Waiting for a call to rescue you, a letter, a word, the right word, a surprise encounter – that might do if it were with the right person. Waiting for the war to begin, the war they told us would solve everything or some things anyway. Waiting for the market to rise or not to fall anymore. Sitting here waiting, looking, staring at the door, waiting for it to open to admit the right person, the person you know or want to know, the person who can make things right again, restore equanimity. Checking your email, thinking that this time the email you have been waiting for will arrive though you don’t know which email that is or from whom, only that you have been waiting for it for a long time and it should be here by now. Waiting for the door to open and finding it almost unbearable to look when the door does open for fear that it won’t be the right person, won’t be anyone you know or want to know. Thinking that you will wait only so much time and then no longer and then you will go because there is energy to every day, there is so much possibility that inheres in each day, and when you have exhausted the day’s energy and exhausted its possibility, and the signs are all there if only you know how to look for them, then the best thing to do is give up and go home and go to bed and wait until the next day with its new energy, its new possibilities, when maybe your waiting will pay off. OK, you didn’t like the news you got today, you knew that it would have to happen one day, but could not understand why it had to be this day of all days because you could have taken it better, absorbed the blow in other words if you had some good news to cushion it, but most days are not like that, most days are not generous with good news; glimmers of hope are what you get and that’s if you’re lucky; so then you’re stuck is what you are, waiting here, waiting for the door to open, waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for that letter, waiting for that email, waiting for that overdue carrier pigeon, thinking that maybe if you get the hang of waiting, if you are truly able to master the art, if you can wait without waiting, without at least being conscious that you are waiting but can pretend that you are not waiting and thus are open to any surprise but won’t care if no surprises occur because you have other business to attend to, then maybe you can goad whatever it is – fate, luck, chance, the gods – into giving you what you want while making as if you don’t want it, couldn’t care less. You are waiting for war to begin. You wake up early and think today is the day it begins and this will change everything but the war did not begin today and may not begin tomorrow either. But you know war will come: everybody says so. You do not want the war. No one wants the war. Everyone says this too. No one wants the war but the war will take place but not before everyone is required to wait some time for it. When the war comes no one will tell you, no one will call, no one will write, no one will email you, you will have to find it out on your own, though it won’t be hard. The news is the same as you were expecting a long time ago but it always comes when you least expect it. Is that as true with good news as it is with bad news? You do not always have to answer the phone or open your letters or your email; you can think that the person you want to hear from has already been in contact, has left you a message, has invited you somewhere that will change your life forever. You don’t have to look when the door opens; you can believe that the person you want to see has just stepped in and will be by your side in a flash. You are waiting for war to begin, you are waiting for the market to rally, you are waiting for someone to forgive you for something outrageous you did and cannot now even remember. You are waiting like everybody else is waiting to be rescued, to be salvaged, to be amused. You are waiting for a surcease from boredom. You are waiting to wake up and waiting to get to sleep. You do not understand why sleep won’t come. The news should have been better. The news is old news though not to you. It isn’t even news anymore except to you who are the last to know. You knew it had to happen someday. There are no good days for news like this. A good day with news like this automatically turns into a bad day. You do not sleep well after a bad day. You wake up with a headache and too early in the morning. You wonder what is wrong, why you ache, and then you remember. You think you must do something to remedy the bad news, to make up for it in some manner. Some knack you had you seem to have lost because why is this happening now the same way that it happened before? You should have learned your lesson. You need to talk to someone, you need to… you don’t know what you need to do but you need to do something. It’s not so bad, or it could have been worse. It will get better with time. That is what everyone says. We are waiting for war to begin. War might have begun already. We will have to turn on our radio. The TV should tell us something we need to know. We are waiting for the weather to warm. We have been waiting for spring for a long time.