Death in Life

Originally Posted Friday, May 31, 2013

This conference of bosses is a sign of the apocalypse.  To be here is to know that the end is surely nigh.  There is no room at the top for the nonconformist.  There are leadership councils to which you might be accepted that will teach you what you need to know about rising up out of the muck.  If you are creative, they will show you how to repress and hide it.  I sit in a room in which everyone looks the same and have affected (or were born with) the same abbreviated motions as if they were in a room full of irreplaceable crystal and china too delicately displayed.  Their faux laughs are constructed not to disturb the air that surrounds them. 

And then there is me.  It is not obvious why I am there, but it is well known that I won't be applying to the leadership council.  I am the fart in the room, the hand grenade. 

I give myself too much credit, of course.  I am a mild irritant or an object of silent ridicule. 

I sat in a conference room for nine hours yesterday.  It was death in life.  Outside there was sunshine and briny air. There were women lying about the pool and walking upon bleached white sand in bikinis.  Why do they have conferences in such places?  They should be held in Gary, Indiana or Butte, Montana where the most beautiful thing in the area is the room in which you are sitting. 

For lunch they served cold, pinkish chicken in ptomaine sauce.  I declined. 

I am expected back in a little while.  I am struggling with the decision.  It is time I will never get back.  On the other hand, if I don't go, I give the bosses fuel with which to burn me.  I will go.  I have had some ailments for weeks now that will not let me go.  I may as well give it to these conformists.  I should infect them with something if not ideas. 

The Hilton is astounding.  They build recesses into the wall and light them from within.  Then they go to the cheapest furniture store in town and buy some hideous vase and set it in there like it is from the Ming Dynasty.  They are postmodern geniuses. 

For a second night, I have not slept more than an hour at a time.  No reason for it that I can tell other than some weird depression.  Or maybe it is my body's reaction to reducing its intake of liquor.  If nothing else, these two days have given me an opportunity for weaning.  Sangria again last night with the group at dinner.  I stopped at the bar with one of the good guys from our group and had two whiskeys before going to my room.  But going home will be the real test.  There routines and habits prevail.  It will be harder in the comfy confines of the familiar. 

I leave at the end of next week for a workshop in New Mexico.  I will learn to do polymer gravure there.  I have booked a $50/night room in Santa Fe, sight unseen, on the recommendation of the school.  I'm guessing it will have no internet connection.  Just a guess.  Cheap furnishings and a lumpy bed set next to a busy highway with cars whizzing by all night.  Plastic curtains and forty watt lightbulbs too dim for reading.  A tube television with rabbit ears.  Something out of a Richard Ford novel or a Sam Shepard play.  The sort of place I stayed most of my life so I could afford to see the world. 

If it is such a place, I will try to get the what is sure to be Mexican maids to let me make pictures of them for inclusion in Lonesomeville.  And I'm pretty sure that Arnold Palmer's won't get me through the night.