Feckless Friday

These next two weeks have been published as vacation time since the middle of Spring. Perhaps longer. Why, then, am I in the office at six thirty on the Friday preceding?

I had a lot to finish so that my time off would not weigh on my conscience. I did not finish it. We spent the afternoon having a group quarterly racing indoor go-karts. There was beer. Now I'm here, surrounded by loose papers and cookie crumbs, doubting that it's worthwhile to do an hour's portion of a week's worth of work. I should just go. If they remember and smack me for it, so be it. I don't care.

See, that's the problem. I don't care. You might say I'm a rather feckless employee these days. It ain't fair that I still am an employee, with my attitude, but there it is. Between looming divorce, incomplete Burn prep, middle management rolling eyes at upper management politics, and the fact that in fifteen years I never really caught any excitement at working for this place, I just don't, you know, have the right attitude.

Maybe it's a tired on Friday thing. Burnt from endless late nights slowly making slow progress on shit that has nothing to do with the job, or writing, or being a good dad. Just my own personal gig re Burning Man.

Feh.

Not going to list all I still have to do for BMan. It's not important. Once I get there, for better or worse, I'll take a deep breath and cease caring. It will all be good once I get Home.

It has been asked why I go. I would love to answer that. I cannot give it the time now. I may never encapsulate an answer in a monograph, essay, or blog post. My hope though is that while there I will take copious notes (much better than taking pictures, albeit time consuming), and upon my return write a bunch of stories and vignettes that somehow, in their collection of experience, provide an answer.

I wrote a few after last year, but published few if any. Shall I now? I just found this, and I know I never shared it, so here.

How can a face I can barely recall and a body hidden in nondescript clothing stay in my mind for weeks afterwards? We met for all of two minutes and said almost nothing.

I waded through the crowd to make way for Sonya. She was the leader. All the other boys were left behind, hanging out in the street, waiting for her to get her one-minute dance fix at yet another random club. But this place was cool and she and I were the only ones in our group to discover it. A great domed roof splashed with projected psychedelic graphics, one funky-ass downbeat going on, and they were serving not booze but warm chai tea. Better yet, the crowd wasn’t packed wall to wall with frenetic twenty-two year olds but had a slightly older, slightly slower, and much groovier vibe. Some of the costumes were seriously righteous. And that downbeat had us all movin’.

I spread my arms dancing and made a space for Sonya in the press. She took it and danced in it, and made it her own, and now we owned a space on the floor. She was so beautiful -– one of the sweetest and most beautiful young ladies I have ever known. No, we were not together. She’s still in her twenties, for heaven’s sakes. We were in the same camp –- I was like an uncle, watching over her. Whether or not she needed watching over, her worthless boyfriend wasn’t doing it, not while he was outside pouting because she kept disappearing into dance clubs.

I saw you and her embrace and the look on your face, eyes closed over her shoulder, bliss on your lips, was precious beyond words. Sonya has a way with women: they all love her. You embraced and parted and now you were dancing with me, or perhaps we were both dancing with her, and you said you were Amy, and I said I was Don, and everyone around us had a calm energy flowing through and about them. I complimented the girl dancing near us like an Egyptian in her tall headdress and glittering belly-button stud, and she smiled but said nothing, and I turned back to you and I liked your strong features and your direct dark eyes and your brown curly hair. There was magic brewing, and then you pointed with both hands at the floor, finger rings flashing, and said,

“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

You were gone. I was ready to wait. But the bug in Sonya’s cute little ass acted up and it was time to go. I was too slow-witted to say go without me. I felt like the responsible one, even though I really needn’t have. I led her out into the night air and found her friends and we were a group again, continuing our long winding trek to the Opulent Temple. I had great winding conversations with Justin about faith and libertarianism while Sonya and Douche-bag made up yet again, and at the O.T. everyone disappeared into the frantic rave and I thought, well damn, screw this, and I came back to look for you.

By now I’d been gone an hour. I waded into the crowd but it was a recycled crowd and you weren’t in it. I spent the next two hours walking slowly by myself across the vastness of Black Rock City in the dark little hours, stopping at various places along the way for a drink or a few dance steps. But no magic was reawakened. A moment had come and it had gone.

In time I decided the magic was partly imagined, that you trusted me because I was with a beautiful woman, that I was preselected in a sense. Sometimes women have an instinct about a man, that if he is with a beautiful woman he is more desirable than if he is not. That makes a certain biological sense. But not enough to turn me into a cynic. I hope that wherever and whoever you are, you remember me just for that mysterious chemistry, and remain open against the night when magic happens again and we get another chance.

Today at the go-kart thing I connected not only with Bond Girl a little more, as well as a few other co-workers, but also with a lovely mask designer who has the most glittering smile and who's been at the periphery for a long time and whom I've had no occasion to meet. I am not and never will be the sort to just go talk to an attractive coworker out of the blue. But at a social event it's okay. We may be friends -- it was nice. So was talking to some others (male, because that's all else there is). I am discovering a nugget of happiness in my own amazement at the fearfully non-social comportment that characterized me for so many years. I am happy that I barely understand it. I will never completely forget, of course. People who are afraid, who sneak through life fearful of something they cannot define, are of concern to me, as if I either want to slap them out of it or gently help snap them out of it. I know they needn't be afraid, and yet I also know they are afraid and have no way to know they needn't be. It's a tough nut, and my heart both goes out to them and wants to be closed to them, because of course they represent, in a way, me.

Now to try and neaten my desk both literally and virtually, and head off into all the projects not quite finished or not quite even begun. May or may not write anything. Day after tomorrow we take our son to his new college home, while his girlfriend, who recently suffered some terrible things, has to stay behind. Wednesday morning some of us will caravan with trucks and trailers to the high desert where we will help build a city. Surely a parting picture on that wordless Wednesday won't be too much to ask, but we'll see.