(no subject)
As I walked down the concrete steps to Brewer's Art (an automatic act, an act formed without thought, forged from so many repetitive gestures from so many eager evenings) and then stood at the darkened, bass-rattled barstools, I looked over behind the bar and said "Karma."
She turned around and smiled, surprised, and said, "Where have you been?"
All I could come up with was, "I guess I just don't go out much anymore."
And sitting there, to my right and left, were friends that I used to see every night: rainy cold nights driving to so-and-so's with the windshield wipers whipping back and forth, scraping noisily against the glass; summer nights with the wind too loud for the music, turned up; nights in lamplit living rooms; nights in bars. Those nights, described with such loving poeticism, used to become significant as they happened, used to mean something, well, perhaps romantic.
Now I see them less, succumbing to or maybe choosing more evenings at home with a scrambled laptop, out at dinners, talking to girlfriend, laying on something soft, being tired after 9 hours of staring at final cut pro windows. And the poeticism has dwindled to a small mumble I didn't quite catch. Every five minutes or so, I think that is sad. The other every five minutes or so, I think about when would be the most unobtrusive time to leave.
I tend to go out on certain nights that rally against better judgement, and somewhere in lulls in conversation that slowly etch the drift in common interests deeper and deeper into the table we are staring across, I realize that my better judgement is better.
The petty struggle then rages on, arguments over whether I am now officially not cool enough for the proverbial school, or if I am actually too cool for that school everyone talks about.
As ever, we are floating in the ether of measurements. And, like our own system of weights and measures, the standards are completely and utterly arbitrary. But we follow them nonetheless.
She turned around and smiled, surprised, and said, "Where have you been?"
All I could come up with was, "I guess I just don't go out much anymore."
And sitting there, to my right and left, were friends that I used to see every night: rainy cold nights driving to so-and-so's with the windshield wipers whipping back and forth, scraping noisily against the glass; summer nights with the wind too loud for the music, turned up; nights in lamplit living rooms; nights in bars. Those nights, described with such loving poeticism, used to become significant as they happened, used to mean something, well, perhaps romantic.
Now I see them less, succumbing to or maybe choosing more evenings at home with a scrambled laptop, out at dinners, talking to girlfriend, laying on something soft, being tired after 9 hours of staring at final cut pro windows. And the poeticism has dwindled to a small mumble I didn't quite catch. Every five minutes or so, I think that is sad. The other every five minutes or so, I think about when would be the most unobtrusive time to leave.
I tend to go out on certain nights that rally against better judgement, and somewhere in lulls in conversation that slowly etch the drift in common interests deeper and deeper into the table we are staring across, I realize that my better judgement is better.
The petty struggle then rages on, arguments over whether I am now officially not cool enough for the proverbial school, or if I am actually too cool for that school everyone talks about.
As ever, we are floating in the ether of measurements. And, like our own system of weights and measures, the standards are completely and utterly arbitrary. But we follow them nonetheless.