Tragically I have been uninspired as of late to blog about much of anything. Certainly the indignities of daily living were ever present and I would get wound up enough to start to formulate one in my mind, but then, ennui would over come my brain and what seemed like a good idea went cold like a cup of coffee long sitting. With blogging, if you aren’t fired up about something, it seems a complete and total waste of time, if not an entirely self indulgent one. I was doing so well too, in the early days of the Lenten season, where I demanded five hundred words a day of myself and willingly complied. Each morning awaking at 8am to type said five hundred words. I also had an unwritten Lenten demand, which was to blog every Sunday, routinely getting used to a sort of schedule. In the early days of this blog, I was almost writing daily, but then, I was often alone, in California, a good 45 minute drive from anything that resembled a social life and the Jesus Van sat there, ever present, taunting me on each walk to Trader Joe’s. I lived each day with the fear that the gentleman driver of said van, resplendent in his Captain’s hat trimmed with tinsel, would ask me where I expected my soul to go when I died. A question I would rather not answer, and a question that has gnawed at me for as long as I can consciously remember. For as long as I remember my soul has been expected to go to heaven. Baptized as a baby, confirmed in the church in seventh grade after a series of introductions by our Pastor to other religions and ways of life, I have always retained the fear of not being good enough to make the cut. The lake of fire, and fear of eternal damnation has kept me from nearly everything but the drink. The drink wins out in the omnipresent battle of good vs evil, it says, ‘let’s not worry about that right now, as a matter of fact, let’s forget everything’. However the things that get forgotten multiply and soon, instead of tiny infractions against the proper way of living, years are forgotten in the travel from party to party. Soon you find yourself in a position of looking back and thinking, where the hell did all that time go? I am sure this is the way of life for many, even those not fixated on the drink. Clean livers (now that is a double entendre if ever there were one) also reflect back on life no doubt, wondering where it all went, but perhaps with a little more clarity. I am weary of not remembering conversations that when sober I would very much like to participate in, but perhaps lack the courage to broach whilst in the waking life. I am tired of the honor among thieves club that exists as opposed to actual conversation, the ‘man I was hammered last night’ instead of ‘do you think Satre is full of shit?’. The last thing I wanna read while nursing a hangover is Satre, so instead the Khardashians get their airtime, and I get one more step closer to a fiery demise.
I am preparing to travel back to the place of my torment, not my psychological torment, but my physical torment, California. It has been two years since I filled up the Honda with what I could carry, selling or giving away the rest of the contents of my second home, the beach shack by the sea. I still miss that majestic sectional sofa I procured on Craigslist, nine feet by six feet, down filled, with only specks of yellow in spots where the previous owner allegedly got in a mustard fight with her boyfriend. I hope the young mother that was getting her first apartment off the streets is enjoying that sofa today, on Mother’s Day, and isn’t filling her arm with a load of dope. I would like to believe that the sofa is happy in it’s now two year old home. It wouldn’t have liked Michigan, not enough sun. I do not fly very often anymore, so naturally I am filled with the fear that accompanied me on every flight back in the day, but was dampened by regularity. When you do something all the time, you are less afraid of it, like riding a bike, or banging. But flying, now that I am no longer a member of a special club of assholes known as Elite by the airline, will be treacherous. Middle seats on four hour flights abound, and nothing says commoner like a middle seat. Thankfully I still retain a Valium from my earlier frequent flying days to handle that special kind of anxiety that only extreme lack of control can provide. Flying in a middle seat, well forget about it, I will need several. The holder of the coveted aisle seat will regret their choice when I am finished with them, or I have not done my job. I vow to get up no less than seven times to use the bathroom, shoving my ass in their face each time.
Flying makes me morose and instead of looking forward to a vacation, I work to see whether my ‘house is in order’ a spiritual term my father has always used about those who are prepared or unprepared to leave their human life. Sweet reminders punctuated dinners, the same way someone else’s dad might say, ‘turn on the tiger game’. I don’t think I am alone in the slow panic that takes over the mind prior to flying. Most meet it head on with a cocktail, but sadly I have been brainwashed by fashion magazines and adhere to the model’s rules of flying, all water, no caffeine. It does little to help the anxiety, and little to make the middle seat a pleasant place to be, what with flyer’s diamond hammered out on either side. Each time the plane lands a heavy sigh of relief escapes, only to be replaced by the treachery of getting behind the wheel of a rental car, or in the backseat of a wayward cab. To live means to risk dying, and right now that overwhelms me. Is thinking about death on a daily basis normal? Or have I been conditioned to question my every move and it’s impact on my future? It seems this blog is leading far to deeply into a territory which no one can provide answer to, compounded by the fact I am too tired to go out and get a cocktail to deaden the heat of the lake of fire. Such is the treachery of Sunday nights. Next Sunday night I will be in a hotel somewhere, no doubt obsessing about hotels and murder rates, all the while getting geared up for the flight home, middle seat. Questions, still unanswered.
