Fall and fall and fall and you still have to pay autumn’s vig. A real simple slice up cut of an envelope filled with what you won’t get back on the bet, the wager; somehow in some to be conveyed as the reason why not continue down a cobblestone path that has the uprooted green grass moss stones that no longer sit just right. No excuse at all. Pay and march on young man! Show some respect to Marcus Aurelius.
“A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.” So where does that leave me? The party pool has changed and done so exactly to my liking. The fall and falter of Nancy Pelosi will bring forth the proper fate in two years. Better for them to have won now as opposed to the full gamut two years from now. Should it even matter to me now as I skim and sift the classified ads and hold strong to the passions of pride and pomp and circumstance that have led me this far down the road? I look up and down, all around me; so where does that leave me according to Marcus, where indeed?
The wooly dog will still greet each customer and their smiles as they come in and look at the relics that I made good on, the ones that will stand for a decade or more beyond my departure like the relics of ancient something or others. A gilded sword hilt to show them all who was boss; we all know it was never me, or I as it were. I worked through the days in the alley, in the shop; through the evenings in winter when it darkened far to early and reminded me of getting ice cream on a high school evening long ago with some girl that I wanted into the pants of far more than I wanted into the mind of. These days and evenings; the nights when I would come home filthy with a bit of a cough and tad bit of nausea and dizziness running through the melon and collapse with a tall boy in the chair that I could call friend after a long day of ass/back bust.
They will still offer up the greeting ‘Welcome to our house’ when a customer chimes the ding dong in the back and rattles the sleigh bells in the front while moving the door in that hypotenuse pie splay out and then back in like a rogue protractor seeking out work, much like I am now. Swing in, swing out; jump and jive.
I will still arrive at work in another place and long to see the various cars of the family that I have come to know, the family I have come to love, the family that I now call mine. I wonder if they call me family these days? I am told, time and time again, that they wish more than anything to not have to let me go. In all honesty, I think that is an immediately secondary wish just behind their business not falling into the pits of hell after 30 years of serving the community. I can understand that but I think it should be made clear. They are now paying me out of personal bank accounts via ATM. I almost cry every Saturday upon receiving my pay. It actually hurts to take the money and I wouldn’t either, if I could live without it. I like being there, doing what I do, sanding away and breathing life into the long forgotten dead and unused denizens of music’s cavernous and carniverous past.
I can still see my boss coming down to visit me at the music store before I worked for him. He would come down and smoke a bowl and a cigarette and we would all laugh and joke and talk business. The other music store guy and I would comment on how is Dad looked like Geppetto in the back alley, buffing out brass with a big fabric wheel coated in Tripoli and spinning furiously away from each little hinge or screw that was being given it’s bath of Ponce de Leon. I am going to hate thinking about those days for awhile. It hurts.
The inevitable noon time question won’t be asked anymore. “Richard, what are you having for lunch?” will only be a memory comparable to Quasimodo’s bells after a trip to Dr. 90210 and an appearance on ’Queer Eye for the Hunchback Bell-ringing Guy’. I will miss it, but the tonality of each generous inquisitive query will fade out soon like the end of a bad live rock jam. Soon, I will only hear “Richard” and will wonder in a déjà vu stupor who is calling my name. I wonder if this is how we actually end up hearing things that other people do not. The revenge of the fading memory played out like scratchy records through a horn, all played on 78.
I already desperately miss my work, my job, my vocation.
It is affecting my writing and that could be interpreted as a ‘bummer’ for all of you, sorry if it is.
I have been in bed for three days. I don’t have as much money as Brian Wilson so it is a very different experience. My body hurts from head to toe, as if hot white match heads have replaced my blood cells. Each muscle seizes and loosens time and time again until I am dizzy and know not where to turn, how to sleep or what position will be of the most comfort since none of them are. All night, I sweat and burn, sweat and burn, over and over again my friend, over and over again once more. The blankets are no longer my friends but rather my Gitmo detainees, my Gitmo gizmos - they are quite upset and I have heard rumor that the ACLU will be filing law suits on their behalves any day now. If the sheets do not then I know, KNOW, the down comforter will. None of the fans work, not one single fan even though I have three pointed right at me, right on me. Right on!
I get so depressed and so nervous, so anxiety riddled, that not even seclusion works as the paranoia only fuels it. Today I needed to open up the windows and shades to help with it all. Let in the air, the sun, the heat. I can smell the world and it makes me even more ill. I guess there is something to be said for turn around, putting it in and shaking it all about.
I will miss the Mom and Dad I know now. My brother and sister at the shop. I will miss coming in early with my key and getting the shop opened up and the coffee down. I will miss listening to my talk radio all day and being able to smoke when I want to. I will miss the neighbors. I will miss the freeway traffic that abuts the alley. I will miss. I will miss. I will miss.
I guess sometimes things don’t have a way of working out.
I guess, I guess, I guess.
I wanted to free fall through all of this and have a bit more faith than what I am used to but it all seems so dismal and misconstrued.
I will take on a new job just like any other with verve and vigor.
I have never gone longer than three days without work when I have wanted it.
I guess that will earn me a merit badge in Hell.
I will be dressed pretty spiffy when I get there.
Samuel Clemens had that whole rap about Heaven and Hell and the weather and society and such.
From Marcus Aurelius we get, “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”
Fate, bind, accept, love, heart.
And then the new days begin.
They begin with angry sheets and tired souls …