Creeping up into the sky
I was talking to a friend the other day and she said, “How was your day?” Taken aback by anyone who isn’t my mom asking me this question, I issued forth a confused look. “You’re actually asking how my day was?” I said. “Oh,” she told me, “well you usually don’t do anything and so I don’t want you to get all up tight about it.” That is, actually, an acutely stated character assassination of what my life has been like for the last few months. And so it was the not asking that was actually more representative of true concern. Thanks, G. I really do appreciate it. Because the canvas has been startlingly empty, and I do appreciate the not looking.

I tend to be the kind of human who thinks that life is life, and while there does appear to be various shades of prevailing and awesomeness, that is, incredibly, it. Sitting at a bar a couple of weeks ago with a friend, he looked over at me and offered words of shame and derision. “Look at us,” he said, “all slumped down in our beers, it’s totally pathetic.” Not knowing exactly what he was talking about, I asked for clarification. “What do you mean?” I said. “Where, exactly, should I be right now, and what should I be doing?” The whole sitting-at-the-bar slumped down in a beer was not quite the life-quantifying paradigm that he had imagined his Friday night to be. There was something better that he had worked out in his mind, but what I don’t know. He never answered my question.

While I may be pretty assured on the whole life-quantifying paradigm or the lack thereof, I understand the nature of boredom pretty well, and I think those are the delineations which most people try and transcend, most of the time. I happen to be particularly locked down right now, locked in the lock groove. You can feel it taking hold, the workaday workweek kicking it to you. It’s enough to make you want to get out of your chair, bounce your head off the wall, just to have something to talk about later. And so this I do, for no particular reason, just because. You can feel yourself at times, willing something into existence, like a ball of clay in your hand that you’re giving shape to, for no reason at all.

I am hustling out of work tonight when I see crazy N. It has been a long day and I’m practically running to my car when I spot her. I don’t know if it’s because we’re similarly bohemian-looking or if it was my strange declaration that we could have been brother and sister separated at birth, but we have become workplace allies. It’s nice. I wave goodbye to her as she approaches. “See you tomorrow,” I say. She makes fun of my lethargic goodbye. See you tomorrow, she repeats in the mock-appropriation of my farewell. I can’t help but laugh at her languid impression of me, which isn’t too bad. She asks me what I’m doing tonight, if I’ve got a hot date that I’m in such a hurry for. Sadly, I tell her that I am just going home. She cannot reciprocate any of my lethargy, however, as she tells me that she’s on her way to the park, to get drunk. “Are you serious?” I want to know. She produces from her car a large beer in a brown bag and tells me I should come along. I think this over for a minute. It has been a long day and I’m totally frazzled. Introducing something foreign to my nothingscape would be alien and unnatural. I just don’t know. It might wreak havoc on my tightly conscripted existence. But fuck it, I think, realizing this nice day. I’ll go, just because. And then, suddenly, all at once, you can feel it taking place, the amorphous ball of clay, and the narrative locomotion. Or whatever it is you call it.