Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Time and the Hawkman

The title is a play on the name of Batman #700, a celebration of Batman, working in all of the Batman rogues gallery, somehow, with an especially great way of mentioning Mr. Freeze. Neil Gaiman said in an interview that he'd love to call up DC and do twelve months on Hawkman. He's drawn to Hawkman because of his goofy old weapons, huge wings and his museum job. And this, in perhaps the best tie in, was part of him trying to describe his two issues of Batman, cleaning up for his good friend, Grant Morrison. Grant Morrison killed Batman, and Neil Gaiman did the burial and eulogy. Man, killing Batman with one of your best friends has gotta be a great feeling. But this is about time.

Time as the clock is something I'm never going to get ahead of in the case of Subsidized Sincerity, but then again, I set the whole thing up this way. No quarter. Just me versus the clock. Of course, the clock is a different way of saying me. I'm removing my own self-pity of "not feeling" an update. It keeps me from being precious and it keeps me desperately producing something. Time is me. Or, time is a part of me that I ignore at my own peril. I need something to get me to keep producing something.

I need something to show for the time I'm spending here. (Here being defined as broadly as possibly.) So I write it. It also being defined as broadly as possible. People have the opposite problem, I guess, but at the moment, I worry about about being put out rather than burning out. I used to do the same thing when I was working out. I can always go a little further, just to the :15, right, which inevitably would lead to being just a couple meters from a landmark, which isn't that much further either, and trying level one out would knock the other out of wack, which would keep propelling me forward.

Time is a thing that can be used or not. I don't want to be remembered for being too lazy to try. I understand something I believe to be important: I'm going to embarrassed of everything I do right now in five years, so I may as well try to be proud of myself now. Time is a unit, something to be grasped and converted. Or in other words: Time is a resource and it's constantly being spent. Man, what the hell am I buying? Assuming, for the moment, that I'm buying something in five years I'm going to shake my head at regardless of what, then what's left (at least) to me, is buying something that's not just going to make me happy, but something that's going to make me better at what I want to do.

Which, in case you haven't figured it out yet, is thinking and communicating via the written word in English. To this end, I haven't played enough videogames, read enough books, listened to enough music or watched enough movies. I haven't played Silent Hill 2. I haven't played Fatal Frame 2. I know, also, that I'm never going to have consumed enough to satisfy me, but if I wait till I feel comfortable, I'll never get started and forfeit the chance to have done it in the first place.

And so: Spend my time doing it. Now. At this nanosecond. I'm remembered enough for playing it safe and I'm going to be embarrassed by this time whatever I do. I wish I had something more positive to end this with, but I have 10 minutes until my window is over, and unfortunately, time marches on...





Today's song is called the Slowest Drink At the Saddest Bar On the Snowiest Day in the Greatest City by the Lawrence Arms. It's also about doing something with your time, though from the perspective of someone who was scared of changing and took a shower just to pass the time. "What will it say on my snow-covered grave? He had it all. He let it all just slip away," is the relevant lyric. You'll know when you hit the moment, trust me.


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