours.
Great.
That still leaves one whole day before the this invisible machine exhibit opens in LA, and I have no idea how to spend the time. Sounds fun, right? I suppose it would be if I had any idea of what to do once I get there. Usually, I have these things thought out ahead of time, but since I was relying completely on fate and faith, I'm left clueless. It's not like I can just walk around LA with my head in a book the entire time. Frankly, I'm worried that what happened to me here in Roswell will happen again in Los Angeles, and I have a feeling it will only get worse.
A monotone voice rings out over the PA system telling the waiting passengers that they may now board the bus to Phoenix and LA. That's me. Time to go.
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