Golden Age

I get this feeling that everything is rushing at me. My boss at the bar, with her text hissing into my phone every morning. The deadlines I set for myself in order to practice my craft and the dull buzz I hear when I sit down to write. The dumb television shows and magazine articles I read while half asleep and taking a shit. The electric bill the cable bill my rent and my drinking habit. My heart spidering out in new directions and the bleeding insects caught in its web. The collapse of old industry and the frightening rise of another. The threat of success and the lure of failure. The fearless cowardice and all the pride attached to it.

All this rushing at me as I pay for two sangrias at a bar on 4th avenue. And she takes hers and puts it to her smiling mouth and her lips embrace the straw and on the flat screen above her head Germany scores a goal against Ghana in the world cup. Her eyes never leave mine and I feel my phone vibrating alive in my pocket. The bartender mentions a trivia night and I say yeah I'm thinking of starting one where I work and ask him how his is going and he says its stellar and I take a mental note of this.

We are in line at dmv and she’s cracking wise about people in the waiting area and I'm filling out a license renewal form and security guards stand in front of a hanging flat screen showing the early matches highlights. England and USA advance in their group and the guards groan at the Ghana/Germany score. When I get up to the counter the lady ask if I want to take a new picture for my license. I stammer out that ill do whatever is easiest and she says that wasn’t what she asked. I say no and laugh nervously at how slow I can be and she paperclips a paper to my form and tells me to move to the waiting area and ill hear my number called.

I'm sitting at home and this rushing has hit a wall. Or perhaps it was just too much all at once and like a stopped up colon I'm paralyzed by it. The TV is on and my computer is on and I'm chatting and reading and worrying and my cats are sprawled out on the floor begging I turn on the ac and a beer bottle is expiring before me and a single dollar bill in on my desk and I'm afraid to touch it. I have to wake up early and be at work early. I have a deadline on the horizon that I've made no strides to meet. I’ve got tense muscles in my shoulders and neck. My shirt sticks to my skin and my forearms are slick and shiny. I want to sleep but I cant. I couldn’t if I tried.