Under (Perhaps) Some Full Moon

I've had a difficult time finding full moon information on the internet.  Much of it is conflicting.  Last night/tonight is the full moon depending upon where you look.  It is listed as October 23 because it was full after midnight, so was last night's or tonight's moon full?  Again, different sources, different answers.  But let's say it was last night.  It rose big and beautiful here in a perfect sky.  But what was it called?  The Farmer's Almanac calls it the Harvest Moon, but that can't be right.  It is a Hunter's Moon, I think.  But I am no astrologer, just a romantic looking for something always beyond the next rise.

So after a long and hard week of personal and professional turmoil, I was happy for Friday.  I got up feeling as if I needed to get much done as there is much that needs doing.  I was to be just the man for it.  First thing, I went to the bank and did some business.  I don't have a lot of business to do, so I don't go often and what I do have piles up.  It seems such a waste of time, really, going to the bank, although they are always friendly.  Perhaps in a few years it will be part of my regular routine, going to the bank, sitting in the lobby for awhile drinking the free coffee.  But today, that was done.  I was on a roll.

Next up was the DMV.  Remember--I had been pulled over a few weeks back for "making driving look too fun" in my Jeep.  And that is when I found out that the decal had been taken off my tag making it invalid.  So, with great resolve, I sat in one of the hard, plastic chairs waiting for my number to be called.

"I was pulled over a while back for not having a decal on my tag," I told the stone faced woman when my turn came, "and the police officer told me I would have to come here to get a new one."

"Do you have a case number?"

"A what?  I don't know?  Would the policeman have done that?"

"He would have given you a case number?"

"Maybe he did.  I don't know.  Can you check and see?"

"Sir," she said filling me with dread. "I don't have any way of looking that up.  You can pay forty-five dollars to get a new one or you can report the decal stolen and get a case number and we will replace it for free."

I stood for awhile uncertain, looking at her like Larry David.

"You want to call them?"

"Can I do that?  Can I just call them?"

"Yes sir."

"O.K.  I'll call them."

And that is what I did as soon as I got to work, and I got a woman on the phone who said that she could give me a case number.

"They said at the DMV you could do it over the phone."

"No, sir.  Some agencies will, but we don't do that."

"Oh.  Which agencies will?  Can I just call one of them?"

"No, sir.  You live in this city and will have to file with us.  Are you at home now?"

I thought this an odd question.

"No."

"Where are you?"

Really odd.

"I'm at work."

"Where's that?"

Jesus, I was getting nervous.  I was thinking of the old Soviet Union.  This is why I hate the police.  I told her the name of the city.

"When you get home, call us and we will send an officer out to your house," she said.

I didn't want an officer at my house.  I was beginning to think of just paying the forty-four dollars, but now they had my home address and home phone and work phone and cell phone numbers, and I was beginning to feel trapped.  It just isn't a wise idea to get voluntarily involved with the police.  Nothing good will happen.

"Can I just come there?  I'll come there on my way home from work," I said.

It was a gorgeous day and everyone at work, it seemed, was gone.  I wanted to go, too, out into the day.  I would get "things" done as I had resolved early that morning.  I called the mulch company.  I would have mulch delivered and mulch my three driveways.  They were in bad repair.  I would weed my yard and fix my sprinklers.  The yard was already dead and dying.  But just as I was talking to the people about delivering the mulch, someone came into my office.

"I'll have to call you back," I said and hung up.  Way led to way, of course.  I never called back.

Later than I hoped, I left work and headed for the Police Department.  I hadn't been there before, not to this new building.  I live in a small town surrounded by a city, a boutique, really, that is nothing at all like what surrounds it, and this little hamlet had built a new shrine, a combination police department/fire department/ city hall.  It was big and ostentatious and a real waste of money.  I walked into a big hall with fifty foot ceilings and walls of glass.  No one was around.  I read a sign and followed the arrows into a small room where a woman stood behind a bullet proof glass.  She pushed a button and her mechanical voice filled the space.

"Can I help you?" she said without enthusiasm.  I explained.  "O.K.  Go back to the lobby.  You will see a phone on the right.  One of the top buttons says 'dispatch.'  Push that and someone will help you.

Forty minutes later, a large, young, weary-looking police officer entered.

"Are you here to report a crime?" he asked sternly.

After half an hour, and I had my case number.  And I felt lucky not to have been arrested.  In the end, though, the policeman warmed up and gave me a Victim's Rights trifold and told me that if I felt that I had been abused or threatened in any way to call the number on the back and I could get support.

"Perfect," I said.

A trip back to the DMV, etc.

It was later than I'd hoped, but what can you do?  Forty-four dollars would have been a bargain.  I was drained, but I still thought I should go to the gym.  My bag was in the car.

And somehow, I managed my workout though I'd only eaten a bowl of soup all day.  I got home as the sun was setting hungry and wondering if that was the full moon tonight.  I was not clear.

I decided to go for sushi, the only place, really, that it is any fun to eat alone.  I sat on the veranda and drank sake and waited for my food.  It is fun to drink on an empty stomach, I thought, remembering that I had drunk no water at all that day.  But the sake was good, and then the tuna kobache.  I sat calmly watching the crowd that passed thinking I just had time to get tickets to see the new Woody Allen movie, "A Tall Dark Stranger."  It would be a good night.

Now, this is where it gets strange.  And I have buried this here at the bottom of the essay knowing that few if any of you would read this much.  Nobody reads a blog entry this long.  It is not why you go to a blog.  But here it is.

I had thought ahead and brought a full flask of scotch with me.  As I've said, I like to have whiskey after I eat, and carrying a flask seems wonderfully romantic, so thin and form fitting with its slightly curving back.  This would be good.

When I entered the theater, there was only one couple there, and since they were in the perfect row, the perfect distance from the screen, I sat a few seats down from them.  During the previews, three others entered the theater.  And that was it.  Six of us in the dark.

And so I began to drink.  And the movie was slow.  It was awful.  I checked the time an hour into it wondering if anything would ever begin to happen. And already, the whiskey was gone.

And now the horrible part of the story.  And I am not making this up.  I was having a difficult time staying awake.  I should have left, I guess, the first time I drifted off, but of course. . . . And the next thing, I am awakened by a voice.  It was a policeman.  The lights were on and the theater was empty.

"Sir, are you O.K."

How do you answer that one?  There I was, a pathetic looking man, sprawled across the seat, arms and legs akimbo, slack jawed, just as I had been at home the night before, in an empty theater looking up at a policeman.

"Holy smokes," I said and began mumbling about the movie. . . boring. . . .

"One of the patrons tried to wake you up," he said.  "I'm just glad you were only asleep and not something else."

I wasn't so sure.  I drove home in a haze.

What has happened to me, I wonder.  Everything has gone wrong, and suddenly I am living as if in a dream.  No dream, really, but something else, less appealing, but just as vague and far away.  Somehow, I'm not connected to my life any longer.  Recent things come back to me as from some distant past, barely remembered, compressed, like something I've read but not completely, phrases and snatches of a complex chapter.  It is all just something that is happening to me that I set into motion long ago and over which I now have no control.

Don't write to me with advice, nor concern, nor anything else.  Just read this and be mildly entertained, for it is of no particular consequence.  All it requires, as do most things, is a sense of humor.  And if I'm lucky, it will make a good story.