Waiting for Godot (and my Rent Check)

I noted in my journal: "Waiting for Godot."

The waiting is constant. Waiting for the "sudden flash of insight". Waiting for capital accumulation. Waiting for the "win condition", or perhaps just an end to the noise.

Henri Bergson posits that time as measured by the clock (the 1st of the month, the utility bill due date) is artificial. It is spatial. Real time is Duration (la durée). It is a relentless, melting flow of experience.

My experience of Duration has been viscous.

It manifests in the "onion model" of the character I developed. Layer 1: Physical attributes (the external facade of androgyny; the feeling of being "misshapen"). Layer 2: Quirks (the obsession with aphorisms). Layer 3: Values and Myth. Layer 4: The Void itself.

But what occurs when Duration elongates? When one sits in a room, confronting the "dangerous thought" of inadequacy?

"The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future" Bergson wrote.

This is a terrifying mechanism. My past (the shame, the "traumatized persona") is actively devouring my future. It shapes the horizon.

I observe the anxiety that I am "diminishing". That the fire my ancestors once carried is extinguishing within me. I attempt to sustain it. I attempt to be the Prometheus of my own narrative. But often I am simply waiting for the bus, analyzing the "insecure men" who posture around me. I question if I am projecting my own shadow onto them.

We are endurance athletes of consciousness. We wait for the bell. We wait for external validation to permit us to exhale.

The bell does not ring. The Duration continues. One must learn to navigate the current without drowning.