And so here I am a quarter after 10 on a Saturday night, staring at a cracker, debating whether or not I should eat it. My friends are at the Midwinter Formal, dancing the night away in their glamorous, expensive dresses; my sister is coughing endlessly because of an unusual asthma flare-up, possible pneumonia and who knows what else; my dog hasn't eaten a thing all day and the radio in the kitchen is set on a non-stop stream of Christian talk shows... Everything is so beautiful I can't stand it, and yet everything is rather muffled. Rather blurred.
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Rather incomprehensibly complex.
Though it feels like it shouldn't be.
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And then here is this cracker. Just a little one, a little rectangle of wheat with an Italian-herb flavor dusting, this little tiny unimportant cracker.
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Except it is everything but unimportant.
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For right now this little cracker simulates and symbolizes so many things--my lack of self-control, my wistfulness, the day's lost potential... it is my late-night friend. A tiny quadrilateral of comfort, a polygon of hope--?
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Now it is a quarter to midnight. My friends have all stopped dancing; they have reluctantly shed their elegant gowns and are tiredly but happily finding their way to bed. My sister is asleep or almost; the dog is snoring; the radio is quiet.
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I have long since eaten the cracker.
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I have long since eaten the rest of the bag of crackers, actually... but what was most important was simply the first one. That first insignificant cracker was what mattered. It was what resonated. Maybe only because it was the single cracker I randomly selected... but still.
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Now, finally, it is half-past 12. I should have been in dreamland some three hours ago, but instead I am still here, here with traces of cracker dust on my fingertips and an empty plastic cracker bag beside me on the tablecloth. All that is left is a small collection of crumbs.
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The group pictures from the dance have already been posted to social media--I have seen some of them. They are all smiling, all of them, all of the bright and beautiful teenagers in their bright and beautiful clothing. They have danced the night away, danced it in oblivion, in excitement, in glee. And they have every right to have done so.
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It's just that I have been here, here in my head, here in my pajamas at the dining room table, here spilling my mind and my heart and my soul right onto the screen. I have folded laundry, I have stoked the fire, I have done the dishes, I have listened to the radio, I have lost myself on the endless flow of the treacherous Internet, I have seen a million different facets of a million different lives. I am changed and not necessarily better for it--for all this everything nothing has only fed my brain, has only instigated my mind to grow in all the ways that enhance and yet entrap it.
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Entrap me.
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Now my mind is bigger. But that leads only to the ceaseless development of useless ideas, of nonsensical nothings that I must spin into some sort of vital gold.
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It is now, now, finally a quarter to 2.
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Where did the time go?
I know.
And yet I grieve.
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I grieve for everything. For the infinity of social media that keeps me from seizing my days. For the sadness of happy memories dredged up from the depths of my heart. For the times lost, the time passing, and the time that I have never spent. For all those pixelated people out there that I have never met and never known and never will--for those people who still exist even in our never meeting each other--for all those people who will never ever know I even saw their face--all those people I must care about and cannot simply not--for all those people that mean everything everything but nothing 300% personal--all those people, those computer-screen people, whom I have met but never will.
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Also I grieve for the cracker.
It is back within those faded hours... it is me now.
The cracker is gone.
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It is ten minutes to 2.
I am tired.
I am blue-?
I didn't desire to go to a Midwinter dance
and I didn't go anyway.
I didn't desire to spend
this precious time online
but I did anyway.
And now the hard part, the part of facing me in the mirror and the part of ascending the stairs. And then a devotion and a lukewarm prayer. A tired one. A limp one. And then a flop to the pillow and a sigh for all lost.
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And then a blink and a dream and tomorrow again.
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It is 6 minutes past 2 on a Sunday morning.
I am going to bed.
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And "tomorrow"
will be waiting. 💚🌙
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