Looking to Get Off

The SHOUT OUT was a success.

It started out kinda hinky, with a rock band blasting from the theater section of the bar. They were practicing for an upcoming show. I looked at my cellphone (watch), noticing that they had five minutes left before 4:00. So...what the fuck. Don't get in their hair, right? So I didn't, and true to form when I walked in at 4:00, they were folding up their show.

Our Feature, Richard Lung brought in a substantial crowd, and wow did he put on a reading. He blew the socks off of everyone in the audience. I watched him mesmerized, largely because I was stoned out of my head. My brain kept floating about in a primordial bliss as I stared my mind pressed against the ceiling, down at Richard Lung and his animate reading.

Later, I pulled the string, tied to my leg down, lowering myself into myself and packed up the show and off we went, the four of us, D2theL, OBISIDIAN, T-Fuk (prounounced T-Fook) and myself. Along with Richard Lung, Dennis Tiger, and Ice Cowboy. We headed West, staggering from the hits and talking. As we went south we dispersed, even to the point where my brother and I split up. I went on to the Starbucks by myself. The minute I walked into the door one of the countergirls called out: "Hey Hobobob!"

I wave. I take two tables, laying my shit across both and then return to the countergirl, who I will now call Short Stuff. I order up a Grande Regular. She returns with two Vente Regulars. For those who don't know, a Vente cup is a third larger than a Grande cup. When I frown, she shoos me off. I take the drinks back to the two tables, rest one on one table for OBSIDIAN and I cop a squat at the other.

OBSIDIAN soon arrives, and takes his cup and table after thanking Short Stuff.

In my punched in the head state, I begin to ponder things. Ponder about my future and what's in store. I can't help but feel that I'm not doing anything. I'm not actively participating in my life, but I am instead 'going with the flow', as if something is drawing me in a certain direction. I wonder if others are living life in the same way, as if compelled, not actively making decisions, but having them made for us. We are only going through the motions of being active.

I feel the same way, on a treadmill that is purpose- less. It's not actually designed to help me, it cares nothing of my wants and needs. It just absorbs my time, and has me churn air for hours on end. It absorbs my limited capacity for life. I'll see very little of this world if I allow it to live my life for me. But the question is, and I know you have thought of this too, how to get off??

How do you get out of this? And then, I knew. I was blown out. A catastrophe of enormous proportions was visited upon my person, and I was expelled into the streets. I was sent into oblivion...and I did not die like I was supposed to. When I tell people that I wasn't ALWAYS a hobo, they are surprised. They believe, wrongly of course, that I was born a hobo, lived a hobo, and will die a hobo. This is the limit of my reach. That I am all that I appear to be.

But that's not how I feel about it. That's not what I feel now. I feel superhuman inside now. I feel that nothing, no matter the loss, can get me down. Sometimes, to slap reality into my face I think about all that I've lost in this life. Personal things, heirlooms, photos, clothes, decent furniture, books, many things, incinerated or auctioned off, and I feel deeply saddened. I have lost everything in my life, which some people would probably rightly feel, they could not handle. But you can. My hobo-ness was just a transition from one way of living to another. It was a reboot of my life, from one to an entirely different one. I am now sincerely happy. I know what many of you might be thinking. You bitch so much Hobobob, you sound as if you'll commit suicide every post that I read.

Naaah, I bitch and moan, because that's what I do. I am sincerely happy after my weekend. I had a break, not just from the Roach Motel, but from life. I feel whole now. Like I said, superhuman. I am happy now. Now I have a quandary.

Hot to get off this fucking treadmill, and take control of my life once more.

It's a quandary.

Hobobob