20 minutes to go

Twenty minutes to go. What can you do in twenty minutes but think of the twenty minutes there is to go? How hard will you work when there are just 20 minutes to go? Hard, or hardly? Maybe both.

Now there is less than twenty minutes to go. All the things are put away, all the pieces of paper have been recycled. All the food has been eaten, the money spent, and the day winds down from dusk. What has been made has been made, what's been done has been done, and twenty minutes are almost done too.

Do you even want the last twenty minutes? The last twenty minutes of a movie are different than the last twenty minutes of a television show, the last 20 minutes of a letter, of a lecture, of a shift at work. The last 20 minutes is something-the time shrinks and expands according to context. It expands, it expands.

There are 15 minutes to go. Sometimes if you go get your coat and your bag it doesn't seem so long. It doesn't seem so long does it?

Now there are 14 minutes to go. Maybe I will play this game. Count down the minutes as they happen upon me. See how long one can write in twenty minutes. Why does this minute seem so long?

13 minutes to go.

I will go home. I can think of the bus ride home, and the people I will see on the bus ride home. Maybe there will be the man who sits on the bus and mumbles only slightly audibly to himself.

Seven minutes to go.