Time

Time
August 27th, 2001

It is said that if you want something done ask a busy person to do it. The reason this works is that people who are busy know how to get things done. They can fit things in. Anybody who has been unemployed and tried to write something knows that the contra-positive is also true.

See the contra-positive to "If A then B" is "If not B then not A."

This statement is true if the original position "If A then B" is true.

As opposed to "If not A then not B" (which doesn't necessarily follow) and "If B then A," which everyone can see is often not the case -- I mean how many times has B been TOTALLY true and A is just pure bullshit?

You know what I mean?

Neither do I. But I did get an A in Geometry in 10th grade.

The point is that if it is true that if you are busy you can get things done it must be therefore true that if you cannot get things done you are not busy.

That doesn't really apply to my point which is that its been my experience and the experience of certain friends that if you have PLENTY of free time you can't get JACK SHIT done but as soon as you get a job you start churning out stuff.

It has something to do with the Bernoulli effect I'm sure. See the Bernoulli effect is basically what makes planes fly. Yes that's right it's magic.

See Bernoulli was this brilliant Italian guy back in the Renaissance when everyone in Italy was brilliant. It must have been something in the water. Probably something nasty. But Bernoulli was trying to figure out how to get water from one place to another in Venice or Rome or Naples or something and he discovered that water moves more quickly around corners. So if you have some water in a pipe and it turns a corner the water will move more quickly.

This is why you can shoot people with a garden hose if you hold your thumb over the stream. Its also what makes planes fly because air is a fluid and as it goes over the curved top part of the wing it moves more quickly than the air going over the flat bottom part so that creates less pressure on the top of the wing and that creates lift. That's how a 747 can get off the ground.

Well that and the magic, invisible helper birds.

Fluids move more quickly around corners. And since thought is fluid it works more quickly if there are lots of curves and pressure. See it's easier to be creative if you have constraints -- if there are lots of curves.

I, for instance, wrote this that I am holding in my hand because I said I was going to. I put pressure on myself. I said I would stand and deliver at 10 tops every month. If I didn't have that pressure point, that corner, that curvy wing if you will allow me to painfully extend an ill used metaphor long past it's breaking point…..if I didn't have that push I would not be here today talking all this nonsense.

You know what I mean. If you are faced with deadlines and pressures and rocks and canyon walls you explode like the white water rapids with wave of energy and invention.

If life is tranquil and still you can be tranquil and still but there isn't much action happening and if your not careful you can get a layer of algae growing on you.

This is all coming because as of tomorrow Shelley's due date is 6 weeks away. There is so much I have to do in six weeks I can't believe it. But there is so much I have done in the past 7 months that I never thought I would get done it's just hard to fathom. It's like this Gigantic Deadline is heading my way and it makes everything else seem like falling down a mountain ravine, bouncing off rocks and leaping into the clear bright air, falling and misting and spraying and finally finally landing with a crashing splash into a cool placid lake.

And there I'll sit for a week or two…contemplating… breathing…feeling the pull of the next stream or river or waterfall but enjoying for a moment the fruits of my labor. Not doing anything because I am not a busy man.

And then the baby will cry and the ripples will start and the river will continue on its way. Altered in course. Branching and joining other streams. But always moving.