The Day of Time

Enter. "Good morning." "Good morning." "You look older." "Oh, do I? I had a rather harrowing experience with some tongs and baking powder as a child." "Yes, that must be it. How have you been?" "Rather well, rather. Well, I did start the morning with a wonderful chocolate chip muffin. And tea. And every time one starts a morning with these things, a good day will follow. Like when a bear with a beanie comes out before the circus, you know the circus will be good." "Indeed." "Right! Do you know then that I read Barthelme's 'Sentence' and Borges' 'Book of Sands'? Fascinating! That first one is all one sentence, and it doesn't even end. Why, you may say the Book of Sands is also infinite." "Do you think that we are infinite?" "One thing I do know is that lasagna is not infinite. Travis said the middle of his tasted funny. And if lasagna is not infinite, all bets are off for mankind." "But don't you think that we are different?" "Different? Maybe. Lasagna cannot write--that's one thing. I went to the University this afternoon." "On a Thursday?" "Yes, to listen to Kent Bruyneel, the editor of Grain magazine." "Is that for farmers?" "No. Not most of them. It's for writers." "Oh, them." "Yes, us writers are a wild brood! I went to buy groceries after the Grain talk." "Oh... wild indeed..." "There was an old lady giving taste tests. When I walked up, there were the typical plastic cups--but they were empty. There was an awkward pause until I asked 'So, what do you have?'" "Not the most poetic thing to say!" "Hey, that's why I'm a writer--they have more time to think." "What is time, and how does it relate to thought?" "Thoughts are like the eggs in a bowl, and time is the whisk that beats them." "I do suppose. Sounds like an eventful day." "There's more--we had house church tonight, but we were supposed to pick up Ricky on the way." "Oh, oh, you said 'but'... what happened?" "Well, we waited at the BK by the bus stop for twenty minutes, and no Ricky. We drove down to Jeremy's and then he calls and says he missed his bus. So Jeremy has to drive all the way back to pick him up." "Shame" "Well, things happen. So we have a great sloppy joe meal and then we get back in the cars and drive to Dolly's new house in the northwest part of the city." "Ah." "The guy that was living in there before was evicted and so he trashed the place. We had to do a lot of clean up and painting and rug removal. I've never seen so much glue used to hold down a carpet! Dolly's shoe actually came off her foot it was stuck so tight to the glue!" "Marvellous! What were they trying to hide?" "We actually uncovered a secret drain below the rug that was full of spider webs." "Ooh, I hate spiders!" "Well, there were some dead spiders on a piece of baseboard from which I was removing nails. When I tried to hammer a nail out a dead spider fell onto my hand causing me to drop the baseboard onto Jeremy's back." "Good times." "Maybe memories are immortal." "Maybe."