It might be a math equation. Section off in amounts of time; use numerology to know how much it should be. I like 9 minutes and 52 seconds. Let the silence speak. What silence can no longer do, an alarm will fill.
Does this need to change? No.
Switch now? No!
When? Wait.
Stay & let this be exactly as it is. Compare notes with the meter. Doesn’t this minute feel different? My minute feels tense. I’m sharing it with the clock — the stopwatch that doesn’t flinch. It halts and resumes at precisely the same rate. This meter does not warm up to the idea. This meter is the idea. Even now, I’ve required 113 words to feel out what A Trance is.
———
Once, when I was a painter, I painted the same house over and over. The contractor would tell me to give different levels of effort depending on where I was painting. Homes belonging to University Students got cheap latex paint. We painted everything in those houses. In and out of my mind, the house would finish. Every cramp, every spit-erased mistake; all the blood running out of my upward stretched arm reaching to cut the high corners of a multi-storied frat-house — forgotten.
For non-student homes, the contractor would sing my praises in front of the customer, well aware that I had weeks of experience. Again, in and out of my mind, the house would finish. My heartbeat only throttled upon seeing those special, rebellious paint drips expertly falling toward the gap between tarps. I’d spit, rub them into a fade of themselves, and return to the in and out of my mind. A painted house would wake me.
My thinking stopped entirely. I no longer spit. I no longer made mistakes; at least none that I was aware of. Both hands could hold the brush comfortably — neither arm slept while I raised them to cut the ceiling, for there wasn’t enough time for the blood to slide back home where the heart is.
Because my thinking stopped, I left that job. I was worried it would effect who I am. No thoughts must mean a lack of intelligence. Do you agree.
I don’t anymore. I would accept less thoughts if offered.
———
The meter was given its trance. Its broadcast is an indifferent declaration of time and space. From the meter’s trance, comes my thought.
It makes me long to wake up in a painted house.
Should I switch it now? No.
Then I think:
Wait until each house is painted.