2002-10-30 - 1:42 a.m.

One thing I have to remember is that nobody really has chapters to their lives. Things just don't start and stop that way.

It kinda sucks. First off, there's the limbo we all go through, but I'm not talking about that.

It sucks that when we supposedly move on from one thing to the next, there's remainders. The stages of our lives are not easily divisible.

When I was a kid, I was driving around with my dad, and we passed some construction workers digging up Centre Street for whatever reason. The entity known as my dad, in the car, was for me an infinite source of wisdom, and he always had an answer ready for any question I could come up with, from why does this work this way? to facts about presidents, baseball players, laws, and even music.

I asked him, in kid talk of course, what the point of construction was. I reasoned that there had to be an ultimate goal to building--it's supposed to make things better than they are already, right?, which means that, at some point, everything should be done, right?, and that, when all of the effort and inconvenience is finally over and done with, we can all sit around and enjoy our beautiful, finished, perfect city. Right? And when is this going to happen? Will there be a parade?

I remember that he was actually impressed with the question, and that he didn�t have an answer for me. I think that�s probably why I remember any of this--I stumped him.

And that�s where I am right now. I�m this fey kid, turning a Rubix Cube around and around and around, giving up every now and then, frustrated that I can�t get it right.

Sometimes I can get the colors all lined up on one side of the cube, like I�m supposed to, but I can�t be happy with just that. I want to get everything perfect. I�ll turn my attention to another side, sending what was once a wall of red, or blue, or yellow, into total discord, satisfied that I can easily get it back the way it was, �cause I was able to do it once.

I never solved a Rubix Cube. I always gave up. I cared enough to want to have done it, but not enough to actually sit there and try and try and try at it. Every time I worked at it, determined, I let myself stop, �cause I was smart enough to realize that there was a trick to it that I didn�t know. That there was no magic at all. That if I somehow made all the colors line up, it wasn�t skill. It was random luck.

One time, I got all the colors right, actually. I wanted to see again what a perfect Rubix Cube looked like. And yeah, I proudly brandished my accomplishment. Nobody believed me--you could see where I had sloppily peeled off the stickers.