The Waiting Room

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“The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom. To function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and human. To breathe, so to speak, without air.

“The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable.

“It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.”

― David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

when at the beginning of the year I said
I want to be unboreable
I didn’t mean I wanted to see if I could
withstand watching paint dry
I didn’t mean I wanted to relearn
statistics and attempt to understand
curves and ratios and numbers and
survival
I didn’t mean I want to do things that
are boring and try to find
delight
when at the beginning of the year I said
I want to be unboreable
I meant
tell me your story
let me listen for long hours to
the tale you weave or
darling let
us be adventurers
I meant let us never sit still long enough
to be bored
I meant
let me be creative in more than one color
black is so 2019
work outside the lines of style
or script
claim a new identity
I meant
let me never be stuck in a waiting room
unwanting to wait