Hello, It’s Me

Hi there,

First: everything’s fine with me (and I define fine as being “things are going well, no dramas, no chronic issues for me to be concerned with”).

I realized that the previous blog post – written/posted in a vague cyber-scrawl – could be misconstrued. All is well in Cahillland. In fact, things are going well enough that I have very few opportunities to blog.

I wanted to express what I considered to be rumbles (predictions) of change around me.

A diner I went to on the east end (near work) that I hadn’t been to in about a month, where the same waitress asked me the same question she (and the owner) asked a month ago: how’s the new house? I wanted to pick up my plate and whip it across the vintage 50s decor’d aisle, preferably smashing violently against a wall. The new house? I wanted to respond. I’ve been there – every single day – for the past three months! I imagined yelling. I’ve seen its insides, I know what it is, I’m intimate with it. It is many things, but – in the name of the Lord Baby Jesus – it’s not new! I imagined saying, holding my arms out dramatically, waiting for the curtain to close and for the audience to clap.

I didn’t say that. I hunched my shoulders and said: it’s good. Thanks.

At work I felt I had been snappy, officious.

Later I dropped by a sometimes getaway, an Irish pub downtown I know. I sat there with a Guinness and the bartender, a lovely person, said: “You okay? You don’t seem yourself today.”. I was tired. Tired of non-stop work, frustrated that I was frustrated with the waitresses’ question from lunch, my crankiness on the job, and now – apparently – the answer to the question that I didn’t know how to ask was written on my face for her to see: You okay? You don’t seem yourself today.

I’m fine, I said. All’s good. It’s just this (I thought): when it seems that I am triangulated by revelations of change (which I interpret the above to be) or change-which-needs-t0-be-made, I cannot help but ask whether this is a fin de siècle in some way, or whether I’m just looking for fatalistic icons. Stressed and desperate for more drama?

And this: it’s hard to be eloquent with a cellphone, so I appreciate the responses of those who were concerned with the content of my previous post.

All is good, if not necessarily crystal clear.

(One of the problems of being busy is not only not enough time to write, but also not enough time to revise for clarity.)