If I am a prism or funhouse mirror, there is a film over my shiny surface.

A “fil-uhm,” if you will.

Not a movie or flick.

Not a celluloid or cellulose substance.

The film is made of a bunch of threads that say “what if…?”.

Some days, making my own way, having no signposts I consider permanent guides down a path because I’m mentally trailblazing, I get caught in webs of “what if…?” threads.

The threads become reality and reality is lost in a filmy haze, a background to minor mental dramas a spider or muddauber wasp would not understand.

Learning more about how my central nervous system works would not help me today.

Whether the brain is an imaginary center of my universe or a switchboard without a soul doesn’t matter.

I’m dimly making myself take steps – away, from, to, fast, slow…

Escape or rescue?

I’ve been here before and I still don’t know the answer.

The solution is to make myself disappear, become wallpaper, build a barrier that hides whatever is left of the self from the rest of a species of selves.

I do not exist.

I am unimportant.

These states of energy make their own way, slowly, carefully, a journey, sooner or later, to death.

Leaving?

A blog that gives thanks to others who do exist: Crystal at Apollo Cafe, CeCe’s yogurt shop, Lowe Mill, Flying Monkey Theatre and its support crew, Christabel and the Jons, Helen Keller’s Ukelele, Fred Bread.

To see the world of beautiful young people having fun on the dance floor…

I am an old man, older than I try to deny.

To see my time has come and gone, no longer able to create illusions of youthful hope for my grownup future…sigh…

Well…”my troubles are few,” I can console myself with, “I have an extremely comfortable life in comparison to most others of my species, no survival challenges, no children to worry about or grandchildren to dote upon.  I have what I asked for, so be happy, dammit!”

The private self is in conflict with the public persona, that’s certain.

There are days when the simple act of socialising with others is uncomfortable because, as a person who tries to please everyone all the time, I can find no value in sharing my melancholy thoughts that sometimes border on depression and other less self-assuring attitudes.

To know I am not alone in this mood is even less assuring, due to imagining there’s got to be something about me that’s original even though I know nothing under the sun is completely new.

This mood shall pass.

I shall return to accepting the role I assigned myself a long time ago, making sure our species carves out resources for securing a place for us in the cosmos off this planet.

If that’s all I believe I’ve accomplished, I will not have lived as more than a weather vane that points wherever the winds of change are blowing.

I look across the room, briefly staring into the eyes of a singer who’s sung the same tunes many times, occasionally running into audiences that have no appreciation for the dance style that goes with the music she (or others) wrote but giving her best singing/acting performance every time, no matter what.

She looks back.

Normally, I would give her a look of reassurance.

But last night, I could not.

There was nothing inside me with which I could match/equal or exceed her place in the moment and into the next.

She’s living a real life, trying to earn enough money to go on to the next moment, traveling with her bandmates to strange or semifamiliar towns, seeking and giving honestly, not trying to steal money from LinkedIn through a botched IPO price fix, or selling a dream that the overpriced car in front of you will not only empty your bank account but also make you well-respected by other fools soon parted with their money, regardless of how they, too, acquired wealth from fools.

A look.

There’s no barter exchange in a look.

There’s just two people involved in external stimuli activating two central nervous systems.

Two sets of states of energy in a giant universe completely unaware of itself in any cognitive manner.

Is that too much to ask of me, to participate in that moment with another person, pushing aside a minor issue or two that pales in comparison to what that other person faces everyday?

I can’t wait until I get my mother in-law settled into wherever she and my wife will be happiest, taking into account as much as possible the feelings and wishes of a niece, a nephew and a sister in-law.

Then I can return to my imagination or even create a reality where looks become regular conversations, topics relatively unimportant in the moment, the future completely unknown.