random thoughts and thoroughbred selections

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

1117PM

Way past my bed time, but I don't give a shit. I'm typing slow, the SoCo and Vermouth is seeing to that. I actually took a thermos mug and filled it with Manhattan tastiness before sitting down for this tourney of ours tonight, and have since refilled the rocks glass twice. Twice. These are easily doubles, mind you. I'm at half speed for typing, I'm glossing over, and it's all okay.

The Doc (and not "The Doc") is going to send me an email on this one, which is okay. Aside from Bob, she's known me longer than any of y'all, so it's okay. But finding the little bits of joy in my week are usually few and far between. I don't handle things at all - well or otherwise. I live a really solitary existence, and that's not a horrible thing - it really is more an "is what it is" sort of situation, but the excuses for the self-confinement are growing thin.

As are the ones for the self-flagellation. I'm really terribly uncool, and I'm really quite cool with all that, but this is a different thing altogether. In college, "uncool" means your jazz fetish loops you in with a Coltrane group that masturbates on Ole and finds reasons to prop various bootleg versions of "Greensleeves" above the studio of the Love Supreme suite, however motherfucking stupid that really is.

I don't really have any of those friends anymore. At least not accessible. Dan and i used to muse long on the virtues of Jethro Tull, and I'll still fight you to the death that Stand Up is easily one of the fifteen best discs to come out of the British Invasion, especially if you're wanting to pull that Dave Clark Five bullshit out of your ass. We could talk Miles, he actually turned me on to Miles, which musically was the most profound impact on my tastes I've had in my thirty some-odd years. I dig serious, I dig complex, I dig funky, I dig improvisational, I dig skilled, I dig sensical, I dig a logical progression, a growth, a path blazed from Birth of the Cool through Pangea and everything in between. I find the little moments like when Tony switches to sticks for about four measures after laying off on brushes for fifteen, twenty minutes on Filles De Kilimanjaro. I like the rondo form in Silent Way, the one time in "Right Off" where Henderson doesn't finish the bassline like he had a few dozen times in a row to set the groove previously. I like how there's a backstory to Monk laying out on "Bags' Groove," and how the young bucks in the 1964 Lincoln Center concert weren't told until gametime they weren't getting paid and paid Miles back for it, opening doors in the music he didn't know where there before.

One of those seminal sorts of things, one of those moments in life where no one's looking at you funny when something new is happening because the tension in the air is telling you something should be happening, whatever "happening" means in that moment in that context. Creativity is one thing, creativity in context is explanatory and illuminating and understanding and beautiful for what it carries with it.

It's loaded. Every goddamn thing is loaded, and that's where I manage to slip and fall and tumble down when confronted with reality nowadays. Everything is loaded. There's a "supposed to be" attached around every corner, and the road map is impenetrable, totally illegible, and there's no way to discern what's supposed to drive your mentality and progression between consecutive successes, it's just a simple succession of pitfall laden ruddy roads, and good luck trying to drive full speed.

Which means I'm careful, cautious. Way too much so. I'm past the point of thinking about life anymore, it's just auto-pilot from here, just like it's been for far too fucking long at this point. Why do you think I gamble? I'm so full of the certainty of conservative decisions that I need that action. It's not the money, it's the anticipation of knowing that in two and a half hours Utah is going to walk off the field against TCU either covering the three or not, and there isn't anything I've done today that is going to change that outcome. It's knowing that when I'm done with over two hundred hands of limit poker, assuming I haven't surfaced my self-destructive streak, I'm just at the mercy of chance, playing as perfectly as I know how - which isn't really all that perfectly anyway, to tell you the truth - at the whim of action, chance, and the roll of the dice.

I do the same shit every day. I avoid confrontation, avoid putting myself in positions where I'm going to throw variance to the wind. Would it surprise you to know that I took a leak in four different bathrooms today at work? No? How about why? I didn't want to be noticed, I wanted to just coast in and out in the forty-five seconds of business I had there without having to make eye contact, smile, offer small talk, whatever.

Is that fucked up? Probably. So where do I break out of all this bullshit? Gambling, for one. I already mentioned that, but I'm also in debt to y'all - my friends who organize tournaments like tonight's, who open a chat room, who keep me entertained for hours on end. You're throwing that little bit of variance into the mix I need for sanity's sake.

And yeah, I know I should volunteer at a soup kitchen or take my dog for therapy dog training or anything to help me get lai... I mean meet people, but I took a walk today down to the store and I was fucking winded. A poker tournament, chatting with my friends, and a little variance to the wind are enough for a Tuesday night. Thanks again guys. And girls, for that matter.

[>>]posted at 11:45 PM by BG - click to email
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