...tonight the women at the rehab were in the living room, that legendary Wizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moon mash-up playing on the T.V....I told ‘em you may be the most sober group of people who’ve ever watched this...
God knows, it’s sacrilege to waste the talent for idleness which I possess.
William Faulkner
...to get busy, first get organized...(sounds like something Sun Tzu would've said...or maybe it was me)...made myself a big to-do list...a series of bulleted goals to be accomplished...with, one hopes, a sense of optimism, hard work, and perseverance...in the coming days....and then, within an hour or two, started feeling a dry, crusty, utterly nasty feeling from the back of the throat to the sinuses, along with an overwhelming need to bundle up, lie down, and close my eyes at two-thirty on a sunny Saturday afternoon...
...that was more than week ago...the nasty sinus cold still lingering just a bit, but mostly, it seems, off on its way....that to-do list serving as a bookmark in the novel I tried to read in between blinding headaches, desperate noseblowing, endless games of FreeCell, and the latest seasons of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Breaking Bad, watched from start to finish on the computer....so now, I’m starting over...
...and I went down to the demonstration,
to get my fair share of abuse,
singin’ we’re gonna vent our frustration...
Mick Jagger
...at least managed to get some yoga in, if far less than usual...including a vinyasa class on Friday, where, actually, not having biked for a week, I noticed a refreshing lack of soreness in the leg muscles...and, then, ever the glutton for punishment, got back on the bike for a ride downtown on Saturday....a pretty day along the river, except where I had to detour around a gathering of aryan nations-type people blocking the path....seriously....maybe ten beefy, angry-looking, Gothic-tattooed, generally goonish-looking skinhead guys holding flags, one speaking into a bullhorn...though whatever he was saying...(apparently something having do with the statue, there by the path, of Viking explorer Thorfinn Karlsefeni...no doubt muttering can’t you please just leave me out of this crap? in some ancient Norse tongue, somewhere beyond the grave, at that very moment)...was drowned out by a slightly larger, equally angry-looking, group of dudes, perhaps fifteen or so, dressed head-to-toe in anarchist black chanting “nazis suck,” while a couple of cops stood in between, simply looking miserable...
...and it occurred to me, thinking back on over a week of relative inactivity in the face of a long list of important shit to do, there could be worse ways to spend my time...
I tend to idealize Van Gogh—not so much for the prostitutes & syphilis, psychosis & depression, or self-mutilation & suicide aspects, but for the absolute go-for-broke, follow-your-muse-no-matter-what type ‘o thing. Of course, he had his brother to support him, but still had to keep asking him for more cash, and manage that cash so rent got paid, food and paint could be bought, and some was left over for the prostitutes and absinthe; and he didn’t just paint for God or his own soul, either. Apparently he got quite frustrated that Theo the big time Paris art dealer couldn’t sell his paintings. So, even passionate Vincent had some sense of balance with crass practicality. Which is not to say one has to compromise everything. Shortly after graduating college, feeling disillusioned with...well, just about everything...I was doing temp work—generally minimum wage crap clerical jobs for investment companies, the kinds of places where I was still far too idealistic to even think about getting a real job. Then one day I got sent to work in the mail room in the local office of some gigantic corporation, not realizing till I got there that this was in fact the company’s nuclear division. Not long before, I’d worked for Greenpeace, demonstrated against nuclear power plants, been arrested protesting nuclear testing. And there I was, wrinkled suit borrowed from my Dad, wondering if I was really cynical enough to simply go with the radioactive flow. To make matters worse, my supervisor liked me so much that, there on my first day, he fired somebody, figuring she wouldn’t be needed with me around. At the end of the day, I went to the temp agency office and told them I had moral issues with the gig. The woman in charge said it was too late to get somebody else, so I’d have to go back the next day. I refused, which seemed like it knocked the wind out of her; “well then we can’t use you anymore,” she said. I said “okay” and walked out. Later, her superior called me and said she shouldn’t have done that, given the circumstances, and I was reinstated. My guess is that it hadn’t even occurred to her that somebody might stand on principle to the point of getting canned, and so figured she could make the threat with no danger of having her bluff called. Of course, after that, they only called me when they were desperate—graveyard shift, breathing dust with co-workers who never failed to share racist jokes.
