Outer Space Is a Lovely Place

The most astoundingly splendid and good thing about life is the sheer potential of it. What do you want to do tomorrow, or next week, or next year? Nothing? Well that’s all very splendid and good too, it’s just not as exciting as say, climbing the moon or swimming to the top of Everest. Not that those are particularly my goals. I would like to fly to the moon and back, with the flight back being the important bit. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to tell people what froodishly exciting things I’d been doing. Such as larking on the moon. But in all honesty, not to say that the previous wasn’t honest, but more honestly, I’m going to be the world’s first lunar architect. I’ve got it all figured out. Meaning I’ve thought about it. In passing. And approved of the idea. And then calmly gone back to my habitual avoidance of any career moves that might possibly put me in line for such an astounding future life. Or put me in line for any sort of future life.

I prefer to not have any options, and thus, keep them all open.

The Dodo's Quandary

To exist, or not to exist.

There’s an inherent dichotomy within my inner psyche. Two me’s if you will. The me who could have married a high school sweetheart and never left the hometown and been perfectly content, and the me who terrifies himself with thoughts of settling before having seen the world, and missing out on all the opportunities that life has to offer. Then, and this part is a fiercely guarded secret, there’s a third me. Naturally meaning, and this is the first time I’ve ever admitted it, that there is an inherent trichotomy within my inner psyche. Yeah. Nietzsche your way outta that existential quandary. And the middle of my schizophrenic triplets, the one who always gets picked on by his brothers and has to sit in the backseat on long car trips, is the me that has currently won the situational conflict of my being and is residing in Oxford typing nonsense on this computer. The me who made sure not to linger in the home that he loved, but was too realistic to attempt the unreachable dreams, and so took the middle road. Now don’t mistake him. He simply adores the middle road. I mean, it’s cobblestones, and everybody loves cobblestones. Me included. But it doesn’t stop him missing what he doesn’t have and longing for the greener grass on the other side of both fences. Basically, he’s just a malcontent bastard and the other me’s occasionally want to throw rocks at him. But they’ll get over it, and then we’ll go for drinks and kebabs tomorrow night.

First round’s on me.

Seventh Inning Stretch

So I decided yesterday, for some as yet unjustifiable reason, to conduct a pseudo-socio-hydrogenous what-the-hell-were-you-thinking kind of experiment. Rather than wait ‘til a civilized morning hour to discover what happened in the crucial San Diego Padres/Colorado Rockies playoff baseball game half the world away, I resolved to phone Witt at, oh about 3 in the morning, and instead receive a to the minute report. But then, and here’s the less than clever part of the story, I decided I could wake at quarter to 3, get an initial update, and then phone back later for the conclusion of the match. And in the intervening hour I could write. Yeah. I know. Right now it doesn’t seem the most sublime, or lucid, of all plans. I don't know though. My vision is certifiably 20/20, it’s my hindsight that’s a little blurry…

But, to top off the muppetry of my resolve, to really take the biscuit of my intransigent meandering mind, I awoke at 2:40, pre-alarm, having been dreaming of the score. Strange? I mean, this is just plain obsessed. Sleep deprived too. So now I’m sitting here in a darkened room drinking a coffee, typing, listening to a greatest hits of swing cd that I bought today, being tragically unable to find the soundtrack to 'Across the Universe,' and idly wondering if I’ll even remember this episode of my life in the morning. There are many uncertainties in this life, but there is at least one thing we can all say for certain.

It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing.