Saturday, October 16, 2010

All In, Used Up, and It's Complicated


Florida has that overwhelming quality of an 80 degree day in the middle of October - where the second or third season of soccer or baseball or football fills most parents Saturday morning with quick breakfasts, choosing the right color jersey, a fast cup of coffee and getting two places at the same time - just to make sure your son or daughter catches a glimpse of smiling at them - like I have said before, I find it hard not to go places and pick flowers or some other weed, and keep it - I have books full of dead flowers - and when I reread them, I am usually always greeted by a petal or two - and a memory or two - now that I have a Kin - I am not sure what I am going to do with the weeds, but I guess part of the therapy is pulling them anyway - that's what those are above - a two hour walk to the Winn Dixie and the Golf Course and the occassional weed picking stop.

I was going through my comments the other day, and every once in a while, there was one that made sense, hidden in between the spammers who want my sex life to be better, to have a smaller waist, and to spend more time online gambling with my mail order bride - The professional writers out there don't have to deal with the crap us part time plebes do - we write when we feel like it - I know this is not going to put any food on my table, so it makes it easier to mispell words, make little or no sense, and occassionally just drop in a fuck or two for no apparent reason.  When you don't have anyone to impress, you really don't try too hard.

This Saturday was perhaps the quietest Saturday in a while - the kids had mid-day soccer games, and afterwards, they just wanted Subway sandwiches and television time - the perfect opportunity for me to go for a walk for a couple of hours - sweat out some of last weekends transgressions, and loosen up some pieces and parts that feel like they are about to fall off.

My former Rugby teammate called me this morning - he was getting ready to play in a match - and I instantly felt the pain in my nerck and shoulders - but even more so, I honestly knew that I would not see myself on the pitch again - two weeks ago, I spent more hours in an MRI and with doctors explaining to me why my left arm feels like a paperweight, and why playing Rugby for 13 years was not the smartest idea that I ever had - I have had worse ideas - and have acted out on them as well, and aside from probably loosing a few down payments on a house, a boat, maybe a new car, and my kids college education, I have to say that physically I came out pretty well.  That was the transition into the title of the blog if you did not catch it - the rustier I get with writing, the more my introductions to new themes start to resemble explosive diaherrea.

Vegas - that city has everything that anyone could ever ask for - straight from illegal immigrants peddling someone's daughter to sidewalk evangelists trying to save the masses from stumbling over some cliff that they put themselves in front of.  There are midgets who spit fire, and folks dressed up like Elvis in all stages - fat, skinny, high, dead.  It has smells that range the Dante's Inferno sulphur and flesh to the ultimate seasoned meals served only in palaces and at Tyco office parties.  That city is a microcosm of global society - an oxymoron dedicated to morons like myself who honestly believe that eventually you will hit - and the lights and bells and acoutrements associated with follow you with parrot feathers and rose petals as you cash your winnings...deviance is the only thing that pays there - even the pros know that they are lucky to get a little edge, a little piece of the action - and the only folks who are winning are the ones who open their doors, and gladly welcome me in to follow their rules - and happily get kicked in the nuts and part ways with my dough....

That's what All In is for - that is what life is for - walking up to the edge of the Grand Canyon and swallowing the little bit of bile that pushes its way up, and looking over that edge - that's all in - stepping up to a table, laying down your last twenty, and hoping that it becomes your next to last twenty.  Somewhere in my primitive brain, I get off on that - I like the feeling of despair afterwards, I like the exhilaration, I like knowing that I gave 100% to gamble on something - I mean really, look at us - we do it at work, we push more hours into a day than God originally intended by TiVo'ing what we might have missed.  We sleep three hours a night, we live at the extremes - and most of us, are only one pink slip away from not being able to do any of that luxury All In .  You stand in front of a flourescent pink table every single day, and someone brings you something akin to Lennon's Reliogion, Sex, Drugs and TV - and you push to become the working class hero - and you go to bed at night, a little more tired, a little more happy, occasionally a little more accomplished - but for the most part, you just dropped 24 hours of your dwindling bankroll - and if you get ten out of 24 right and good, then you ain't doing so bad.

So what about after Vegas - after the money is gone, and the lights start to dim, and the dealer who cheered you on earlier in the evening is just another automaton in a bowtie and the machines are just the gaurds to the treasure that you Don Quixote'd all night?  That;s the used up part - Bill Whithers was high when he said "If it feels this good gettin used, you just keep on usin me till you use me up" - either that, or he was just a little smarter than the rest of us and decided that it was worth it.  Now, now to say that I am smarter than the rest of us, but I have sort of drawn that conclusion as well - Used up does not have to be a bad thing - the bittersweet foolish feeling after going out on a limb, the uneasy discomfort of speaking up, the five o clock shadow of a hard dsys work - working at anything - but using it up.  I imagine that life is full of those dealers, and sometimes, we are even the dealers, encouraging those around us to give and give and give, and really hoping that this time it will be different for them - a wierd role reversal, but true - and the great thing is that we line up again!  We do it again the next day, we sit in traffic and wait in line at Starbucks and head to the office  - and somewhere aftter getting used up and bartering to an agreed upon amount - we rest.  Maybe Bill was right, but that just seems so damn complicated....

Yes, it's complicated.  That facebook relationship status that means fuck all is about what it amounts to - it's complicated.  At the attempt of dropping a few lines of humor - that has to be the understatement of the year.  Most things are complicated except to Economists and Scientists - they narrow their experiments down to one or two variables and explain the perfect situation in perfect terms in a double blind three scenario event - and take the bill paying, car fixing, dinner cooking, butterfly farting in South America out of the equation - Vegas is a complicated place - and, more like life than real life - all of that water in the middle of the desert.  All of that money being made out of sand.  All of that experience designed to baffle, confound, and confuse - but create the illusion that reality is what we make it - and that for a short period of time, we can control it - that's what is complicated about all of it.  I wish I knew a few more answers to the same questions I had twenty years ago - and the fact is, that I just have a few more multiple choices to consider.  I can run models in Excel seven ways to Sunday to show the statistical significance of why I should shower every day - or why I should feel the way I do - but at the end of it all - it's complicated.

That's all I have right now.  I could go read a book, or do some online gambling, but given that I would prefer to be all in on something that is not prone to use me up without a little reward, I think I will go downstairs, make sure the kids have finished their subway, and see what movie we should enjoy together tonight.

Until next time -

George