thoughts from a boat ride

cartwheels : reindeer section

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How much can you write in half an hour? Half an hour is my ferry ride to work. The amount of time it takes for me to decide where I'm having lunch and actually getting there. Three, maybe five, percent of my waking hours that slips past cognizance as I trawl the internet. (Is that all?) Three hundred and sixty seconds of gainful knowledge as I read the editorial page. Six songs and many years of adolescent memories from my eighties playlist. A tall soya no whip mocha for flatfoot. How do you occupy your mind in a half-hour commute? Sometimes I get to wondering about thought process itself. What do I normally think about when I have nothing to think about? I never knew, or maybe I did, but have forgotten. Thoughts are funnily tentative, like dreams, which are thoughts you never knew you had. Sometimes I steal glances at other people. Do you look at other people too? Mentally pick on the man next to you for his coffee-stained two-buck necktie from Bangkok? Do you close your eyes and try to take a nap? Reminisce your childhood? Cartwheels are the stuff of childhood. I have never cartwheeled in my life. Or maybe I have, but never with any measure of success. I climbed walls and trees and jumped off them to scare my mom. I tumbled in the grass, on my parents' bed, on our living room couch, which wasn't much of a couch, as the make was firm and you hardly sank. I remember the giant shell on the side table. I would put it against my ear to listen to the sound of hollow. The sound of hollow. Empty has a sound. Empty takes aural space. Space is funnily fleeting, like time. My thirty minutes is over. My ferry is about to dock. Good day.