Morning Revelry

I wake up.

But I go back to sleep. Fuck it. I'll meet the world head on later. I wake up again, and this time there is activity around me. It must be later. I look at my watch. It's six fifteen. I jump up as soon as Robert and Jor-el go out for smoke break and do my exercise. Today it's very hard to do 31 push ups because of where I placed my hands. Closer to my sides this time. Shit, that was hard. I sweat bullets.

I get ready and grab my gear. Now, where to go this morning? I have a medical excuse for Fridays, so no Morning Meeting for me. I think about going to Starbucks as I step outside into the cool morning air, and realize that I left my jacket. What the Hell, once I get downstairs I absolutely so hate going back up. I head to Starbucks, but as a treat I head to Think Coffee instead. Only because I view it as such a guilty pleasure that I only go there once in awhile. Whereas Starbucks is for my heavy lifting.

As I make myself comfortable in my favorite table and chair, which was waiting in the corner all for me. As I settle in for the morning I see older men, my age also arrive and settle in. They all, and I do mean all, sit and open laptops and rest a cup of java next to them. I can only think that these men are the professors from the nearby New York University. It's not a bad assumption, being that normally this coffee shop is filled with college kids from the university. Adults must be here doing the same, and since the ratio of young students to old is so low. Whereas students to Professors must be higher. Just an assumption. I take a seat and my mind starts to ramble.

Here I am, having the free time, and paying the heavy cost for it, as these much better off men, who are using the same time to learn and to teach. I've cashed in my life for my freedom. A fair trade I would say. A friend of mine suggested that I shouldn't look at my life as an all or nothing endeavor. That I can have balance. I ruminated on that. I have a little work for a little cash, a little time for a little poetry and writing, and little restrictions for a little place to rest my head. All things in balance. It settled here on it's own, naturally.

I have options, I suppose, to upset the apple cart. I have the option to leave well enough alone.

This is on my mind as I sit down and prepare for my morning. Last night I worked feverishly on my screenplay. The characters are still racing by, living on the paper. They are bringing this beast to its finish. I have around fifty pages left to fill. This is the first thing that I work on this morning after email.

It's interesting. I got just this email this morning: "Hi, I wanted to know is there a certain time that I need to get there [THE SHOUT OUT] to be put on a list for the open mike, or how does it work?"

Emails like that prove to me that the SHOUT OUT is working. It goes to show that effort, no matter how small, is never wasted. We average about fourteen guests a weekend and this just might be number fifteen. Slowly but surely are all things built from scratch. Pay your dues, my dude.

I struggle with myself, and I don't mean in that way. I don't want to sit my ass here in Think Coffee all day, but I don't want to lose this excellent seat. I have to name it one day. Probably 'Rat in the Corner'. But I was growing fantastically restless. I was just about to give into my wastrel desires when I felt the need to use the bathroom. There is only one bathroom that I rather enjoy using, and that's the john in the business library. With this call of the wild, the die was cast. I packed up my gear and got on the Way. What looked like would be a long, long trip was over faster than I thought. I was there at the library and standing in front of the bathrooom I found that there was nothing that I had to do. I was free of the need to do anything. I went to my cubicle instead and began writing my screenplay.

I also surfed, and wrote email and did my IMs. I remained busy. I watched Electra's bags and did my usual shit. Later in the day friend of mine gave me an interesting lead on a man that had just died recently:

"Charles Wright, who wrote three autobio- graphical novels about black street life in New York City between 1963 and 1973 that seemed to herald the rise of an important literary talent but who vanished into alcoholism and despair and never published another book, died on Oct. 1 in Manhattan. He was 76 and lived in the East Village."

He died of heart failure. Well, I guess that SOMETHIING has to take you out of here. I was amazed that he lived as long as he did, but not as long as my father. Also interesting is that he found out earlier in the year of his death that alcohol had eroded his liver, and yet it was his heart that gave out first. Meaning, when it's your time, it's your time. All the good clean living that you can do just might not help you live longer.

Mr. Wright echoes me though, or more accurately my life mirrors his in the sense that he was "...working at low-level jobs, living in low-rent apartments, hanging out with lowlife personalities." And yet he was a writer. A crippled writer, but one none the less. It just may be a writer's lot in life to live like this. He though had a home in his later years. He wasn't homeless. He lived with a friend and his family in the East Village. In alcohol-psychoparlance his friend would be called an 'enabler'.

His story, nonetheless is very fascinating to me, and like a dog's wet nose on a scent, I am drawn to it without thought. I order: "The Wig" from the NYPL system and standby to await its coming.

I would like to absorb his literature. Absorb his writing. Become immersed in it.

Tread in the path of greater writers before me.

Just not to the end. No need to go like that.

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