Wetware Filter: Skipping Stones On The River of Knowledge

The humor, to me, is obvious. This is not at all what I was supposed to write. Ha. You laugh, too, I can tell.

You see, what I was supposed to be writing was a third draft of another report for my job. It’s a worthy report, for a good client, with some interesting work to be done. I even e-mailed the draft to my home address, to whittle away on it after I stuffed some calories down my neck.

But it didn’t turn out that way. My heart whispered in the ear of my subconscious, and the two conspired to make the meat suit that is my body move in a different direction. Fatigue, hunger and the drive home became a drawn-out smear of rebellion against the long days I have already put in, with no more tolerance for the “have to do” and maintenance tasks.I was tired to the point of being weepy, almost. And so hungry I didn’t feel like cooking.

So it was that I found myself turning off the high road home and onto the low road ending in the dodgy embrace of a nearby purveyor of fast food, the golden brown and delicious crispy variety. I was too tired and hungry to be ashamed. Raw need and impatience created the Prime Directive my jittery mind could not ignore. To my credit, I exchanged the fries for a green side salad. The fast food equivalent of one or two Hail Marys and an Ave Maria.

Sitting at the table, chewing slowly and steadily while gazing with bovine lassitude at the surge of suburban life lapping at the service counter, my wetware performed a ‘count zero interrupt’. My brain decremented to zero, the grey matter quietly rebelling against the straitjacketed evening I had originally planned.

There would be no rewrites. No text edits. No rephrasing, no cutting and pasting of dry ideas and cost estimates. No, not now.

Instead, I ended up in the bookstore, i.e. ‘harem for the mind’. Ahh, books…I even had a vague plan to buy a specific book, but…but…they are all so pretty behind their brightly colored veils. I dallied, I lingered, exchanging sly glances and knowing looks with pretties of all stripes and shapes and bright colors. But even the king has to make up his mind as to his concubine…

This, dear readers, is what I came home with:

Tell me, O rapt ones, what does this say about me? What, oh, what was I thinking? I ask, because I confess that I do not know, only that there was a gossamer thread I followed in my mind…