I’m casting about for adventures like Neil and Jack in On the Road. New job, new car, new girl, new cats.
Cats. That’s where I’m living now. A brother and sister, Hunter and Sid, have changed my life and filled my house with smells of cat. Big fat cat turd cat smells. I wonder if a robot litter machine would lessen that disturbance. Or just burn some more NagChampa? Filled life. I long for nothing. A place to write. A quiet place to sleep. Now, cuddles all around.
The love of a cat is different from the love of a woman. But there are similarities. They ignore you from time to time. They cuddle, but also bite. They play like mad acrobats falling off tables, smashing small objects to the ground. Where I had quiet, almost deafening quiet, they have added chaos to my heart and life. Stirred it up. Giving, loving, launghing. Our conversations are very jazz-like, bop, bam, boo, boom.
Today is Halloween. I have no ghost left in me. No candy for the kids. Yesterday was my ex-girlfriend’s birthday. A sad milestone, and yet, one of no regrets. My bed is not empty. It is full of books and extra pillows to snuggle. And these two new furies that race around with tiny yips of delight from Sid, the talker. And things couldn’t be better. Sure, a partner would put a cherry on top, but also add risk and responsibility.
My days are not filled with $17-an-hour hustles. Yesterday I took my daughter to the airport. Along the way we stopped by the fancy grocery store to get her a sandwich and bulk gummies of different flavors for the trip. “I am glad I’m not working here, helping people find the right bin and the pricing codes.”
We checked out and walking across the parking lot, I added, “And I don’t care if I’m Ryan Renolds, trying to impress or seduce the cute women from behind the cash register is impossible. No one wants to fall in love with an old guy working here.”
Several near misses: I test drove a newer version of my own car, interest rates are going down, the end-of-year incentives look nice, but it was a distraction. A joy ride. Nice car. “We can let you take it today, for 24 hours, just to get the feel.” “That’s okay, I know what it feels like.” It was a different color, had a few less autonomous features that I never used, and more importantly the same fine sound system, but this new car didn’t require a cable to connect to my phone. No glitching the audio to share a track with my friends while driving 95 down the central artery to tennis, or son, or errand.
My cares are few. Of course, I went through that moment of panic. Got the job. Signed the papers and did a few hours of training and, “Nope.” The manager who hired me responded to my text. “Sounds reasonable. Good luck.”
Yes. Good luck.
I was born in a town that’s become a hub for music, tech, and art. My things. There was the heat of hell in the summer, but you adjust. Acclimated. I’d like some rain to acclimate to. Maybe today. I water my front yard. I do this. *write* And I nap when I am tired or bored or lazy. I had a father who was absent but affluent and I grew up in a glass castle on the lake for a few years before the whole place went to shit, my dad left, and my mom sold it for survival. I’m still surviving on some of that money. Like my mom before me, I’m preserving the generational wealth. Before my last two firings I was doing my part to add to my purse. Now, not so much.
The lesson, as I figure it, is about adding back in some work that pays me money. It’s not an issue at the moment. But the rocket AI stock can’t soar forever. Right?
My legacy will be my books and my music. Leaving behind all I can blow and grow. This then, is my life’s work. Here. Now. Doing it. Running with the flow of life for a bit. Why would I blow all this up? For anything? Even a girl? Why would I?
She almost came to town two days ago. I’ve invited her to the beach today, Halloween. No particular confidence that she’s coming. She hasn’t responded since 4 pm yesterday. Ho hum.
It’s early. I fell asleep at 8:30 and didn’t budge until 4:15. I haven’t checked my watch for sleep tracking, but I feel rested and free. Sad about my son, whose 24th birthday passed without a celebration or more than a text and a loaf of banana bread from his mom. Oh, the sad birthdays. “You just keep working to improve those,” I told him while we were eating lunch a few days ago. “I’ve had some pretty shitty birthdays.”
“Yeah, I’ve got no car and I’m living at a sober house,” he complained.
“Yes. I understand. Better than being living with your mom at fifty. Twice! Against my own volition.”
I understand loss. Perhaps I understand loss more than contentment. I am content. Sure, I want to go and blow and fuck like mad. I also know how destructive that pattern can be, has been, could become. What are the odds, right? What do I really know about the girl? Why complicate my mysterious zen more than I already have?
I am not lonely only alone. I am finding discipline in my body and mind. I have time and energy for what I want to do. Only that. The buzz of the election in five days, the racing anxiety spinning all over the globe, the crush of money worries… For now, quiet and settled in my life.
It won’t last. It can’t. It might.
I began bursting more regularly in Nov/Dec of last year. I always rise up around my Nov. 27th birthday. I am rising again now. And the happiness bliss, the fog of joy, have been sanding down the sharp edges since the beginning of the summer. Even as I was breaking up with my girlfriend, I was ecstatic. Unlocked. Uncorked. Driven toward a dream of something else.
I aim for somewhere else all the time. The ocean, waves, and bad TexMex in Corpus Christi. A road trip with a fantasy girl with blonde memories that I want to run my fingers through. I want. I long. I hunger. I am aching to be on the move, in love, on the road, blowing and going.
I am blowing. Here. This page. Wrapping my head around life at sixty. Balancing exercise with the aching results of competitive tennis. Praying for serenity and wisdom at all times. Here’s the kicker, “The wisdom to know the difference.”
I know this woman isn’t my dream girl. I know my first-grade imagination is relighting fires of my own creation. How could she possibly respond and join my team without rerouting time, energy, and obligation?
Maybe that’s her pause as well. What do we want? What’s the obligation? What’s the restlessness? What ideas are we pinning on each other? How do you find, land, and keep LOVE? The BIG LOVE. The ONE LOVE. The mythical ONE.
I’m aching to find out. I’m also smoothly blowing along on my life’s work. Expell and breathe out joy. Joy for me first. Joy that makes God laugh. Joy that brings my kids closer to me. Joy that confirms my good fortune, my expressive energies. Joy that gives more joy back. A self-contained joy that does not need fame, a hot woman, or tons of money. A joy that is close to *OM* and *YES* and *AH* and… on and on.
All this, yes, and I’m moving around my house this morning, toting my phone in case she responds with a yes or a no. A cat is cuddled on my foot. Easier to write that way. When they are on my chest I have to peer around them to see what I’m writing. And Sid likes to type or tap the screen where the pixels are hoppin.
Amen.
