Reflecting Pool - Part Two

If the opening part of this series didn't bore you enough already I'm about to go into the second part. So if you're passing through you've been warned! You remember this right? It's where i transcribe the self-indulgent notes I wrote to myself about myself by myself at the pool that one week. How self-absorbed can a person get? Well if you're me apparently pretty much. If you need a refresher on this first part go here. If not, don't worry. This can't last too much longer.
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The chances are pretty good I'm really not who you may think I am. Maybe I'm not boring, but I can very easily be a boor. Two different things. So much so that it would probably wear thin on you after a while and you'd quickly be looking for something else to do. I'm the guy who asks the stupid, embarrassing and/or unrelenting question that spoils the party, send good and friendly drinking binges into an existential slumber, and ruin Christmas wondering aloud why the neighbor has put a life-sized Santa in his life-sized manger Jesus baby scene. In fact I'll probably want to go over and ask him about it unless you stop me. And the fact of the matter is that the more I drink the deeper that kind of shit gets.

It would be wrong of you to think - at the very moment I've had my ninth vodka lemonade or something - that something profound was going on or something great and noble and wise was about to happen. There may be a germ of something in the babble you'd hear, but hell if I knew what it meant. In fact one of the methods I sometimes use when I do the fiction writing is to work under the influence. I know enough to know that it will shake some ideas out of the stuck place but make no mistake - I have to then struggle with it for hours, sober, to make it readable and understandable. Otherwise it's just the usual unmitigated crap you'd expect from somebody who had too much to drink just then. No I don't do it often. I would get nothing done at all. I'd just spend my time scurrying around trying to figure out what the bloody hell i was getting at. That method is just a matter of kicking at the plaque that collects around an idea in the brain.

Then again if ever we find ourselves at a wedding, a party or any place where that kind of thing is allowed and I have not destroyed it with politics or religion or telling children that there's no such thing as the Easter Bunny, you just might see this old guy still bring some Cabaret Metro style moves to the dance floor. A sad thing? I think not. I'm not bad, actually. Some people call my dancing quirky. Others political. Anarchistic. Evocative of the 80's origins of the hip hop to come. My wife just says it's embarrassing.

So you see I am a bundle of contradictions. For example I truly love my city - not living in Chicago is a strange, scary idea. Yet the idea that there are better places to live than America is not one that bothers me. I'm sure there are. Paris. Dominica. Dublin. Zihuatanejo on Mexico's pacific coast. Any place in Spain. Hell, if I could find a place that had all the stuff in it that Chicago has - minus the willful, proudly ignorant provincials and sickeningly patriotic religionists, national supremacists and run of the mill bigot bible whores who believe any line of bullshit that already feeds their corrupted, under-educated narrow little minds that have the run of the USA - I'd jump at the chance. So long as I could take my granddaughter with me, that is.

Even then I'd end up missing Chicago and have to go back sooner or later if only for a little while. That's just how I roll.

I want to tell the people who stomp the ground and swear to high heaven that their hatred of Barack Obama is not based on the fact that he's black that it may not be obvious to them but they're covering it up poorly and shut up and go back to their Klan meeting. But on the other hand I really don't care what anybody thinks about Barack Obama because really he's nothing special and who cares if he gets bounced next election? All Presidents end up the same kind of crap anyway. So I pretty much just sit and stew any more.

I want to tell all the over-zealous vegans who pour blood on innocent people that I just love hearing pigs squeal when they get whacked because it makes them taste better yum. But on the other hand I'm pretty pissed off at the mega blaster corporate food industry ever since I saw this movie. So I just go about my business and live the damn day out whatever it is.

I want to give stuff away to people who have nothing but I want a 40-room mansion with an enclosed pool for the winter. I want to call myself a philosophical anarchist but would jump at the chance to be a dictator. I'm a recorded member of a pacifist peace church (Quakers) but I fantasize about pushing the teeth back into the throat of any run-of-the-mill Pat Robertson you could think of with my fist.

On top of all this I'm certainly not the guy to trust with a secret. Not because I'd wait for my chance and maliciously spill the beans at the precise moment meant to embarrass you to the greatest possible degree - but because at some point I just forgot it's a damn secret.

So don't tell me nothin'. Really.

(Next and final installment - "Tassels on your God damn stupid ass entrepreneur loafers with a sport coat you prick.")

All 4 nao.