Poetry & Blindfolds

 

I confess I was looking forward to 2010, if only so I could write a piece about how much I disliked 2009. Three weeks into the new year, I have had to euthanize my cat, say goodbye to one of my closest friends who is transplanting herself to California, and help another friend say goodbye to his mother, who passed away last week. I almost miss the soul-draining debacle of 2009.

 

Nowadays, I feel hollowed out like an old tree. In the elevator at work, I used to enjoy hearing the conversations of friends and colleagues on our way up or down. Now I hear not their words but my imagined intentions behind the words.

 

“I’m acknowledging I know you,” I hear one person say.

 

“I acknowledge I know you, too,” says another.

 

“I am asking how you are, with the least amount of interest,” says the first.

 

“I reply with the shortest answer possible,” comes the reply.

 

“Here’s a platitude,” says the first with a chuckle.

 

“I acknowledge I heard you, with a slight chuckle myself,” says the second. “Well…”

 

The doors open and one exits.

 

As an extension of this imagining, I also feel equally uninteresting and dormant. My regular 9-to-5 is increasingly brutal, with my duties becoming increasingly mundane and those I work with increasingly incompetent. Even a task of order 2 packs of legal pads comes with a tug-of-war.  “How about if I send you one and we’ll see how long that lasts?” my contact in Purchasing states.  I’m not sure if they have a shortage of paper, or they think I’m merely trying to horde legal pads, but I cannot for the life of me understand why any tug-of-war has to exist at all.

 

And I think of my colleague, who noted, ‘you’re quiet lately.’  When I respond that she, too, has been quiet, she says, ‘I’m busy.’

 

And I think of another colleague, with whom I had a good rapport.  I suggested grabbing coffee during the afternoon sometime; she said she didn’t drink coffee.  I suggested lunch.  She said, ‘maybe’, and never talked to me again.

 

And I think of a former colleague.  Lorraine and I were great friends back in the late 1990s and early 2000s; she did marketing and I made jokes.  We lunched often.  Talked deep about everything.  Advice and martinis.  After years, I ran into her recently.  “Lorraine!  OMGz!  How are you?”  She looked at me, screwed up her face, and said, “Wait a minute… …. … … Steve?”

 

And I think of theater.  My 5-to-9, if you will.  My fifteen years of producing, directing, writing and acting have seemed to earned zero dividends. I never have been able to gather a team, or at least a dedicated team – I know quite a few artists who are on numerous teams, which isn’t unlike a guy with ten wives. For me, I am just as much of a solo artist as I ever have been. I suppose I could be completely in it for myself, but that defeats the purpose of any theater work, at least for me.

And I think of a guy I worked with for years in theater.  We had a good relationship; he used to make me uneasy and I used to squirm.  It worked quite well - until I make a joke about him which, once related to him by someone else (in great high-school drama-club style), and he disappeared.

 

When I head out for lunch, I find myself disappointed and depressed as well.  After I order what I want, which I do because I know what I want, I am ambushed with a series of questions, asking what other product I want.  These dialogues, all ending with me saying ‘no’, have gone from surprising to amusing to irritating to unavoidable and trivial.  I sometimes speculate how more often I would go in __________ Restaurant if only I didn’t have to justify my choice in food.

 

And I think of the distraught woman and her son who accosted me while I was taking an infrequent cigarette break.  She just needed $8 to get her and her boy home.  I gave her $10.  And then watched her accost person after person, asking the same thing.

 

And I think of a friend of mine, who contacted me two weeks ago suggesting we have a beer.  Just what I needed, I remember thinking.  He just had to check with his missus to find a good day.  Never heard back.

 

And I think of the US.  Madness.  The conservatives constantly belittle the liberals, as if that was more important than anything else.  And the liberals fight back.  And these people are the leaders of the country.  Again, it’s gone from surprising to amusing to irritating to unavoidable.  And I find that very sad.

 

Even my personal attempts to expand and enrich haven’t met with much success. I recently found my 14-year-old niece on Facebook and sent her what I thought to be a kind note. I made the point of saying I had followed her progress for years and was happy there was someone else in the family who liked performing. She never responded, but her mother – my sister – did, shooting me with the same passive-aggressive tomfoolery that made no sense, the kind our father was known for (“curious you were not interested in her for the last 14 years” she wrote to me). I don’t get it.

 

It seems like life is winning a battle that I didn’t sign up for. It would almost be worth it if some incredible inspiration was borne from all of this. I reach out to my muse, who sends me a note:

 

“I acknowledge I know you, too.”