I've spent the last two hours hoping the phone will ring. If I had grass I would have smoked it a long time ago. Not because I want to be high, but because I want time to go away. I can feel the second hand of an imaginary clock in my head ticking away the seconds like a countdown to doomsday. I just want it to stop. If I thought it would help I'd smack my head against the wall and smash the clock. But it would still be there, churning its gears deep within the grey matter.

The phone, what a loathsome thing. It mocks me, sitting there like a black bug waiting for me to put it to my ear so it can suck out everything. Everything but the clock. The clock never goes away. There is always a schedule to be maintained, an order to be kept. Even when I don't know it there is always an order. When something is random it's just an order that I can't see. When I was young I was a swimmer. That was 2 years ago. Am I not young anymore? Perhaps I am in some ways, but in others I feel as if a gray beard should hang to my ankles. When I was a swimmer were always watching the clock. In practice the clock controlled everything. Fifty yards in 50 seconds. When he clock hits the top you throw yourself from the wall and do it again. The clock never stopped, not that we could see. Maybe it stopped while we had our heads under water. If it did then we never knew. If the clock stopped and we were underwater, could we stay there? It's eerie underneath the surface. Laying there, you can achieve neutrality with the water and float in the middle of nothing. It's like flying, like flying in my dreams. Underneath the water you can't hear what's above. The crowd can be screaming for you to fly faster and faster as you glide from one end of the pool to the other but you'd never know it. When you crouch and wait for a race to start, your mind goes blank. The crowd is silent and nothing matters, there is only you and the surface of the water a few feet away. A few feet to a whole other world. The end of this world could come and you'd just be there, floating. When the horn sounds the start the crowd roars like a battle being joined. A hundred voices, each screaming something different. But you only hear them for a fraction of a second before you slip under. Then float, cutting through the water for a moment before breaking the surface. Like a horse with blinders you can't see the competitors beside you. You vaguely know that they're there, you know whether they're ahead of you or if you're lucky they're far behind. You know, but you still don't see them. You use them to push yourself, but they don't really matter. You're not racing them, you're racing yourself, racing the clock When you finish it's like you were never gone. Some time has ticked off the clock but even at the end the clock doesn't stop. It goes on, clicking away the seconds. They're the seconds of your life and you can hear them go. You don't even know how many you get. they're just there. Always there. Never gone. Never silent. Except underwater, when you're flying. When you bask in the sea of silence. When the molecules find the endorphin receptors in your brain and tell them that everything is going to be alright. Sooner or later though we must come back to the surface to breathe the air that sustains us.

Breathe deeply friend, for as the seconds tick tick tick away that breathe may be your last. When will it be over? What is it? It is the struggle that is life. Can it be over without taking refuge in death? Or are we as human beings cursed with sentience, knowledge of our mortality, that we might only struggle for our brief lives and then wink out like a faulty christmas light bulb?

Today has been a lazy day. And this entry makes it no more productive. What is it that drives me, that drives men, to search for answers?

The clock urges us on. Tempting us with the carrot of it's destruction. That we might waste our time pondering an escape from the wheel that turns us all. There is no magical stone to jam the cogs of life. It will go on as it must. After my time, after I am long since turned to dust, there will be others who ask this same question, and find no more answer than I.

By this point one might wonder what this has to do with a phone. A phone which despite my loathing still refuses to ring. The answer is simple. The answer...is nothing.

Strong as steel, riding a rough spot

Iron