Deep Thoughts not by Jack Handey

Cara Lisa Powers
Assignment #2

Fumbling with keys, my icy fingers have trouble finding the lock. Open. Close. A plastic runner under the door sometimes gets stuck, but not today. Closing the wind behind me, I start the car. Elvis Costello croons to me from an aging tape deck that needs to be cleaned and glows the time. Ten minutes fast for my own good, it pierces the dark car with the digits: 6:03. As the car warms up, and the night street becomes more clear, I buckle my seatbelt and stuff my hands under my legs, in between the cold seats and my cold jeans, hoping some reaction will warm something.
My fingers, stinging from the cold, are unable to grasp anything for a few moments. It is the kind pain that, as a child would have brought me to the fetal position, but that now is strangely comforting—a reminder that feelings can be felt. As my fingers dull to a comfortable numb, I reach for the manual window crank and roll the window down enough to fit my hand through comfortably. Lighting up a cigarette, I take a sip of my scalding hot coffee before pulling out on to the street. This is the moment I wait for all day. Knowing my house and all of the lack of obligation that it represents are only five streetlights away, the hot coffee coats my throat, and the smoke slithers easily in and then out of my lungs. There are no hurried phone calls or frustrated car honking to occupy my non-steering hand, and I am able to indulge in my own self-destruction.
I glide easily down Park Avenue in the post rush-hour lull, an even marker of dinnertime siesta. Immediately following this, the happy time, is the sad time, the title that myself and my roommate have given to the time of day at which we set our cell phone alarms to 5:30 and 6:30 AM, respectively. The time when I shut off the car, and Elvis Costello, Frank Zappa, and Bob Dylan disappear with the haze of the headlights, into the black of the night, and I trudge up the fire escape to the world outside my head. I will in the next two hours eat, shower, discuss my day with my roommates, whom I see far too infrequently, leave a message for my best friend who I see even more infrequently, and give the dog a cookie, so it still loves me and remembers me when I get home tomorrow. Then something will most likely distract me, something that pushes my bedtime back into the vicinity of midnight.
When that magical moment finally happens it is hard not to think about the end of the night, when the morning is broken not by light through the shade, but by the monotone mechanical notes produced by my cell phone. Eventually I am able to move my wandering mind toward happier thoughts, though, and with my handmade heating pad in hand, I settle into the cavernous wonder that is my bed. Surrounded on all sides by pillows, a failing attempt at producing the illusion that I am not alone, I melt into the familiar groove where my body has miraculously left its impression, despite seemingly infrequent visits to the spot. Stretching my feet, and wrapping them by the ankles around the pillow that shortens the length of my bed to better suit my five-foot frame, I edge closer to the pillow that rests against my back. Finally, I pull my teddy bear close to me and rest below it the velvety purple heating pad that, in the months after I made it, exuded the smell of jasmine. With this, and the haunting lull of the subway train, reproduced by my windowsill white noise machine, I pass quietly into the realm within my head.
Regardless though, 530am always comes too quickly, and whether I fall into my bed at 8pm or 2am, the alarm always sounds next to my head just early enough to be jarring. I bundle myself like a kindergartner no matter what the weather report, preparing for the frigid wind of the predawn walk to work. By the time I arrive at work, I am slightly more awake, thanks to my friend nicotine, but the half hour it takes for the espresso machine to heat up is always discouraging. The whirring of the coffeemakers and the loud hum of the oven makes it necessary to turn the music up so loud that my co-worker and I often wait until we’re already open to discuss our weekends.
For eight hours the same faces pass by: The woman who is always late, but is picky anyway: bucket of French Roast, double cupped (make sure the seams line up). Then there’s the guy who will be back in an hour for another coffee, at which point it will be waiting for him on the counter, motivated slightly by the consistent dollar tip he leaves, but also by the amusement we get from his love of AC/DC; The acquaintance I don’t remember who swears we were at the same party last weekend (the details of his face escape me now), the dark eyed young man who, despite his love of flavored coffee with lots of cream makes at least an hour of my shift worth the two minute casual exchange that he supplies to pepper my day with aesthetic pleasure. In this haze, the only way I can tell apart one day from the other is the amount of time that can be spent looking longingly at my bed as I gather my things to make the trip to class. My only escape is those infrequent moments that count out my day into segments. In these moments I ignore the passing people and the pressure of daily like. Inhaling, I feel my tense arms loosen at my sides, as though the smoke is spreading to the very tips of my body. Then another three hours. No matter how excited I am about a class or an assignment, or a meeting, each moment is spent thinking about how many more moments are between me and my car, me and my bed, me and the weekend, me and May and freedom. At the end of that class, though, while I glide effortlessly down the five streetlights of Park Avenue, there is only that moment. There is only me, and Elvis Costello, and my coffee and my cigarette. That is my grounding moment. That is my Zen.