"It Was Over 9,000!!!" in My New Life

Yesterday (or the overnight equivalent) was fantastic! I was placed in another Ward I sometimes work in. My superiors have done a really good job at placing me in another Ward when the lady who bothers me is working on mine. This is another Zen, Buddhist, or Yogic tactic (?) I have learned in the workplace: The Art of War by Sun Tzu. The Art is to avoid war. The Art is to avoid conflict unless otherwise forced into it. The entire book, thereafter, is what to do if one is forced into war. My avoidance of her jeers, prods, and pokes finally built-up in her frustration, and she snapped over something ridiculous that really wasn’t her place to instill, threatened to write me up, and I came back with my offensive defense. It caught her off guard, because she was so used to my just avoiding her, but this time I was backed into a corner, and stretched to the max before an exam. As she was attempting to write me up I abruptly told her to include all the snotty, nasty remarks she had been making in my direction every shift for the last few months, and that I would include those in my counter remarks, and maybe even report some grey area Patient Abuse she so thoughtlessly dulls out to the mentally feeble to feel powerful. Needless to say, her Write-Up went into the nowhere box, right next to the shredder, because obviously, anyone who had worked with her for years knows her character. They need workers. Period. So, now they just assign us different Wards, and it’s all worked-out.

So, yesterday, (I’m finishing this entry a day later), I woke up feeling like myself. I journaled in my physical notebook journal, tied up loose ends, listened to The Grateful Dead, and sang loudly in the shower. The Dead have a great vibe to blow depression out. I had forgotten a few of their songs I used to play, and sing. Plus, it takes me back to so many of my glory days with good friends. Rediscovering my guitar-singer/songwriter life is sort of like finding a person I forgot even existed. I used to play often. In those Dead years, I was always playing. I was playing with anyone, and everyone. It’s like a layer over top of my yoga/writer/chef life I forget about being so preoccupied these days. When I had the time, and peace of mind to play, I was getting exceptionally good. I think my top was when I was learning Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven as far as fingerpicking goes. It’s almost surreal to hear music I used to play, and be able to say, Wow! That looks really difficult. But, when you are in it, it’s second nature. The last few years I have been more interested in my piano life. Before shit became chaotic in the Fall of ‘22 I was teaching myself to read Chopin’s Nocturnes. I can read music to sing it, but site reading piano sheet music is a different story. Especially, since I know enough to be dangerous when it comes to theory, and form. I was classically trained at the best school of music in the state so I am aware of bad habits that a classical music teacher would feign at (I only took Piano I later on in college, though. I really just picked up what my friends were learning in class). My best friends tended to be music majors who would collaborate on what I played, and wrote. It was sort of a music department joke that my best friend was Salieri, and I was Mozart, because he would practice, and play professionally after hours of painstaking music lessons, yet never could land anything serious with the girls he was in love with while I was in the practice rooms next to him breaking all the rules, getting laid, sleeping in the girl’s dormitory, and sneaking past the RAs hungover on my way to class.

Good memories. I’m pretty happy in my yoga/school/work-life, and working on essays; writing. I re-read James Joyce’s The Dead a few days ago. It is sort of my Christmas go-to story when The Catcher in the Rye is not. Upon every read I get a new interpretation of the text. This time I realized her final remembrance was a short story she was writing to, and about Gabriel. I had formerly believed Michael Furry was a real boy in her past, and she was slighting Gabriel’s coldness to make him feel inadequate to Michael’s passion for her, but now I believe it was sort of writer’s foreplay. Michael was the young Gabriel she was attempting to stir in him in a way only a writer could understand: through a story she wrote for him. I can relate, because I can see how passionate I was as a young lover, and musician. However, the pillar-like sturdiness of my life now is so much more comfortable, and reliable than the passionate boy I was then. I look back at what I put my lover through in college with shame sometimes. I was jobless, and got us our drinks at parties with my reputation. She would get her’s with her charms, and looks. I remember just taking off to her parents house every weekend we could; she missed them so much, and I wouldn’t think twice about homework I may have needed to be studying, and we rode, and sang away from all our friends, and problems. Or, taking her out of state for her first time up snowboarding at the slopes I used to teach at. And then I remember how much fun, and excitement I gave her being the carefree irresponsible boy I was, - madly in love, passionately living, and never caring about the worries of tomorrow. Love makes a fool out of us all. People kill for it. People die for it. People drive motorcycles insanely too fast for it. People drive-up the mountainside to check out cliffs for it, and in my case, - I had a small dose of all those symptoms throwing rocks at her dormitory window with my guitar in hand as she was leaving me. We sort of kill ourselves when we marry, and grow-up. There is a grave sight out there on our campus with that boy I was then, - his name inscribed on’t where it sometimes rains down snow on the living, and on the dead. In my nightmares I wake with visions of that boy’s ghost wandering the cobblestoned campus at night playing his guitar to the stars when he’s done studying in that room far above the trees in the English building; gazing over the summit into the wild.

Epilogue

Ah, but alas: the writer’s conundrum. I torture myself with the darkest literature in honuor of my beloved English advisor, and teacher. It was a small school, and so I would mow her lawn for an extra $50 to help with expenses. I have seen the inside of her home where she would study Ulysses near a piano. I was attacked by yellow-jackets outside her window sill. I would have married her if I were not so much in love with my lover. I am still passionately in love with my life. Yoga, and a positive outlook has kept that spark alive in me. I am not Gabriel yet. And maybe I never will be. Maybe I am forever Michael Furry putting on Gabriel’s mask during those times when one is expected to act like a rigid, passionless “adult”.

After all, We had three amazing years together, and we were just growing in different directions; thank god, the adult in me now, I didn’t have then, can look back over the years, and see. But, try convincing Michael of that. I don’t. believe many could have.

Yesterday, later, I finally got myself to the sauna, and Hot Yoga studio, and felt amazing until I was faced with another Narcissist coworker this morning. His life is going downhill, and mine is going up. He may retire at 83 years old if he sticks to this job. He spent his years up into his 40s drinking, and chasing women like a stud, and playa-play never thinking about growing old. I sort of get the scene from The Count of Monte Cristo where Peppino of Luigi Vampa’s gang was pardoned by the Count before the execution (a scene only in the novel), and the other prisoners were angry Peppino was not going to suffer the same ends as they were. Race of Crocodiles! The Count exclaimed. I am a bit to blame where most people would say something consoling to him, and the predicament he put himself into, but I sort of enjoy seeing him suffer after he annoys me with his “I’m still top dawg here” rants he rudely begins my days with.

Love Always,
Charlie

Last updated December 11, 2023