All the initial enthusiasm is gone.  Maybe not all, but most.  I worked on encaustic pieces the last two nights with lousy success.  It is early and admittedly I was experimenting, but I wanted to win big.  Now I am going back to the beginning.  Further.  I want to be a consumer rather than a producer for a bit.  I want to sit and veg.  I need to go out and watch life from a table or a stool.  I need to be "in the mix."  I need to do what other people do.  Smoke dope, watch television, eat pizza. . . and most of all, laugh.

Tonight, I was in Whole Foods looking at new yogurt because they've changed their brands again.  So I'm just standing there sort of bewildered, when a voice next to me says, "You staying busy?"  I look up with the automatic smile thinking it will be someone I know.  But it is a stranger--I think.  But I'm not sure, so I'm smiling like Goofy and says, "Yes, yes. . . staying busy."  Then I notice the little give away stand he is leaning on.  What the fuck?  I was about to say (in anger), "So. . . how's your mother?  She still busy being the town pump?  Keeping busy like that?  Really, really busy?"  But I didn't.  I took my Goofy lumps and walked away.  Halfway to the checkout line, though, I turned around to go back.  "What the fuck is wrong with that asshole," I kept thinking, remembering the look in his eyes, the look of Mormon boys who knock on your door just before sundown to see how you are doing.  But I didn't go back.  What was the point.

I knew then that if he was bothering me that much, I needed some down time.  Either that or a job at the Post Office with all the VFW members.