An Evening's Celebration

Unusual night.  Broke with routine.  Barely, but it's a start.  No gym.  Rather dinner and then a cigar and whiskey on the deck.  Sounds unremarkable unless you know what I have been doing for. . . the longest time.  I quit living actively somewhere down the line.  That is, I quit thinking, feeling.  But that is what I did tonight, and some old things came back to me.  I've been reading, too.  All unremarkable, as I say, but that I have been in some sort of suspended animation.  You've been there.  No need to explain.  The numbness and waiting. . . .  But I am ready now, I think, to break with all of that.  I am ready to go out into the world again.  That is what I think tonight, at least.  Not as a sterile, isolated observer, but as an active participant.  Perhaps it is only the nicotine talking.  I found a Romeo y Juliet that someone gave me long ago still in it's metal case.  It had not dried out so much.  And so I thought to smoke some of it.  Only a bit.  But I sat out in the dark of night outside with a big whiskey to clear my palette--yes, a palette cleanser.  And then the big cigar was smoked down to the end and I felt woozy as if I'd been smoking pot for the first time, head swaying, body pulsing.  Funny, eh?  But I made plans and schemes.  Now it is only a matter of following up.

I have lived too long in this semi-trance.  Things must change.

Those of you still here have been around for the worst of times when living was only in the head, and a dead head at that.  I am a smart fellow and have been able to continue to draw on a rich reservoir, but it has been just that.  Time for the next act.

Holy shit, a big cigar is a wicked thing.  The boat is rocking as I write.  I may puke before this is over.  How terrible.

But you shall see.  I will get out of the house.  I will take some chances.  I will find some new material.

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Written last night in exuberance.  This morning feels too much, though, like the same old thing.  The thing is, I got some good news yesterday, or at least I didn't get the bad news, which sometimes produces the same feelings.  I am O.K. for now at the factory job.  My economic life will continue for awhile uncompromised.  I wanted to celebrate, but I had nobody with whom to celebrate.  So I called my mother, came home to the cat, made my evening meal, read a bit, then decided on the cigar.  The thoughts and feelings of the past evening are still legitimate.  It is the resolve that is in question.  One can get comfortable with even the dullest of routines.