Sometimes I think I’ve never thought about anything
There is nobody left in the dimly lit bar. Everyone has wandered off, to some other destination. But we have made it. And in the drunken fog of another morning, it makes you feel vaguely triumphant to have reveled to the end, out-reveling the revelers. And as such, we are going to drink another drink. M. is working at the bar tonight and pouring us whatever. She has suggested a toast, and A. does the honors, producing forth the most soul crushing toast I could ever imagine. “Hopefully things don’t turn out too horribly,” he says, as we all hold up our glasses. The record has skittered from its grooves, as we look back at him. “What kind of a toast is that?” we want to know. Who says that? “OK, OK,” M. rejoins, holding up her glass, “To happiness,” she says sweetly. And then we drink to happiness, and things not turning out too horribly.

I am awake this morning to the sound of an alarm clock going off. It beeps repetitively, the most grating sound in the world. And then, after a few minutes, having listened long enough, the insidious beeping turns into what sounds like a mechanical bird coarsely squawking in the air. I listen to this for a while before the beeping begins to sound like an air raid siren. And then I can begin to make out the specific syllables, sending out the message in its encoded beeping, getupgetupgetup, for a full ten minutes. I guess there’s nothing else to do, I realize, as I’ve been staring at the ceiling for long enough to wake the neighbors. Putting two feet down on the ground, testing for footing, that your legs are going to carry you the distance again. I tentatively stride across the room and shut down the alarm clock, which causes a silence to hang heavy in the air. It is another day. Old man time has wound up another 24 hours of possibilities and failures and I don’t know what. That’s something, at least.

An article I’ve read recently points out the nature of nothingness. Even if you’re doing nothing, it relates, that’s still doing something. And all of that lack of something will impact both you and everyone else in the world at some point in time. I think this over as I go through the day. The girl I converse with outside of work today has just had her day altered in some short term way by the conversation I have had with her. Were it not for this back and forth banter, it might have caused another moment to occur, inside. She may have met the person she was going to marry coming out of the bathroom, but I have just altered her destiny by holding her up for two seconds, while I tell her nothing in particular. In that moment, her potential life partner has disappeared through the doorway of an entirely different outcome. It was my fault, totally and completely, for talking long enough for this moment not to occur. Although, I may have just saved her life as well, sparing her the sordid fate of a roof beam collapsing on her inside and crushing her totally. My completely spontaneous act of free will, which is the lame conversating back and forth, has in fact changed everything, but we do not realize. And just doing nothing alters things, too. There are no end to the possibilities of something-ness and nothing. “See you around,” I tell my coworker, as I watch her open the door and disappear inside, sending her on her way to a now altered future.

I try to decide whether I’m OK with all of the fortuitous life moments I’ve had lined up thus far. If I’ve utilized them to the maximum degree, and what exactly that means. There is no way to determine, really. It’s not like buying some consumer item, where you can compare and choose. And that leaves you in kind of a precarious predicament, lifetime future-wise. Because how do you really know? It’s probably the not knowing that ruins it for most people. The complete inability to compare, which makes you feel like jumping off a bridge, unawares. If I were really taken by the aforementioned girl, how would I know I would not be just as taken by someone else? And in turn, how would she know, not being able to compare an infinite amount of choices and possibilities, that she would not be more taken with somebody else. And one million other possibilities. I guess, though, too, you could assert the fact that you should be happy with what you have, and to stop being such a douche. Although, that would imply the ability to shut down any and all thought process, a concept which I find myself with the staggering inability to get behind.

Spying myself in the bar mirror, hair standing on end as I sit slouched down on the stool, and cackling at some absurd late night infomercial, it’s hard to make an argument for OK-ness. No, the only case I can really make is the de facto. And it does not look good. But it’s too late to work out the logistics, and so I just watch the infomercial, instead. Extremely fit-looking women on oversized exercise balls are doing insane acrobatic movements, as they smile enthusiastically for the camera. A room full of women thrusting their midsections upwards, in perfect synchronicity, off of the ball and then back down again. Who knew rigorous exercise could be such fun? I shake my head in amazement of the spectacle.

Finishing up at the bar, we have to call a cab to get home. M. has produced the theory, with her bartender's wisdom, that if you’re going to pay for a cab you should make it worth your while by being inebriated to the point that you cannot walk. And since I’m really just along for the ride, I listen up. I’m not even sure if we’re drinking to happiness anymore or just in lieu of the possibility of it. In the bathroom, I can hear A. throwing up.