To Resume, or Not to Resume…

23Jul07

I am staring down the barrel of a gun poised to shoot me back to where I was a few months ago.  To rewind the tape and hit record again is its only threat.  I would like to repeat: I will not die, if and once the trigger is pulled, I will simply resume. 

Resuming is what I seem to do, for I have been hit by this bullet before.  Only minutes ago I unpacked my one set of clothes from my backpack onto my bed and took up residence at my roommate’s computer terminal in one corner of our apartment where a dining room might otherwise live.  This is an action I’ve performed many times.  A week ago about this time I resumed city living after a long weekend among the largest trees in the world, eating a large supply of nuts and fruit and drinking stream water that I, not some city agency, had filtered.  Last monday brought the resumption of the arbitrary though standard work week, and I hopped back into position as its lowest cog each day until they said it would be socially acceptable to leave.  But what’s so wrong with routine, right?

During my truck ride hours ago in the central Californian heat, windows down and heater on full-blast to cool my engine, I resolved not to resume.  To myself I began a short list of improvements set to commence in the coming weeks and months.  Among them were the renunciation of all smoking and alcohol and swearing and an implamentation of my languishing fitness regimine.  I would also order my haphazard finances, even picking up extra work if I must to solidify my fiscal position.  Suggestions of this kind I often make to myself in the torpor of my own skull.  I do so, not only to regain the inches around my waist and arms that atrophy due to underuse and malnourishment or the girth of my depleted wallet, but to in some way raise my own existence.  To exist more!  As encouragement to myself I posted a warm motto as a welcome message on my cell phone, so that as I beckon my phone to resume its post, it would remind me to do the same.  The motto is this: (wait for it…I am turing off my cell right now to quote it verbatum…here it comes…”Cingular”, sorry…it should be up any, ah!

“BE ALIVE” 

That’s it!  This small piece of homely plastic urges me to do something that it has no ability to do.  Or rather, my previous self urges me to do something that it cannot do anymore than this reminding device can.  I will visit more poetry festivals and jazz clubs in order that I might fulfill its demand.  I will listen to undiscovered talent I have missed out on daily, the ones in comedy clubs and blues bars.  Even the opera, nobody goes there anymore.  I will know the scene’s insides, will predict this city’s heartbeat.  I will watch only the finest foriegn films and eat on pennies a day in order that I might afford this new upbuilding regimen.  Another improvement suggestion I supply my consciousness with is to help somebody.  Vague, I know.  Soup kitchens and big brother type programs are the only such places I know to start, but start I just may, this time.  Finally, grad school and writing jump into frame for places I might put my time instead of the perhaps overused options of drinking something or smoking something and talking to someone about something.  These just may be the foothold I’ve been lacking to boost once more higher.

And boost I did, boost I did, I tell myself.  Once, there was boosting aplenty.  In every drawer, inside other peoples’ skulls, and between the covers of every book hid potential boostingness, the boostingness necessary to gobble up my lethargy and spur me on to this existingness I’d read about.  So, in this spirit I will away, good citizens and see if I may dodge a bullet today! 

Filed under: Hopes   |  2 Comments