In the business of living

 The other night as i sat on my deck and watched a herd of bunnies graze in my backyard...  i watched the breeze stirring the leaves on the trees and the greyish clouds of dusk roll merrily along, all of it unconcerned with the follies of humanity... listening to my uncle's weakening voice and talking about his life. He talked about the things he had seen and done and how as he approached the end he stated that it was a good life though some of it could have been better. It was a telling statement about what we've been set up to expect from our little spin in human form through the cosmos. To put it bluntly... modern life is rubbish. The captains of industry want us to don our hamster suits and jump happily on the wheel were we will run at full speed while never going anywhere, exhausting ourselves for their benefit while they convince us we need a plethora of useless shit, they dangle this carrot known as "retirement" or the "golden years" and my response to such non-sense is a hearty, fuck off! Of course for a good many of us even those things are never going to happen, we may be never fully escape our hamster suit but we can try...

In terms of modern American society i am and hopefully always will be an unabashed failure. Dubbed a college educated slacker because i never understood why i needed to join the shit show... the recurring theme of being a strange man in a strange land. Years ago there was an incident at the Big World Bank Machine. My supervisor had been canned (long story) rather unfairly but suddenly there was an opportunity to become one of those upwardly mobile achievers. I applied and of course got the courtesy interview where i was treated like a fucking clown who the bosses thought didn't understand that he was wearing a curly and bright orange wig, red ball nose, and outrageously large shoes... i did know... because i was the only one in the meeting wearing a uniform, one supplied by the BWBM so that i could be easily identified as one of the lumpen-prole. Needless to say in the course of said interview i embarrassed my boss because by this time i knew damn well the interview was bullshit, that i had no chance, i could tell by how little they paid attention (both big boss and her minion were on their phones multiple times during the dog and pony show) and when i snuck in an answer that was utter bullshit i almost laughed out loud as i watched her write it down before she realized i was taking the piss. Fast forward a year or so and the BWBM decided to create a suckers gig (something that will get it's own post someday), i didn't even bother to apply. Apparently the brain trust had already made the name plate for my new cubicle with the "real" people and my new supervisor was dumbfounded when he saw that my name wasn't on the list of final interviews. When he asked why i didn't apply because like most things at the BWBM, the fix was in, i laughed and said, i'm cool doing what i do... and besides that's a sucker's gig, a way to insulate the bosses from getting shitcanned should another colossal fuck-up occur. I'm not sure anyone understood my thinking... then again i didn't care. 

In the past few years it seems i've gotten to talk a lot to people who know their time left is running out. No one escapes that...  and when i juxtapose talking to my dad or uncle and watching my sons just start out it brings mortality into sharp foucs... seeing some other people i know face the void and seeing the panic and anger that ensues makes me glad that i come from a long line of stoics who all have a healthy dose of gallows humor. My uncle was laughing about the Celebration of Life party that was being thrown for him the next day or what he called D's Death Party, we laughed together and he said it was cool though, his friends wanted to say goodbye, his voice is telling as it gets weaker each time i talk to him. 

The same night the I-mac pulled me aside and quietly asked if he had anything going on the next night. I told him no and asked why and he stated he might be going to the movies... but he added, could i not tell his mother. I gave him a raised eyebrow and said sure, can i ask why? he smiled and said he was going with a girl... his official first date, i said no worries boy but you should probably tell your mom at some point and he said he would he just didn't want her making a big deal out of it and he knew i would be cool. Sometimes kids don't know how good they make their parents feel... the boyos relationship with their old man is markedly different from the one they have with the BW, to put it bluntly we handle things very differently.   

And so the next night i played chauffeur, shuffling the boyo and date to the movies, picking them up and taking them up to Bev Road and a strip of businesses and a school where they apparently hung out on the swings, hit the ice cream shop... on the ride to the movies the conversation was idle chit chat, i could sense the nerves from both of them... by time i picked them up the first time i could see how things had loosened up and when i pulled up the second time to drive them home i watched them as they sat on the steps of an elementary school talking and laughing and smiling at each other. The kid is about to enter a whole new world, the night before his 15the birthday, the same night fifteen years ago where i partied like a rock star and was fucking exhausted and hungover the day he was born. I've told him the story (some of it anyway, documented on the lounge somewhere) and he gets a big laugh out of it. In the car i sat and listened as they talked. The I-mac is both a little shy yet confident and now he was comfortable, making her laugh and talking away... it was cool his old man got to witness a bit of it. 

Ah life... what a fuckin' trip... watching the boyos grow up may have driven home my own mortality but i wouldn't have it any other way, i mentioned to someone i was on the downside of my journey through this life the other day, i don't think much about the end other that i know it's there and it's coming... nothing i can do about that is there? nothing any of us can do other than to enjoy the ride... get up and live... fuck the hamster wheel or stay off it for as much as humanly possible and remember this existence is not about all the shit we can accumulate but of the stories we tell, about the people we love, it's about creating something other than products or content (as i sit here creating "content" so to speak)... the Breadwinner, who i was speaking to about my own demise, didn't want to talk about it... shocking i know, she didn't want to think about it or discuss it... which yes is par for the course of any topic i bring up but i could tell this one bothered her more... or maybe it was just me... either way i won't sugarcoat things for the boyos... i want them to understand and enjoy this ride just like their old man has... they'll have some books to read and records to spin... all (with any luck) little stories tucked inside them as to why their father loved this particular piece of art, they'll have a selection of their father's ramblings and hopefully they'll have their own stories to tell... about their life and their crazy father who may have been that unabashed failure in the conventional sense but was a smashing success when it came to living...