You are now in a deep sleep
As just one more event in the vast and interminable nebula of agitation that is my waking life, the people who live next door to me are rebuilding the Boo Radley construction that under some broad definition might be considered a house. Not only have the rats scuttled from their collective domicile but an entire miasma of radon and god knows what has been floating in the air, causing me to wheeze. The whole situation has forced me to realize what a recluse I’ve become. With the onset of symptoms, I have come to the conclusion that with the exception of a three-hour period that I left to do some obscure errand, the symptoms have not disappeared. And that, actually, I’ve been spending way too much time at home lately. You have to get out every once in a while, soak up whatever insane stimulus the outside world has to offer you—which just happens to manifest as an outdoor barbeque that is by all turns short on insanity. Since I can hardly breathe, however, I check in on the festivities, showing by with all the gracefulness of a one-winged bird.

I enter the backyard to little kids scuttling around and their parents gathered around a picnic table, who are people I know. The crowd gives a general nod in my direction, registering my presence after a one-year absence. These are mostly friends I went to high school with, people I end up seeing annually at best. What’s going on, man? How you been? You process the scene after a 365-day absence, realizing the subtle changes, the addition of a new vehicle or child. It seems weird to me that people my age are having kids, getting married—entertaining anything, basically, which is not completely self-serving in some unambiguous way. It just seems right and natural to me that you would choose self-direction as the only direction. But then, they seem happy, I reason, checking in on their children, making sure Johnny doesn’t spill his sordid orange juice box down the front of his shirt like he is currently doing. I try and imagine myself in this same kind of role, and then realize there just are no real reference points. No—when I think of the future, I imagine a one-bedroom apartment on the periphery of town somewhere, a stack of books, and some unending supply of doom and despair. But then, it’s probably a worldview like that one which has me issuing forth statements like I commonly do, offending people’s sensibilities. I’m talking to a friend about a mutual acquaintance we have both recently seen. “—Yeah, she’s married, with children and stuff,” I say derisively, in an audible range of every other person here, who is married, with children. The needle skitters from the grooves as I realize my error, the tone of voice which is suggestive of the complete and utter insanity of such an idea. But there is no taking it back. My words have hung there in the air long enough for everyone to hear, and for a friend to shake his head at me. The eating then resumes and the moment passes, but it has been marred. A little ball of soot has it been adorned with it now and there is no taking it back. Ah, well, I think. It could have been worse. And it’s not like I’m intoning racist jokes like the guy sitting at the end of the picnic table. Who invited that guy anyway? I think to no one in particular.

The night ensues, to more or less fanfare. It feels like September out, I think, before realizing, oh, wow—it pretty much is September. People are drinking domestic beer and talking about their lives as the sun goes away. I am sitting at the edge of the table with Adam Lynch as he contemplates the whole situation, with more or less of a positive spin. “I need one of those,” he tells me, looking down at the cooler. “What?” I ask him, not understanding. “Another beer?” He just laughs at me, ignoring the wife as inanimate object and/ or Budweiser beer connection that he has just made. What the hell are we even doing here? I want to know, contemplating the domestic living scenario. It’s totally freaking me out. I talk to Adam some more and he tells me about this bar around the corner from his house that he wants to go to. It’s more of a neighborhood bar, he explains, out of range from the increasingly annoying downtown establishments, filled with the vapid masses. “Yeah,” he says, “It looks pretty good. I must have driven by it like a hundred times before noticing. I guess it’s sort of an older-person, more relaxed-type place.” And then he adds, “I guess I just don’t really fit in anywhere.” It seems somewhat true, I have to admit. There’s nowhere good to hang out around anymore. But I don’t know if he understands the implications of that statement. And I don’t really want to be a part of all of that, while realizing at the same time that I probably am. Or at least I will be.

Life, it turns out, is a lot like the mold spores originating in the Boo Radley house. You end up floating around a bit before sticking to something indefinite. And it’s the sticking which ends up defining you, with more or less fanfare and agitation. But all I seem able to do is float and not breathe. And since I can’t go home or anywhere else, I’ll probably just end up checking in on that pub later.