3:45

This cat, the fat one I call Gato (the one my mother calls Cinderella) lays about, caged like the stupid animal she is. She used to be free. Used to have free reign of the house, inside and out. But then the errant shit began to materialize, first in the tub and eventually on my mother’s side of the bed. The bed she shares with my father. That was the final straw, the straw that doomed this spiteful animal to the outdoors, the “indoors” being seen only through the metal wires of a 2 by 2 cage.

Stupid Gato.

But enough about the cat. Enough! I’ve been needing to write something, everything, anything. The inner perfectionist (the one I despise) requires absolutely the right mood, inside and out. The sky must be just the right shade of grey, the silence the right kind of silence, the rain just so. If I could, and perhaps one day I will, say fuck the grey, fuck the silence and fuck the rain I would. But I'm not there yet. The muse is fickle. It wanders away, takes to the road, takes to the hills, takes to the sky or the sea or anywhere else but where I happen to be.

Then I go quiet, my voice goes on a journey and leaves me behind, speechless and dumb. There’s no guaranteed time of return, no day on a calendar to denote it’s possible homecoming (do muses even have homes to come to?). But then I leave as well, searching for I don’t know what. The muse? A home? A place where I can be myself or no one at all?

The clock ticks out a loud 3:45. Not the dark, brooding 3:45 of the early morning hours. No, this is the dull, grey 3:45 of a wet afternoon in the south. Just a few days into the new year and I'm already tired of it. Where is 2010, 2011, 2012? They’re on their way and will be here sooner then I hoped they would be.

That’s the thing about the future; it either too early or too late.

But here is the present, right on time and boring as hell. That clock is driving me insane.