What Do You Look Forward To?

Originally Posted Tuesday, July 23, 2013

(Back to Instant Film--Fuji)

Easy question: what are you looking forward to?  It is a defining question, I think.  Rather, the answer is defining.  It will help to ferret out those people you want to spend time with from those you'd rather not.  I asked this of myself mere moments ago.  The answer didn't please me.  No. . . not the answer, but the lack of one.  I used to look forward to things with such passion that I would make myself ill with anticipation.  Travel was always one thing that could do that.  A trip just about anywhere was like meth for me.  Travel and romance were almost always hand in hand.  I'd play the home version, too.  A lunch with a desirable woman in some cafe.  A walk down unknown streets.  Just to get out, to get away. 

I don't know what happened for sure, but I suspect that it is as much external as internal as the world becomes more and more homogenized.  I am having lunch today with an attractive young woman who has made her amore well known, but it will need to be close to the factory.  Vague pronoun reference there, "it" referring to the lunch, not the amore, though neither would benefit from the proximity though I am thinking as I write this that the passion might benefit from the danger if it were close enough to be illicit.  Jesus--have I come to that?  What, dear lord, does it take to stimulate me now? 

But I lose my way in sentence structure and associational thinking.  The question was what does one look forward to?  To what does one look forward?  Look forward to what does one?  There.  I managed not to end the sentence in a preposition.

Fuck. 

Without passion. 

Perhaps it is an illness brought about by making fancy, from making pictures of a time and place that never existed but now exists more vividly than Sanford, Florida.  In case you've not paid attention, that is the home of George Zimmerman who is looking forward to traveling, I'm sure.  But Loneseomeville is real as is Lady Brett, aka Brett Ashley, or Daisy Buchanan, both of whom are as real as anyone who has walked the planet.  Even as I try to get my hand out of the cage, as I try to move out of Lonesomeville, there are models who want to go there before I leave, models who want to put down roots, so to speak, in that most lovely time and place.  Eventually there will be t'shirts that say, "I've been to Lonesomeville."  Maybe I should cash in. 

To what do I look forward?  Jesus.  Tonight I will watch "Newsroom."  It is shameful.  I really look forward to that.  I look forward to the return of "Boardwalk Empire" and of "Girls." 

And if you haven't watched, "Ray Donovan," you might want to.  John Voigt's performance is pure magic.  He has nailed this character.  I'm convinced he is a crazy son of a bitch.  He is that good. 

I look forward to next week's show. 

Is it that the world has become too difficult, too toxic, too ugly?  I'm going to spend the next few days asking people what they look forward to.  I will ask people of all ages and ethnicities and genders.  I will see if it is me or if it is going 'round. 

But summer is running away so quickly.  We are headed toward those dog days when it is difficult to move, Faulkner's time in the old south where weather means someone's going to be lynched or go missing in a well.  Mean ass summer.  Maybe I'll look forward to some escape to a better clime.  But where will the money come from (there's that preposition again)?  Perhaps I will have to sell off pieces of Lonesomeville.