I wish I could make like Houdini and perform a great escape from here to anywhere else...slip out of the ropes and handcuffs to freedom and dead on Halloween...a great escape to someplace good, just any place to get away from the way...when you’re way way down and owe three months rent, where are the sages?...when your girl that you figured you had something going with drops you for some Johnny Come-Lately, where are the sages?...when you are down to your last dollar and all prospects look dim, where are the sages to slip you twenty?...most likely the modern day wannabe sages are tucked away somewhere in a fancy looking temple, wearing thier precious robes, meditating quietly after a nice dinner of warm bread and hot soup—legs folded, eyes closed, hands in the official position to reach enlightenment—totally stiff as a statue seeking nirvana—the clock tic-tocking the only noise in the room with plush red carpet with the smell of incense wafting through the air...the purveyors, soothsayers, and bricklayers of the zen way, and the moans and groans of the old bones of the handful of people in the hall...the dead ones meanwhile are locked away in a dusty book in some library and are off the grid...no wonder they’re all so goddamn peaceful, they don’t have to try to get by from day to day in the real world; the struggle, the drama, the circle of life that grinds you down, down to the ground and pounds on you and beats you into submission...the recipe for life is a massive amount of problems sprinkled liberally...sometimes it’s easier to self-medicate with vodka or whiskey...we communicate with the liquor spirits and listen to the hypnotic pulsating samba music and fade into the darkness of the nothingness of another night...sitting in a dive in the dark recesses of our favorite lounge long after happy hour and as we sink into unhappiness...conversation has ceased with the local neighborhood stranger--it’s never the local neighborhood sage…they’re like cops, they’re never around when you need one...hell, they’ve got it worse than you do...so for now, we stare at the floor in a stupor or hold the bar up with our elbow...well ok, we’ll have one more drink and call it a night, maybe...we think about what might have been if only or dream about what might be if only--we only had a chance...but maybe when that chance called, our phone was out of order...contentment is the desperate fugitive that eludes capture and lures us into the dark alleys and bars...uh oh, it’s closing time but you’re not ready to go home just yet...you’ve been hanging around with with your best friend Jack all night and aren’t ready to part...why does this place have to close so early, you think to yourself...then you answer yourself that it really isn’t that early now--in fact, it’s so late it’s getting early...so the stragglers like you head out, grim-faced with their heads down and their hands in their pockets...they wobble into their cars and you wobble down the sidewalk...you are so lucky--you have a place a couple of blocks away that you can use that unsteady zigzag walk to get to...it’s a dump but the way you feel now, you can’t wait to get there.
