N.C.T.L.J.C.M.J.

N.C.T.L.J.C.M.J.

Sometimes when life moves too quickly I feel like I have no control over what I'm doing. Then one day I come to and look back and hope I didn't make a fool of myself. I left for work one morning last week and left the dryer running. Is that even something I should concern myself with? My father always reminded me not to when we had to dry some clothes right before leaving for a practice or game. My house hasn't burned down yet so I guess I'm making the right life choices. But when it does, Noah Cicero will teach me how to collect the insurance.

After work one night, I felt rather existential about my laundry, so I did as I normally do. I escaped. I caught myself people-watching in excess up on the boardwalk. Witnessing lesser intelligent people attempt to do things like bike against the wind for the first time makes me feel better about myself. In a future life, I'll probably be punished for holding a judgemental outlook on people. It'll just end up being some more observational depressive human behavior that Tao Lin might build a character out of.

I know one day I'm going to wake up to an angry voicemail from someone I pissed off due some inadequate social formality that I've miscommunicated. I'll laugh at the wrong runner or something. I feel it coming. Maybe the autism spectrum is pulsing within me like a rainbow waiting for a good storm to pass. Or perhaps there's too much iron in my blood, throwing off my magnetic energy. Jordan Castro might shrug me off in a grocery store because I'm too metallic.

But it always comes back to my mud room, folding my laundry, thinking about my life and its influence on others in the interconnected universal pulse. Laundry does that to a man. Before you know it, you're on the socks. There’s always one missing, trapped somewhere in another dimension, leaving its soul mate to either die alone or become forced into a bi-racial relationship. I picture Miranda July to be the kind of person to wear bi-racial socks. Arsonists probably wear them to help find some sort of solace in their line of work. Or maybe people burn things down because they lost a sock in the dryer; their dimensions slightly askew because their lives are moving by too fast for them to control it.