Waiting for things to dowload when you’re trapped in a cafe deep in the midst of an open mic can be a curious experience.

You’re trapped. You’re waiting. Time slows. The caterwauling is incessant. Tick…the second hand moves. Tick…the guitarist doesn’t know how to tune. Tick…the poet hates Bush. I think it’s George she hates. Tick…the hippies sing folk music. Tick…the really stoned girl sings acapella. Tick…tick…tick…

And my software download…wink wink nudge nudge…just won’t speed up. It slows down like time slows down like the hippies slow down like bandwidth slows down like my mind slows down when I’m sick.

Which I am again. Every week it’s a brand new version of the flu or a cold or the fucking plague.

86%

The download is so close. The time to finishing so far.

Tick. A single byte flows through the internet from godforsaken land. Tick. 86.1%

I’m working on editing a weird performance art like video for a friend these days. One of the lines he screams out is that he’s 73% evil. That the devil is in his chest and runs down into his belly.

That’s what it feels like right now while I wait. The devil is in my bowels and its making me sick and the now there have been three guitar players that can’t tune their guitars and the download is only at 88%.

Tick. That young girl is more stoned than the poet and she’s walking like there’s an anvil on her back. What could be weighing her down? Osteoperosis? Tick. That poetress has the worst ass I’ve ever seen. It seems to be imploding.

Tick. 91% Tick. 91.7%

I’m 243% sick of poets who hate George Bush. Look, listen, hear. Never again should there be a poem about the evil Republicans. Never again. Whatever happened to poems about kittens? About lost loves and drunken bar fights? Bukowski would kick the shit out of everyone in this room including a pussy like me. Man, I wish a zombie Bukowski would come back from the dead and beat the shit out of everyone here while looking for a beer.
Tick. 97.2% 97.3%

Tick. She’s got an obsession with Leonard Cohen lately. That’s the first original thing I’ve heard tonight.

Tick. 98.8% I should be learning Chinese. I should be editing video. I should be writing the great American (mei guo, sounds kind of like that, I can’t remember the official transliteration right now) script and working on actually learning something useful instead of downloading video software crap I’ll probably never use.

Tick. So fucking close. Everything seems so fucking close when you glance at the world and so fucking far when you actually try those things. I suspect I’m putting too much thought and not enough effort into my life.

Tick. 99.5% I’m out of coffee. The shakes are coming on but if I get more coffee I’ll feel compelled to listen to more out of tune guitars. I’m all for people playing guitar and amusing me but for the love of all that’s good and pure and holy in the fucking universe how could you have the balls to get up in front of a hundred people before you learned how to tune the thing?

This is important I think. If I could understand that mindset. If I could get into the mental space where I could be completely talentless but still get up in front of people like it was the most natural thing in the universe and that the world was obligated to pay attention to me, I’d understand it all. Every moment of confusion, every bit of fear I’ve felt, would evaporate and I’d be left with an overwhelming sense of simple and easy understanding. Beautiful crystaline clarity. Peace.
Tick. 99.9% A trickle of data wends its way through the nervous system of the modern world. One byte, two bytes, three bytes, four, five bytes, six bytes, seven bytes more…

Tick.