Is setting the master of the scene? Or are the character granted some inconsolable control? Is it the refracted light absorbed or the echoes from elsewhere vibrating meaning within the cranial prison of self? Or, is it all the amalgamated sensation surmised upon the dawn and dusk of each day? Each year? Of every life?

All the while, the barroom radio plays the pop-rock hymn always sold short of how the ghostly bard used to bellow, with power and melancholy alike? Am I lacking in depth? Is it alone we stand, and together we fall apart? As the glass sweats its way to empty. The void, consuming, eventually and appearing mostly eternal?

So, he thinks, of foreign found now familiar, and the inverse, as versatile as the former. And, as he listens obscurely, to the barmaid as she attempts to recall the name of an otherwise unknown patron. While he, this ever humbled narrator, scratches out some symbols with the hope, as always, that meaning might be made from any of this. So, if created purpose cannot be procured, perhaps enough theft might abide substance for whatever time could still be got for being.

A more or less spur of the moment decision brings these thoughts from their usual dwelling. Might be the use of some muse otherwise occupied. Or the occupation of space that resounds different from the din of the regular domicile. And what might be wrought, we are all here to discover.

Comical, a bit, isn’t it? How the lack of normalized distraction creates the opportunity a nearly new brand of absent mindedness. And this glorious quest for something grants all the space for nothing much to say. Yet, still- the obligation remains.

Wonder invokes the thought of futility fading the sense of drive that drowns this mindset, week after week, after weak. Yet, every now and then and again, it comes to my attention that these words reach spaces I might not otherwise have conceived. The simplicity of yesteryear may have made this seem more succinct when a particular audience might have been in mind. That is, after all, how all of this started. A forlorn and one way correspondence, derived upon a dismayed attempt at romance destined now to be what a younger self always feared it might be. Lost.

As the fever never had to fight as fiercely in the folly of youth as it does in the present. These days, each day feeling that there is so much that might lose. Or, what might be lost to others upon the account of my own inaction or misstep.

Still, the shell of a fellow we would be dealing with if obligation were the only motivation left to move this weary storyteller forward. Inspiration could never be got from such a begotten, insipid soul, anyhow.

Perhaps, I’ll people watch a bit, since they are currently available for consumption. Or ask someone else what they might have witnessed in observations of their own. Could be that I could even realize that I above all else, might be the spectacle sitting solitary in this saloon with pen and pad abound.

Looking around at the cheap dates and business liaisons, along with the explanations to strangers and the misunderstanding of those supposedly understood. And in midst it all, they reach regular for their digital tethers, feeding vice or doom or distraction. I had left my problem box in the automobile. Outside the menus, I might be in possession of the only wood pulp page in the place.

So anyways- I asked the lovely barkeep about what she’s been up to, with it having been a minute, and I think we can consider ourselves friends by this point. Abd so, she tells me, she says, there’s a business that she’s been brewing, an attempt at creation. And as she speaks of it, I see a smile most genuine grow across her face. And as so often happens, a sympathetic smirk starts to crawl across the front of my own skull. For out of a mix of opportunity, curiosity, and a benevolent sense of boredom- she has begun an experiment for herself. And this, my friends, is a good thing.

Because, as you very well may have noticed in your own observations of self and surroundings- it seems that so much of this post-post-modern age appears to sap so much of our passion for some antagonistic profit. And while most are not against the average folk earning a buck, the costs and calculated margins seem to have lost equilibrium- especially in matters of that oh, so important, yet, ever inexplicable soul economy. It need not be grandiose to be something grand, And it need not be malicious in order for it to be magnificent.

That very well could be the quest of our age. The crusade of humanity in the current. To instill and invoke the collective soul back to the natural renaissance of passion. That internal intimacy shared outward, even in isolation, that inspires beyond the contrives incontinence of consciousness, so broadly prescribed. And while so much of that motivation derives from withing, it is outward where the true momentum gains monumentally.

It could be what these rambles have been lacking, and allowed them to grow so mundane and medically meta methodical.

And while he writes, the bar mutters out loud, though under breath, and together, the lyrics to some anthem of yesteryear. So, suddenly, I am reminded of many such moments where the same tune was sung, screamed and shouted by the inebriated selected kin and found family of days past. For that is us, I would argue, at our purest essence- we simple shaved apes. And it is how any of the chaos of this existence even begins to resemble any kind of sense.

And all this is likely part of the lost that I’ve been feeling lately. Drowning the echo chamber of my own creation. Too much selected isolation amid that which is already known I must circumstantially endure. That, and a leaning preference to ghosts that I already know aren’t going anywhere, even if they are already gone in this life living affair. I suppose, this is all part of that long term grief ordeal. Less tears, maybe, or at least less frequent- but the void ventures forward in new and inventive ways.

Looking up, I see not god, just dust on the filament while electricity still flows through it.

As always, as has always been and likely will be- this evening’s answers serve at minimum as prelude to the inquiries of tomorrow.

     But the truth is, if there even is such a curse, is always this- that this life is a dynamic beast. Ever evolving, regressing or eluding- but changing, even in the slightest of ways. Static stances are for the dead, or the ilk that might as well be, which I have no interest in joining. Not now, or for a while. If ever, really.

     Sometimes, it would seem, that a brief and beautiful smile of acknowledgement while engaging some near or far off passion is more than enough to perpetuate the will until tomorrow. And so, we can let all the rest be tomorrow’s tribulation. Fret not, dear reader- I’ll be right there with you. If you wish me to be.