With a blank page and a dearth of caffeine slogging through my brains, I fear writing the first word. I write about the fear but it’s only to momentarily pass it before throwing the other fear, the fear of wasted words and ridiculous statements, the fear of not thinking and then not thinking about not thinking in an arranged recursive ballet of nothingness.

Tired raised its ugly hands from his droopy eyelids and roared onto the scene. He did. He barked and stumbled his way to the top of the gang only to find that things at the top aren’t much better than the bottom huddlers who heap on the glories of those who cut their way to the top. Triangular motions move across the white plain. Beasts and hunters walk the grounds and avoid the pointed parts as if passing over them might attract undo attention.

I stare into space and my eyes fail to focus, throwing up three images of reality that pass slightly over each other. It’s difficult to choose just one to study when all three share the space. My mind feels mushy like the plaid ice cream that nobody craved and some wished to return. But I don’t take returns, and the ice cream shop follows what I say and where I go and forget the bargaining or the righteous indignation on the part of those who feel wronged.

I stand at the counter of the movie theater’s concession, accepting that they will gouge me. Three people wait in front of me and I notice all the lines moving faster than mine. Go figure, I think, thinking of the traffic that I fought to get this far along. I hold onto Doolies’s arm and she pats it, trying to calm me as she sees the fire roar behind my eyes, the anxiety building and looking for an outlet. We’re here, she says, and everything is okay. We have plenty of time, no need to worry. I roar silently and look away as a large popcorn with butter in the middle and on top, and, what’s this, he wants more butter, fine, she says, and puts more butter on. I hope he’s satisfied. That woman he’s with, she looks awfully young for him. I wonder if he paid for her, or she’s her daughter. What a terrible thing to say, Doolies says, and I agree. He pays the money and I move closer to the counter to order, but the couple thinks of something else. Do they want candy? Will candy help them enjoy the movie more. It seems unlikely, I want to scream. They already ordered, and they had all the time from the time they placed the order through the time the serving lady, in her, I get paid whether you get your food now or in twenty minutes, put the food together, which involved much digging and pumping and filling, to make a decision about candy. They want candy now? I ask Doolies, who again pats my arm and says we have plenty of time to make our movie, and there’s no rush, but it’s not the rush I’m thinking of but the principle of the rush, and the principle of them having so much time to think about the candy when the serving lady was serving and before they pay, and now they want candy and they already paid and where’s the fairness in that? I look away and I don’t even see what candy they chose, but even had I watched, I’m not sure I could have identified the candy because of the red haze that fills my vision. He hands over a five dollar bill and takes his candy and soda and popcorn with two layers and a few extra pumps of butter, which is just right, he tells the serving lady, after she pumped the additional layer of butter when he didn’t think the original two layers sufficient. The lady is holding the popcorn and the drink, and I wonder why he’s not helping. I step forward and square my shoulders and move toward the lady, hoping she bumps into me, but she turns at the last moment and avoids contact and I have to resist, really resist, as in holding myself back or stopping myself from the screaming or the grabbing or the throttling, from running into her and spilling her popcorn and drink and his candy all over the floor because they made me wait an additional three minutes during which time I could have been eating my hot dog and drinking my Sprite, but instead I spent the minutes gnawing on my knuckles and thinking of the terrible ways I’d like to see them suffer for making me wait so long. I almost forget what I’m going to order when I get to the counter, but looking behind me and seeing the next guy in line, I order, and Doolies teases about some candy she might want after I pay, but I ignore her because the rage is only slowly tapering away, like the candle that has too much wick left and not enough wax. We get our food and find our seats and everything is fine again. Everything would have been finer, of course, if I hadn’t been stuck behind that guy with the three buttered layers of popcorn.

That feels good, the venting, the screaming. You have no idea how often those words run through my mind and how much the anxiety of things not moving, or things not moving in the ways that I foresee as better, which, it’s funny to admit, is not necessarily actually better but at times turns out to be quite a bit worse than a better way which, had I taken the time to listen to what other people might be telling me, I might have not had to worry about in the first place.

That was easier than I thought it was going to be. I should convey my feelings on the evilness of waiting and the anxiety of the three-layer butter man more often. Painful as it is to read, at least it’s to the Goal, and this week that’s all I’m attempting: meet the goal at all costs (or miss it and take the lacerations), and don’t worry about the consternations or the words or the storyness of it, as long as it words and it meets the number: 1,079 today, caffeine-free.