Too Fast or Too Slow

I was given an assignment in the online short story writing class I'm taking from Jessica Barksdale Inclan.  It was: Write a scene about a lie, a second one about lust, and a third about a party.  I was to take five minutes for each subject.  I thought it was an exciting challenge, but the minute the time began, I realized how slowly a sentence takes to get out on paper or keyboard/screen.  I swear that the clock sped up as soon as I started to write.  I'm certain of it, and I'll bet big money on it.  Zillions.  

My admiration for sports writers and journalists who have to meet a deadline went waaaaay up.  Hats off to those guys! I wrote a lot of garbage that I instantly deleted and tried again.  Same result.  Wow.  Dead in the water.  Missed my mark by a mile.  As a matter of fact, I am going to tell my teacher that my dog ate my homework.  I call my delete key "Dog."  

Later, after more writing - not the same assignment - I found myself staring at my screen, waiting for a page to load. My problem stems mainly from owning an old-school modem that kicks me off (of what?) pretty frequently and laughs at me the rest of the time.  It was moving so slowly at one point that I found myself blowing on the screen to hurry it.  Not sure why that would work, but boredom does things to a person.  

So, thinking about these two representations of quickness, be it nimbleness of mind or fleetness of internet, I really have no idea how to get my mind thinking faster or what is going on in my computer or in the air - Apple now connects everything in a Cloud up there somewhere - that makes it slow or fast or anything, really.  

I just pray a lot and smile at my computer and remind myself to be patient.  I find alternatives to situations where I need to write like blazes and have small turtle icons and holy shrines around my home that I hope will influence the computer gods.  That and blowing on the screen every now and then.  Something has to work, right?  

Endless Transition: Night and Day

There goes the day, below the gaudy sun.  They go, together, quietly sweeping up bits and pieces of lingering questions and half-formed thoughts.  Now comes twilight and then night.  It seems a pity to end in desultory colors a day of such beauty, one that breathed cool whispers, implied passage, and consisted of infinite transition.   
This minute separated from that, one hour from another?  No.  An arc, smooth in soundless flight, invisible to my searching eyes.  I felt time passing, saw it in shadow and glare.

Time is only the rumble-less turn of the earth.  Time is not passing; I am passing, round and round again, riding this jutted and jumbled ball.  Time is light and dark and all their blurring permutations.

Flying past the searchlight of the sun's intensity, daylight changes to night.  Still flying headlong, rushing, the other side of the world is taking its turn from dark to light.  While I sit here, still, just breathing, the headlong rush of the earth goes on and on.  I am swept forth, even as I sit here unmoving, away from the sun and then back into its view again.  It is a fantasia, an escapade, a wonder, this spinning globe and our blazing sun, creating constant transitions of light and dark.

A wall outside, gilded so recently in sunlight is cloaked, darkened, biding its time.  There it is again, the thought of time, of measuring, incrementally subdividing evidence of the turning of the earth.  The earth will round again, and soft colors will emerge from the dark edge of night, and all life will ride on.  That gilded wall once visible through my window reflected the disappearing sun, then yielded to the lavender, gray and fawn of evening twilight and then no color at all.  One infinite span of color, time is all one time, nothing at a standstill, ever.  All is transition, all is change, we are turning, we are always waiting, to see the sun again.