The Elasticity of Life

This is exactly how I had hoped the night would end up.

You see, I've been feeling creatively stagnant lately, like the water that gets backed up in your garden after heavy rainfall, the water that has yet to settle into the soil. I had hoped to drink, and drink until I hit the point where I experience the "click," as Ignatius in A Confederacy of Dunces likes to call it. And this drinking, as I remember Professor of British Literature Charlie Robinson saying, makes us more worldly, so that we talk about more important, more scholarly things than if we were to just drink a case of Natty Light, for instance.

I was thinking about possibilities for my creative banter even before I went out tonight, as I was lying down in the foyer of my house, waiting for my buddy Dave to pick me up and take me to the bar. I was staring up at the ceiling, thinking about rubber bands.

Seriously, rubber bands. Until a few days ago, I had been wearing a light-green thick rubber band on my right wrist for a few weeks now, since right before I got the job at Sachem. I felt some kind of importance with it when I met my new boss for a drink and he was wearing the same color rubber band on his wrist. And just last week, when my cousin, another wrist-rubber-band-wearer, had asked me if there was any significance to my rubber band, I hesitated and had to ponder an answer to his question.

I couldn't come up with an answer.

But I know quite a few people who wear rubber bands on their wrists. And I wonder, what is the symbolism in this piece of elastic? As I was lying in my foyer, waiting for Dave to pick me up, I was looking at the chandelier right above me. This chandelier has been in this house ever since I've been here, which is now 18 years, and probably even before that. Yet, it has been held up by the same cord the entire time. This one cord, which lasts decades, has been holding up the light above us without fail for almost 20 years now. But, I never pay attention to this very important cord. Instead, I--like many other rubber band-wearers--place the importance on the elastic cord I place around my wrist every so often. The same rubber band that breaks after being worn out after so many days. Imagine if the cord holding up our light wore out as often. Our light would come crashing down on us.

As I was thinking about this cord-conundrum, I was staring out my screen door at the sky, which was being bombarded with strikes of heat lightning. I was thinking about what would happen if lightning struck as often as rubber bands break; if, like the chandelier cord, light could just fall down and strike us with a drop of a dime, or, a snap of a rubber band. I wonder why people place so much significance on something that can snap and be ruined at any moment.

I suppose, however, that maybe that's how we should be living our lives. As if they could break from their spiral routine any minute, from being too worn out, or too weak to carry on.

I suppose that was what was going through my head when Dave picked me up, and I decided to go out and live up my life to its full elasticity, securely fit and strong around my wrist each and every day.