The Flight of the Rocketman

"I have walked this earth and watched people/ I can be sincere and say I like them/ You can't say no to hope,/ You can't say no to happiness..." - Alarm Call by Bjork

Three people had asked me to put a comments section on my blog. I kind of freaked out. All of a sudden, it isn't so much as wondering if I am writing for an audience but to realise that they are there and now they can write back. All of a sudden, every step I take here becomes a little more and more careful. I am no longer running through the woods barefoot, shouting and screaming and waving my hands in the air. Now, I do that, but with my eyes darting to and fro checking to see who else is here with me. This is both a good and a bad thing. Now, my skin won't tear from the various brambles and branches that hung lowly from the trees that I do not see. I keep my body intact. But then again, I like having scars.

With the assistance of one friend, he told me where I could get the script which I could add to my blog for the comments and I freaked out. I don't understand Java script. When I finally did as I was told and clicked on the "save changes" option, my heart sank and I said to myself that's it, if you ruined it, there's no way you could fix it now...

The Rocketman discovers his fuel is only half-full, or is it half-empty, he doesn't really care, all he knows is that the scheduled trip to see the White Dwarf in the farther edge of the Milky Way might have to be delayed. He decides to just see the supposed satellite of Pluto at the edge of the solar system and then circle back to Earth for some R&R.

Well deserved? Maybe not. But I know that there are stories that need to be told and deadlines that need to be met. I love that quality of stories, they have to be expressed, told, revealed to be of any worth. Stories are the opposite of secrets. For a secret to have meaning, it must never be revealed. For a story to have worth, it must be presented. But many people do not know the difference of stories and secrets. Some people just keep to themselves what should be told and tell others what should be kept hidden. I think that is one quality of stories that I like. That, to another, they might think I'm telling a secret.

On the other hand, deadlines are things that we arrived to. They are met. What if we were to actually meet our deadline, like it was given a corporeal form that is drinking coffee in Starbucks at Greenbelt three. He/she is just there, waiting for us and if we do not meet him/her, we have no pressure to deliver. What if you had your deadline killed before the two of you could meet? And all of a sudden, you have no responsibility to finish the job at hand. What if I were to say "I have to be famous by the time I'm sixty" and the expectations within my heart start pounding upon my brain. I falter often because of the fear that I might not reach my deadline and all of a sudden, I will look back at my life and realise I was a failure. I hire some people to kill the deadline and I'll hit sixty and not feel so bad about not reaching that point.

Or worse, I had a deadline to finish an article and three hours to the moment, I stray bullet killed my deadline and on my way to the office to pass it, I find him there, dead on the ground, cigarette still unfinished. Seeing him there dead, I realise that the commitment is over, it is gone and I can submit the article whenever I please.

But if deadlines were in a corporeal form, they'd be arrogant and haughty men or women, in power suits with a fair, pale complexion. After all, in the world of the abstract, where words were made to name the things that we cannot see or feel or touch, they are there in the darkness along with other words like danger and sorrow. They don't get much sunlight and turn quite pale.

I have met many of these deadlines and they have found me wanting. Asking them to go away and to come back some other time. Most of the time they do not leave. One of them is standing right behind me and I refuse to turn around to get a cigarette otherwise I would have met him and that was it. I have failed again to deliver on time as published.

"This is an alarm-call, so wake-up wake-up now." - Alarm Call by Bjork