Two scabs, one per elbow
Fuck. I have done what i said i would do. Exclamation points!
I packed my shit and i threw it in a cold and unlit storage compartment. I had been feeling uncentered and doomed. In Canada, even! I felt trapped in a routine that was never intended to break. So i drove south and took back my old job under new conditions and guidelines. I worked thirteen hours and more hours per day for 55 of the last 61 days. I received glowing reviews. Everyone agreed: i did an outstanding job, never better. I am exhausted, and now it is over. No obligations. Now i am up at 3AM, wide awake. It is the old deceleration blues.
I am faced with a summer of limitless possibilities. I have no bills, no rent, no employment obligations, no personal obligations except to keep my cat taken care of. I have no particular ties to anywhere.
I am in a hotel room in Chesapeake, Virginia that i need to gather the ambition to tear myself out of.
I have been watching a documentary about Mark Twain. Apparently, his life was a wreck. Or became one. A lot of the time. All the brilliant ones, huh? Mark Twain is a pseudonym, and is a steamboating term. It means 'two fathoms'. It is a measurement taken with maybe a lead ball and a cable, off of the side of the boat. It indicates safe water to drive a boat over. It is depthy enough, at least for the moment. The man with the line would shout out "mark twain!", and the steamboat captain would breathe easy.
I do not feel depthy enough, but i have gotten used to the feeling.
My tentative summer plans wane, and then they wax again. Currently, i am looking into an Amtrak Rail Pass. It would give me unlimited train rides in the United States of America, and Canada also. Trains offer the most excellent environs for the reading of books, which i am not accustomed to doing much of, unless i find myself on a train. So i will read books on trains, and the trains might take me through Chicago, through Minnesota, and soon enough the train would dump me at the edge of Glacier National Park, which seems like a place i would enjoy, and its simplest glimpse would cause me to feel some sort of fulfillment, one hundred and eighty degrees from this spiderweb-caught post-assignment syndrome. Homeless and unloved feeling.
Maybe after that, the train could take me to the Grand Canyon. Or to Jasper. Or to Portland, Oregon. Portland, Oregon has always seemed like exactly my sort of city, even though i feel absolutely no particular urge to move there. I am an eastern lad, i think. Although maybe i am not that, either.
If i were in my twenties, i would fancy myself some sort of neo- Jack Kerouac. But i am not in my twenties anymore, and i do not. I am just a Tim Miller. One of thousands, maybe. It is not my assignment to impress anyone. It is not my place to woo anyone. I understand!
But you should've been in my shoes yesterday.
I packed my shit and i threw it in a cold and unlit storage compartment. I had been feeling uncentered and doomed. In Canada, even! I felt trapped in a routine that was never intended to break. So i drove south and took back my old job under new conditions and guidelines. I worked thirteen hours and more hours per day for 55 of the last 61 days. I received glowing reviews. Everyone agreed: i did an outstanding job, never better. I am exhausted, and now it is over. No obligations. Now i am up at 3AM, wide awake. It is the old deceleration blues.
I am faced with a summer of limitless possibilities. I have no bills, no rent, no employment obligations, no personal obligations except to keep my cat taken care of. I have no particular ties to anywhere.
I am in a hotel room in Chesapeake, Virginia that i need to gather the ambition to tear myself out of.
I have been watching a documentary about Mark Twain. Apparently, his life was a wreck. Or became one. A lot of the time. All the brilliant ones, huh? Mark Twain is a pseudonym, and is a steamboating term. It means 'two fathoms'. It is a measurement taken with maybe a lead ball and a cable, off of the side of the boat. It indicates safe water to drive a boat over. It is depthy enough, at least for the moment. The man with the line would shout out "mark twain!", and the steamboat captain would breathe easy.
I do not feel depthy enough, but i have gotten used to the feeling.
My tentative summer plans wane, and then they wax again. Currently, i am looking into an Amtrak Rail Pass. It would give me unlimited train rides in the United States of America, and Canada also. Trains offer the most excellent environs for the reading of books, which i am not accustomed to doing much of, unless i find myself on a train. So i will read books on trains, and the trains might take me through Chicago, through Minnesota, and soon enough the train would dump me at the edge of Glacier National Park, which seems like a place i would enjoy, and its simplest glimpse would cause me to feel some sort of fulfillment, one hundred and eighty degrees from this spiderweb-caught post-assignment syndrome. Homeless and unloved feeling.
Maybe after that, the train could take me to the Grand Canyon. Or to Jasper. Or to Portland, Oregon. Portland, Oregon has always seemed like exactly my sort of city, even though i feel absolutely no particular urge to move there. I am an eastern lad, i think. Although maybe i am not that, either.
If i were in my twenties, i would fancy myself some sort of neo- Jack Kerouac. But i am not in my twenties anymore, and i do not. I am just a Tim Miller. One of thousands, maybe. It is not my assignment to impress anyone. It is not my place to woo anyone. I understand!
But you should've been in my shoes yesterday.