Lately I just haven’t had much mojo. The things that used to give me great pleasure now seem more like chores. I feel a little like the instructions on a bottle of shampoo – lather, rinse, repeat.
Years ago if I had this feeling for too long, I would have just packed everything I owned into my hatch-back and gone somewhere else. The years between college and Chico I lived in San Diego, Lake Tahoe, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. During that time I worked as a short order cook, a video tape runner, a marketing director (for two separate companies), a pizza delivery specialist, and a human resources assistant. There were other jobs I can’t recall off the top of my head.
Things are a little different for me now – I am a married man, and a home-owner. I have a wife and dogs who place some reliance on my being around and bringing in a steady income. I’m not complaining; it’s just different; it’s a totally different set of circumstances.
Life does that – it changes the deal on you. One day you are surfing three times and day and the next your stranded on a couch a mile from the beach smoking weed like a chimney. It’s hard to even figure out what happened – or why? Then you’re living in the mountains, watching the moon rise over Lake Tahoe, or buying a bag of drugs in a dirty fast-food restaurant on Haight Street. Sometimes I feel like I’ve lived a hundred lives – and sometimes I feel like I haven’t even started living.
When I’m Old
I will wear cheap suits and carry a hollow cane filled with liquor. Sometimes I will carry a brief-case around with me and act as though I am in a hurry to get to an important meeting. The brief-case will contain well-thumbed skin magazines and shiny steel canisters of nitrous oxide. Maybe I’ll attach it to my wrist with a pair of hand-cuffs just to make the contents seem that much more valuable. I will be leaner than I am now – I won’t be working so I won’t have to eat as much. My teeth won’t hurt like they do now. I will have either gotten them fixed, or I won’t have any - either way, they won’t hurt, and I will smile all the time. I will hang out in dark bars in the middle of the day and strike up conversation with floozies. I might write, or I might play music – but it won’t matter whether I do or not. I might live in a second story apartment where I can look down at the people walking by on the street. Maybe I’ll whistle at the pretty girls. I’ll be old and harmless, so they’ll think it funny, instead of creepy like I would be if I did that now. I plan on getting away with those kinds of things when I am old.
In the Mean-Time
Enough of that – there are miles to go before then. Isn’t it strange that a spy would affix an important brief-case to their wrist with hand-cuffs? This would seem to me to be a huge beacon indicating that there might be something worth stealing in the case. I suppose it’s a moot point in this day and age – a would-be spy would probably carry any information around in a data-stick on their key-chain.
I’ve got data-sticks and RAM on the brain these days because our office computer seems to have taken a serious turn for the worse. I think the daily exposure to internet gossip and pornography has finally rotted the poor thing’s brains. Last night I tried to print out a paper and ended up having to re-boot, then waited for a good solid ten minutes before it finally performed the simplest of tasks.
Oh to have my problems. I literally weep over the plight of the people living in daily violence over there in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The photos on the news websites look like something out of the big-budget action films. I can’t even imagine it – living in a world where going to the supermarket poses a genuine threat to your health and well-being.
I don’t know, I don’t know – it’s just getting crazy out there. Has it always been this way? Is it a product of a hyper-active media that relies on horror to generate ratings?
Money Makes the World Go BOOM!
The latest I am hearing is that Obama is going to approve payments to Taliban fighters in order to get them to renounce violence and lay down their arms. There are a host of questions regarding this policy, but the one I come up with is where the hell is all this money coming from, and why the hell don’t I seem to be getting any of it?
madbob@madbob.com
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