Validating the Maddening Storm

There is a soft knock on my door.

I'm at my computer, writing, building up my fragile writing muscles again. I glance at the clock. It's close to 2:30am. The knock continues. I ponder. I wonder if I'm actually hearing the knocks. If it is a real person on the other side, wouldn't they get the message by now that this door will not open, that they have never been inside this apartment, that they do not know the occupant? How can they? We've never met. It's like calling someone and the phone rings over and over again, many times. When do you get the message and stop trying that number? Your intelligence dictates the number of times. The definition of Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over, and expecting a different outcome. Well, that doesn't say all that much. The people in my building are mentally challenged as am I. Maybe I'm the one that just doesn't understand my environment.

Around 6:00am, my computer turns itself off, erasing tons of my work. I am both mad and frustrated. So much work lost in the blink of an eye. Rage filled my limbs, and I wanted to reach down, grab that laptop and smash it against the wall, sending pieces flying. But this was my baby from the second I got her. It would be like smashing a real baby against he wall just because she pissed herself. It was time for a timeout. I went to my refrigerator and pulled out some fresh vegetables, broccoli, onions, green bell peppers, and began cutting them up, and dicing them into teenie tiny pieces. This effort was so exhausting that it worked as a perfect release valve for my anger and frustration. Since the task was so mundane, I was even afforded the luxury to allow my mind to drift.

Good thing for me. Here, let me explain. Some weeks ago, July told me about a friend of hers, Shelly who has a great idea for a play. Different acts, vignettes of disastrous online dating stories. I found this to be intriguing because when my ex-wife left me I found myself alone without much opportunity to date women. So I went online to a dating site, that had a two-fold agenda. One side of membership was basically what you would find at any dating site, which is you build a profile and then scan a database or follow their recommendations of other profiles. The second, and somewhat interesting agenda for this website was that they held many single events at very interesting restaurants and nightclubs around New York city. Wow, this was interesting.

Well, to make a long story short, I asked Shelly if I could offer one of my experiences in screenplay format for her project. She agreed and off I went to work. My first play on this topic was what I thought was somewhat funny and enlightening, but honestly, I think now that it was more introspective and worked as a catharsis. It touched briefly on a subject that is very hard for me to think about. 911 and how it affected my life. A subject that I really can't talk about, but by briefly mentioning it in this play, in fact by simply steering it in this direction to begin with, I was, subconsciously trying to say something else. I was attempting to commune with a very black core inside of me. Needless to say, I felt that I may have failed Shelly in writing what SHE needed and wanted.

I asked her for another chance, and this time, I knew exactly the experience that I wanted to relate. So I started the new play, which went off with a bang, but halfway through it I hit a wall - writer's block. I didn't really know where I wanted to go with it. It has been a quandary that I've been wrestling with for over a week now. So when chopping and dicing vegetables, I let my mind wander over and over on this blockage, trying every single parallel reality to move the play on. For my efforts I got a glimmer, a very brief glimpse of what I wanted to do. It was nearing 9:00am. Fuck writing, it's time to feed the mind. I got dressed, and left the room, hitting the streets. I wanted to see a movie, and if I got to catch the first ones, the matinee, I could see the movie for $6.00. This is indeed what I call incentive.

I walked down to 60- something street to the theater, about thirty blocks down Broadway and got to the theater just before the movie began at 10:15. The movie? Prince of Persia: The sands of time. I knew of the video game, and when I was deep into Playstation when I had a life and home. I thought of picking up a copy of the game, but I ended up falling in love with another game that I could not put down. So, I was intrigued as to what this was about. It was a good Jerry Bruckheimer movie. You can count on old Jerry to throw in a lot of hellbent action and breathtaking scenes of fucking disaster that you can never view in real life. You have to CGI it just to make it look as fantastic as it does. Also, you might be surprised, that there IS a storyline to the movie that is interesting. In other words, I liked it.

On heading back home, I went vegetable shopping and called it a day. I slept for two hours, and woke only to watch a little television, and then get online, puttering around until the sun came up. I had a 9:00am appointment at WECARE so, I showered, got dressed and headed downtown to the 51st street complex and sat and waited and read my book. This was interesting. First, I was called in to talk to a drug and alcohol abuse counselor that looked over the data collected on me so far, and then asked further questions, and finally sat back and looked at me. "Hobobob," she says, "You do not fall under the definition of someone who has an alcohol dependence to HRA. I'm not going to exempt you from work." I nod. Cool.

After waiting in the waiting room again, and nearly finishing my book, I am called in to meet the Psychiatrist. An elderly man, who grilled me with questions. He looked over the head meds I'm on, and finally sits back and says to me: "Hobobob, social anxiety is a big one. You have to take care of that. Okay?" I'm doing what I can, doc. He pats me on the shoulder and leads me out to the reception desk. The receptionist goes over my paperwork briefly and tells me I can go home. That's great. I head home, pick up my prescriptions and sit down in front of my computer, grousing over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

I've seen the Gulf of Mexico with my own eyes. I thought it was an ocean, and always had to be corrected that it was a Gulf. Now I don't know about you, but what's the difference between a Gulf and an ocean? It's just a large body of water to me. But let my blatant ignorance not show. I loved the beaches of the gulf, and the thought of them being ruined by tarballs washed up from the Gulf makes my heart sad. I just read in the New York Times, that there might be criminal prosecutions for the spill. There a numerous laws protecting the waters, beaches and wildlife, and the President made it known that he is starting the process of evaluating if BP's accident was indeed an accident, and if they can press criminal charges. I personally think that this is the wrong way to go. There is such limited knowledge of the engineering technology, who or how is anyone to prove that this is anything but an accident?

We only have BP, Halliburton and a group of other engineering and con- struction companies to try to blame. This will not work in my estimation. I think, what will work, is charging these companies for the damage that this oil cloud does to the ocean, beaches, wildlife, and businesses that depend on thousands of people to go running to the beaches in the middle of summer. If a business goes out of business, they should be allowed to sue these companies to recoup the income that they have lost because of this slick. The president should employ, right now, before it's too late, cleanup crews to work on the beaches and wildlife preserves to clean and protect them, allowing them to write out an open invoice, and let the Federal government sue these companies for the cost, and so on and so on. This places pressure on these companies to close this leak before they are literally sued out of business because of the continued damage done.

Ahhhh, shit. I live in Manhattan. What the fuck am I worried about something that by my weak standards, is a million miles away from me. I dunno, but this shit bothers me. Bothers me a lot. I have fond memories of the Gulf.

But I should really think about my life now. I am a beach covered with tar.

Hobobob