Jitters

O.K.  So I found out I came to the party a little late on yesterday's video.  I just wanted to make certain that you knew I wasn't trendy or hip in any way.  I blame C.C. for not telling me this was something everyone had already seen.  He mocks me, I think. . .  and my hillbilly ways.

Days grow shorter and I want to sleep.  All day.  I feel just as I did when I was a kid in school those years that I didn't want to go, when I decided it was much better to stay home while my parents worked and read Playboy magazine (yes--read it), and Life and Look, and to feel the day pass by in a domestic rhythm as I watched television with all the housewives, first the "Dialing for Dollars" movie and then reruns of "Andy Griffith" and "Dick Van Dyke" and "Bewitched" and "That Girl."  Then it was time to eat lunch and turn off the television as the afternoon was full of soap operas.  At that point, I did some serious reading.  At four o'clock, "The Merv Griffin" show came on, and before it ended, my parents were rolling home from work and the glory of the day was gone.  Those days, though, were immortal.  I knew I was learning more than I could possibly have learned at school in those dull, witless classes.  I was rich, those days, and more sophisticated than my compatriots, living through the stories of Graham Greene and Norman Mailer and trying to figure out who all the musicians in the Playboy Jazz Poll were, and somehow, though I don't remember ever staying up that late, watching Johnny Carson.  It must have come to me by osmosis while I slept, though I suppose I was like every other kid who stays up late knowing that there is something adult going on while he is asleep.  I knew that there was something happening in San Francisco that was different from what was happening in L.A., the two dots on the map becoming colored in by what I read and saw, and I wanted them both, both Haight/Ashbury and Hollywood and everything they represented which was everything that where I was was not.

And that is how I feel now.  I am rebelling against the yoke of work and the stealing of my hours just as I rebelled against going to school then.  I just want to stay home and read and feel the day pass through me.  I know who the musicians in those old Playboy Jazz Polls were now, and I want to hear them play as I lay upon the couch and plan my next creative venture, my next travel trip. . . the future.  I am very tempted to take some sick leave for awhile.

I have simply pushed too hard for too long so that the mechanism is worn if not broken.  I want to stay away from all the things I don't want to do.  I want to play hooky.

But mom and dad are not coming home from work.  There is nobody to pay the bills nor to give me a place of refuge.  It is all on me now, and like the Grasshopper fiddling away the summer, I am not prepared for a comfortable and lazy fall.  I must scavenge what I can to keep a place and food in the pantry.  All those squirrels sitting comfortably, laughing mirthlessly but unworried with Romney signs in the front yard surely did the right thing.  They didn't cut class, didn't talk back, didn't smoke cigarettes and joined the right clubs.  When they went to college, they were in sororities and fraternities and they learned how to talk without saying anything that could offend, a series of cliched non-sequitors that comfort the room.  They married and had children and vacationed in the trendy spots, and the kids went off to college and made their parents proud.

And so I cut this short now, for the factory whistle blows.  I've had this and now there is that.  It is probably only the coffee that makes me jumpy.  I should probably quit that as I have the whiskey.  Things will surely be more appealing then.