The Fire

Back to Edie.  That was not her name, but as I've said, I can't remember it.  It will come to me someday.  I hope.  She was unlike anything I'd ever been around.  I was a beast just coming from the wilderness.  I guess I had unreasonable confidence, or, perhaps, cockiness would be a better word, for I believed" my people" could crush "her people" just the way I'd always thought our dads could beat up their's.

But I was hideous.

Edie was into fashion, and she asked me to come take some pictures of her.  She had her own ideas.  These were not mine.  She set up lights and told me what to do.  Most of the pictures were too high key for me, but I was just happy to be hanging around with her.  About half the time I was there, she was talking on the phone.  She talked like an adult, like one of those movie martini moms.  That is the closest I had gotten to anything like that, anyway.

She had her own apartment.  I should mention that.  She did not live in a dorm.  She did not share a place.  She had her own apartment.  And a nice car.  A Saab, if I remember correctly.  I was trying to be a hippie.  She was already Boho chic.

As with everyone,  I wonder how her life turned out.

Today was one of those beautiful, crystal clear, blue sky, diamond-lighted days for which this place is famous.

I stayed inside.  Yup.  I sat at the computer and scanned all day.  I thought to myself, "It is a beautiful day.  You should go out.  You should even take pictures."

But I didn't have it in me.  I dawdled.  I didn't eat.  I didn't drink.  I just sat at my desk looking through old proof sheets and negatives, and I scanned.

Now I have eaten a dinner of shite and have drunk some wine, and I have moved on to "the whiskey."

I will watch some television, perhaps, or I will read a book, and I will probably go to an early bed.  And as has been my practice recently, I will wake in the dark and get out of bed at five.  So I predict.

I need a muse more than anything now.  I need someone to make me want to do something.  I need an Edie or any of the others, someone to make me aspire.  Oh Sweet Jesus, send me some inspiration.  I want to feel that fire one more time.

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I was right.  Early to bed, up at five.  I need to be more mindful, I think.  I need to meditate, to recalibrate and recenter.  I need to get my mind right.  Isn't that what Boss said in "Cool Hand Luke"?  I've been up for over an hour, read the news, texted everyone I know, waiting for the light.  Nobody has responded, of course.  They are comfortable in their beds on a cold Sunday morning.  They will get up to breakfasts and mimosas with girlfriends and boyfriends, husbands and wives.  They will put on gentle music and wonder how best to spend their day.

They are not like us.  They are normal and comfortable.  They've already gotten their minds right.