Walking Around and Looking Around

A return to form, write-from-the-hip, no editing, in-the-moment lambast of words that probably should have all been edited, second-guessed and scrutinized into something easier to read, but you know what?

Fuck it. Sometimes shit's just gotta hit the fan. 

How else are you going to get the shit to splat in all the hard to reach places? 

Tired this week. Woke up so exhausted I felt drunk. After a long, hot lean against the shower wall (after the requisite washing had taken place), I was awake enough to actually enjoy that sensation a little, actually—since I'm a few years removed from my 'getting fucked up' era. Being 'tired-drunk' is a little bit more fun than being 'alcohol-drunk,' because being 'tired-drunk' doesn't come with the other unsavory side effects of alcoholism. Throbbing headache for one.

Being 'tired-drunk' has other trademark 'drunken' characteristics. Euphoria. Delirium. Lowered inhibitions. Easier access to repressed emotion and desire. Luckily, it also wears off faster than being 'alcohol-drunk'.

But fucking tired this week, that's for sure. Getting over a bug but then just getting annihilated at the nine-to-five when I finally recovered enough to make my way back into the office. First day back was a three-day-work-week in and of itself. Is it still considered 'multitasking' if all you're tasks just entail writing? 'Multiwriting,' perhaps, is more accurate.

Butt-fucking tired this week, that's for sure. Figuratively.

The workplace multiwriting—"navigating a minefield," I realized, is, in my case, something of an incomplete metaphor. Sure, it feels as though my role is increasingly "navigating a minefield," but it's missing a core, colorful component that further accentuates the pratfalls associated with what I do. 

Instead, it's like navigating a minefield, that also just happens to be at a dog park strewn with piles of dog shit. You may go to great lengths to try and avoid stepping on a landmine and blowing yourself to pieces, only to find yourself mired in canine feces.

"Uh, Z, you've got a little—dogshit on your shoe, there?" 

"Damn! Right. Well. At least I avoided kabooming my limbs to smithereens." 

"Yeah. Well. You're tracking it all over the break room... so..." 

So by the time you're through the day, you are afforded some time to decompress—and like an idiot I decide the best way to 'decompress' is by watching my favorite movie. 

Groundhog Day.

I'm sorry. I can't hide it anymore. I've known it for a long time now, and I've always hedged my bets by just saying it's high on the list, and sure, maybe that is technically true because I'll wake up tomorrow and rediscover my love for The Master, or Tree of Life, or Fearless, or Babe, or Multiplicity, or Twelve Monkeys, The Conversation or whatever else. But watching Groundhog Day was appropriate for early February, and perhaps appropriate for a long and arduous day of toil, which had so recently consumed me.

After all, it's cold out there every day.

Its best quality is its accessibility. 

It's so unassuming.

It's so simple.

It's efficient.

It runs the spectrum. 

It's funny.

It's dark.

It's easy to watch.

No overburdened exposition.

It's completely self-contained.

It invites the viewer to imagine what it's wise enough to leave understated.

And in the end, it's all just about the difference between a bad day and a good day.

I wish I'd written it.

But the combination of having a day walking through dog shit, barely escaping landmines, and engaging with one of my favorite movies rendered me exhausted but overstimulated. 

So there, I lay in darkness, mulling.

"Acidic, above the shoulders, mustard shit."

Too cerebral. Too abstracted.

Events of the day too oversaturated with 'nuance.' 

Fuck.

Can't anyone just level with you anymore? 

Speak plainly? Speak directly! Tell it like it is, without beating around the bush, leaving with you with half-guessed assertions about their allusions and presumed (mistaken) assumptions.

"Uh, excuse me? Whatever it is you think you might be trying to say-- stop shielding me from whatever you think my feelings about that might be-- and just fucking say it to me, please?"

Since when do simple conversations have to be elevated to the stakes of 18th-century duels to the death? 

Which is worse? That some people's skill for passive-aggression are so expertly crafted that it pervades into the sleepscape of their victims, or that I allow myself to stew in the mire of others' passive-aggression? Begone from my thoughts, wench! These are intended to be my hours of respite! Fretting over your veiled threats and polite-bullying affords you more credit than you deserve!

But the bed is too hot. The pillow is too hot. And fuck if I don't fucking bump my goddamn elbow on the corner of the dresser next to the bed every time I turn myself over to cook more on the other side.

Lie still. Somehow, prepare the mind and body for sleep.

Pulling my thoughts away from the spiral of chaos of WORK, I thrust my mind to dwell on other things, and I stumble into the contemplation of what I now must recognize is another ending:

"The last chance" project, the one that was so close (again), has at last begun the death rattle. 

My last script—the one that, like a Plinko-chip, had been bouncing errantly down the row of pegs, sometimes veering breathlessly close to the grand prize—suddenly, and at the very last second, fell left instead of right and came up a "0".

It's over. 

After years of writing, and re-writing, and pitching, and getting close, and getting a little further, and getting a little closer, and getting this meeting, and sending it to that person—

At last, it's over. 

And I thought I'd be more disappointed, but I'm not because I've been here many times before. This is the last of what has been a long lineage of old scripts' years-worth of writing, and re-writing, and pitching, and getting close, and getting a little further, and getting a little closer, and getting this meeting, and sending it to that person—

Only for this one, too, to be over. 

And I thought I'd be more disappointed, but I'm not, especially, except that I know it's the last time I'm likely to have gotten this close again. 

Last week, it was this script. The one with the musician and the lizard and the decomposing body and the truck and the demoted angel from the fall of Constantinople. 

Last year it was the other script. The one with the enchanter and the broccoli and the MILF and the tetherball match and the tree in California that leads to Baba Yaga's hut. 

The year before that it was the other script. The one with the 80s cassette tape of home-made haunted house sound effects and the grocery store bag boy and the possessed traffic light and the grandma who could bark like a hound from hell.

The year before that it was the other script. The one with black, female high-ranking military general, and the "sticky situations," and the military police, and getting back microchips from Taiwan, and the buddy named Rick, and the less you think about it the funnier it is. 

The year before that it was the other script. The one with the old man and the comic books, and the Mexican coyotes and the little boy with asthma, and the bicycle and the stars and the shower curtain cape and hospice. 

The year before that it was the other script. The one with the sandstone slab, and the three dead priests, and cave paintings, and the buckets of dirt.

And the weird feeling you get every time about how this time it'll work out, because each time you get a little bit closer to it being real than it was the last time—and you get excited, despite how much you temper your expectations, until you finally get so close for a second you think it's actually happening and then predictably it just doesn't.

And it's fine because at this point you think that if you actually made it happen you'd unconsciously or half-consciously or maybe even fully-consciously sabotage it from happening because you know your dream can never come true, because if it did, like dreams do, you wake up.

So then after an hour of sleeplessly ruminating in the history of my failed screenplay endeavors, I somehow do manage to fall asleep, unexpectedly and weirdly, but with no recollection of doing so.

But fucking tired this week.

And of course it's not all bad. It's all actually good. But why focus on the good? The good is good. Focus on the bad. There's something to be learned in the bad. There's improvement to be gained from the bad. Focusing on the good? Who focuses on the good? It seems almost sociopathic to dwell on what's working in life. 

And wouldn't you know it. I got some advice about things this past week, as well. Advice about... well... 

If I had to distill it all down, it would be advice about acceptance, I suppose.

Sometimes the most ethical thing is to live alone with unanswered questions.

["Watch out for that first step it's a doozie!"]

Accept that some stories do not close with mutual awareness. 

[That one blew my hair back.]

It is possible to carry something meaningful with you which cannot be lived out, cannot be shared, cannot be resolved and cannot be forgotten.

[The word "possible," here, is doing a lot of heavy lifting.]

Connection activates vitality. The stakes make them intense. The impossibility makes them sharper. The history makes them mythic.

[You put an arrow through my heart!]

Fantasy thrives where action is forbidden.

["I'm feeling personally attacked."]

I'll see you in another life. When we are both cats.

Oh well. Maybe there's something right with me. The compulsive curiosity disorder is flaring up again after many long years dormant. And I'm pretty sure I can outlast it. All it'll take is maybe 20 - 30 years. Tops.

The "problem" ("it's not a problem!") is ikiagi.

You're telling me:

I've gotta take what I love. And what I'm good at. And what the world needs. And what I can be paid for. Mixing passion, mission, vocation and profession into a fully embodied sense of daily self worth that will give my life meaning and purpose?

I was a restaurant dishwasher once. 

Twice actually.

But the problem ("it's not a problem!") is that monetizing my passion mitigates my passion for it.

Because I recently realized what I loved. 

Better than finding $20 in your pocket you didn't realize was there, I found myself with 2 hours I didn't realize I had. 

Two hours!

To do whatever I wanted! 

And I had the time of my life. 

Here's what I did. Don't worry - this will be quick.

I drove downtown and parked and I got out and I looked at the sign on the new "savory bagel" shop that opened up downtown - it's funny - it's been so long since I'd been down this way that I didn't even realize this was a thing - it looks good, maybe I'll try it sometime, if they've got keto bagels - oh fuck no wait it wasn't bagels it was SAVORY DONUTS, because there's nothing unusual about a savory bagel, that's like all bagels, but it was SAVORY DONUTS, that's why it was so remarkable - and also probably why there's not a keto option - and I walked up the sidewalk and admired the chain link fence covered in locks that lovers hang there after scratching their initials on them there were hundreds of them, maybe thousands? I don't know, I'm not really good at estimating numbers beyond twelve. I know numbers beyond twelve exist but I can't look at a fence covered in deadlocks representing the eternal yearning of two lovers and come up with any rational figure of how many I'm looking at - and I kept walking and retraced some of the steps of the days of years past when I'd spend time just like this, walking around, not doing anything in particular, looking at all the familiar places and seeing how things are different now which puts how they're the same in such greater relief—and I proceeded up the row of bars and taverns that line the historic street, many of them closed at this early hour (though some are indeed open, you degenerates), and recalled which ones I used to prefer back when I used to drink and I found an empty pack of Marlboro Light 100s on the sidewalk and it looked like a murdered corpse lying there in the dimly growing morning light, waiting to be discovered, finding myself surprised at having come across such a scene. I continued on and admired some of the graffiti and decals and stickers illegally displayed on the backs of city signs ("BILL STICKERS WILL BE PROSECUTED bill stickers is innocent!") and thought about you before turning the city block corner and walking down toward the direction of my old middle school holy shit I haven't thought about middle school in a while holy fuck that's crazy I wonder what the hell Mr. Cleary is doing, anyway, I stop and admire the sidewalk drainage ditch and marvel at the industry and engineering of man that everybody takes for granted - you know back in the wild west there would've just been a huge brackish mud puddle here and now instead we get to look at this metal-gated gaping hole in the concrete that disappears into the bowels of the earth and I'll walk down toward the parking garage and stop in at the old coffee shop to get an overpriced cup of oh my god fucking $5 for a small cup of black coffee? don't look surprised they'll think you haven't been out in public in years has it really been that long? the coffee isn't even good I'll sit down and play a game of Chess on my phone (and lose but it was a good game) and recognize somebody and hope I got their name right and look them up afterward and confirm - phew - yes, I got their name right - say goodbye to them as I leave the shop and walk down to the crosswalk at the end of the street and find a trash can and throw my coffee into it - wait, there's hardly anything in this garbage can and the only thing that's in it is another coffee cup that looks exactly like the one I'm throwing away - isn't that peculiar? Am I following someone else's footsteps, unknowingly retracing their steps exactly? Well, better not disappoint, throw this cup right along side the other one in here - I guess I might not have been the only one underwhelmed by this cup of coffee. Five bucks, holy fuck, Vince Vega got bent out of shape over a $5 milkshake for fuck's sake. Cross the street. I see a shoe. A random tiny shoe on the top of the metal containment framing around a ground electrical station and it's one tiny baby shoe right on the top here. What's the story? It's the only shoe in sight. Why put it here? Leave it. I have absolutely no reason whatsoever why I should take one random tiny baby shoe. Look, admire the ivy, crawling up the side of the brick exterior of a restaurant that's been here forever. I used to work for this same company. At two different locations. Not dishwashing. Waiting tables. Never at this location, though. Oh, a cat. He thinks he's so sneaky. I'll stand here and watch him for a second and make him feel uncomfortable. But then I realize that he's totally comfortable and we both share a comfortable moment of silence on the sidewalk this morning. I look at the house he's lurking around in front of. The kind of house so tucked away and mired in neglect that you don't even see it when you drive by it. It just takes up the tapestry of the entire block; it doesn't exist in your mind as a single structure where someone used to (or currently) dwells. There's a lamp inside behind the curtain. I wonder if they're in there. Next to it is the old-old laundromat. I've lived here my whole life but this laundromat has been shut down since even before I was born. It's all boarded up and it's got iron bars on the doors and windows but I try and peek through anyway just to see what I can see, and I envision someone in there, peeking back at me, as I'm trying to peek at them, and I'm kind of scared of that possibility for a moment before I realize that I'm not a scary guy so then I'm not really so worried about it anymore, if they're there. I do continue on my walk around the city block, though - but cut-through the parking lots of a couple of old buildings; one of 'em I did used to work at, during a very brief interlude I had in my early 20s working at a Title Agency - oh my god what a boring job that was. After that I never thought I'd be able to work another office job as long as I lived, because day after day my only job seemed to be trying not to fall asleep at my desk (and failing) and yet here I am, though obviously my job is NOT BORING that's for fucking sure. I come out the other side of the parking lot and see my car parked up the way in front of the savory donut shop and walk toward it, admiring the different buildings on the way and I realize what a great time I had, taking two hours to go around the city block, and I realize that this is actually what I'm good at. It won't make me money. The world doesn't need me to do this. No one is going to pay me to do it. But I love it, and I'm good at it. What, exactly? It's easy. Walking around and looking around. I'm good at it. You can say that everybody is good at that and I'll say, sure, everybody does it, but nobody does it with the certainty of being good at it like I do - and that's how I'm different. That's what makes me special. Everyone walks around and looks around but I'm the fucking Mozart of walking around and looking around. I'm the Forest Gump of walking around and looking around. I'm the Pee-Wee Herman of walking around and looking around. I'm the Neil Armstrong of walking around and looking around. I'm the Zeighmn of walking around and looking around. I get back in my car and drive around and look around on my way to the next thing.

I was asked once to say something about myself that I liked—and I side-stepped the question. I think I didn't understand it. Scratch that. I undervalued the question. Because who focuses on the good? Who thinks about what's good? I'm not a pessimist, I acknowledge that the vast majority, if not all of life is good—(yes, it's a sin to live so well)—but what utility is there in seeing what is good? 

But that's not really the point, is it? And further - there is utility. By recognizing, at a minimum, what there may be about you that you like, you're buttressing your interior world against the forces of psychic-entropy. You're fortifying the part of you that remains ready to meet the world so that you're still capable of innocent discovery when you happen upon it. I think what's so amazing about Groundhog Day is that Phil spends enough time there to know everything about everybody—including himself—and despite hating everything about the place and the people from the beginning, he became enlightened when he discovered he loved it. 

So, fuck, in the end, love really is the answer. And if it's the answer then you better find something about yourself that you love. And is it trivial to love that about myself? 

The ability to walk around and look around and feel like I'm the best at doing it? The best that I know, anyway.

Maybe. 

Anyway, it's a longwinded and very roundabout way of answering that question about what I like about myself.

I didn't want it to be an important question at the time. And It's not the most important thing. But it isn't important-less. 

It's one of those things I always knew but never recognized. It's helped frame recent emotional and philosophical musings (and the manner in which they ripple) in a way that's... encouraging. Stabilizing. 

Fucking tired this week. Somehow, prepare the mind and body for sleep

It feels earned. 

I step in dog shit.

But my limbs are intact. 

Elbows I can smack into my dresser next to the bed when I'm tossing and turning trying to sleep at night.

Lie still. Somehow, prepare the mind and body for sleep.