Thursday, June 12, 2008

It's been a little over two years

And nary a post in sight. Life changes in new and exciting ways. I work more, but on work that is interesting and rewarding. I can spend a day in the office and wonder how the time flew by. That is, of course, excepting the days when time stops altogether. Every now and then you encounter a new problem or challenge that is so difficult that you don't know what to do other than stare at the computer screen like a proverbial deer in headlights. Then, inevitably, after a couple good nights' sleep, you awake to discover that you're retarded and it wasn't really that hard of a problem. Then after a couple hours of working on the solution you realize that, yes, in fact, it IS an incredibly hard problem and that the only constant through this whole ordeal is that you are an idiot. So you remind yourself that if things were easy, life would be boring. But if they were easy, they'd also be done by now so you could go do something more fun like playing Mario Kart. In this way, you can blow through two weeks without really getting a thing done, but somehow have felt like you were working--thus assuaging the guilt while depositing that paycheck on Friday morning. It's so satisfying, I feel like I need a cigarette.

Above and beyond the struggles of the proletariat, paternity looms on the horizon. Delicate strands of peptides have danced their way through the night like fairies of old. Intermingling with passion and beauty, but also with a cold, hard determinism--the chemical source of fate. And also like those fairies, will return in time with an infant made in my image. This must be what God feels (felt?) like. I can watch the clock mark every step closer to the new strange future that lies ahead. Each day like a second. Each week like a minute. Each month like an hour. Each second like a year. Life has become a series of snapshots. The change between each so rapid and encompassing that I stare into the image for the tiniest detail that might connect me again to that time, to rediscover what I was thinking. What I was feeling. Freeze-frame. The spent toothpaste swirls down the drain with the running water washing the basin clean as I struggle to express my joy over the phone to a wife who went to the doctor for antibiotics and came back with much, much more. Pause. Fast forward. Freeze-frame. The visceral thrill of that fetal heartbeat. 150 beats per minute. My heart surges to keep pace. I can't even manage a harmonic. Those tiny beats merge with my own to build a larger, longer, slower rhythm that flows underneath it all. Aural water, the giver of life. It ebbs and flows like the tide. If a medium for psychic thought could ever be found, it must be made of this. And in spite of the waves washing over me, I can't help but find it a little odd that human fetuses have a yolk sack. Pause. Fast-forward. I wait for the next frame.

6 comments:

JoAnn said...

I never knew my husband was so verbose and poetic :-)

Guillermo said...

Perhaps not a harmonic, but a bit of heterodyning?

Josh said...

Verily, sir. Verily.

Meg said...

Josh:
It's been a while since I though of you and Jo...many MANY congratulations. It is quite the adventure, I wish you a cute child.
:)

Josh said...

Thank you kindly, madame. We're quite excited about it. Ditto to you and yours :)

J said...

Wow. A breath-taking piece of prose sir.

Also.... WRITE MORE!!!

That is all. :-)