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So What Happens Now? Last night was a bad idea. I must wonder, though, how much misery one is expected to endure before one says, "Enough." Decides to end the misery. Don't worry. I wouldn't actually do it, at least not right now, with things such a mess. I am a major fan of clean exits, and I could not make one at this point. And anyway, despite my recent "determinism," I would rather abdicate responsibility, despite its being patently not my style, for something so very momentous as my exit. I wish to leave, rather, at the time appointed, hopefully with everything I intend accomplished, and hopefully by some very quick and painless means, perhaps while lying down contemplating the beauty of creation, via a sudden massive fatal brain aneurysm -- poetic justice, I think, for the greatest source of my pain to be the agent of my escape from it. After rehearsal, I went home with the car, as I thought C and I were going to go out drinking, but because of the late hour and the fact that he was a bit tired from his belated birthday dinner with his parents, we decided not to go, and I stayed home, finished off my bottle of gin (Regular Bombay Gin, contrary to what a certain psychiatrist friend of mine said, does NOT make the best martinis. For those, I typically prefer the contrast of the rather floral Sapphire with the salt and vinegar of olives infused. The regular stuff DOES make a fine artillery, though -- a martini with sweet, rather than dry, vermouth, and a couple dashes of bitters. So that's what I was drinking.), smoked cigarettes out the window and listened to music while contemplating the evening and my depression and the distance from my living room window to the ground. I was very drunk and listening to miserably sad dance music, contemplating selections for my second late-night mix. (I'm super-fond of the Deep Dish remix of Dido's "Stoned" at the moment. "If you won't let me fall for you / Then you won't see the best things I would love to do for you" and "What's the point if I'm having to hold this fire down?" indeed.) I've been smoking too much lately. Normally, I smoke cigarettes nearly not at all. In any case, I got wonderfully fucked-up and was smoking out the window contemplating the song, and glanced to the left (roughly north) just in time to catch the end of a sequence of what, in my childhood, was called "heat lightning." It was quite beautiful and reminded me how I miss summer storms. ("Dixie Storms", Maria McKee and Lone Justice called them in their song of the same name, which pretty well sums up how I feel about my home.) I can't remember what I was writing about anymore. Oh, yes, the cruise line idea. I don't want to work, at least not in the sense of the work I'm doing now. I don't want to come into an office every morning and sit on my ass behind a desk at a computer and do things I don't particularly enjoy. I don't want the kind of regular schedule I have right no, which stresses me out. As a consequence of this train of thought, I'm beginning to wonder whether rather than moving to Manhattan, I ought to just get rid of the things of which I was planning to rid myself and put the rest in storage and be rootless for awhile. I think I might like to take a job on a cruise ship, playing keyboards and/or singing and/or working as musical director and/or maybe as a bartender. Admittedly, when I was working almost solely as a musician, I wasn't making enough money to support my spending habits, but hell, I'm not making enough money to support my spending habits now, and it doesn't look like I will anytime soon, regardless of in what field I choose to work. At least if I were living on a cruise ship and only paying for storage for my baggage on land, I'd have much lower expenses, and I could probably save up several thousand dollars in the course of a contract or two with which to move comfortably to New York. I know only that I must leave this job, this office which chokes me every morning when I walk in with a smell which I would swear is stale formaldehyde, and I must leave this town, whose ghosts have become increasingly irrelevant to me (a blessing for which I am most thankful). All suggestions and leads are appreciated. r
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