Hall Pass

  "How you feeling there Jack?"
"Like a bag of dicks."
"Thought you liked dicks Jack." 
"Oh, I'm not talking about nice dicks. I'm talking about the kind that makes your nose wrinkle 'cause they don't wash their booty hole and then try to shove your face into it."

Bad day man.  
Between the bullshit going on outside, trying to find the music again, and just my body fighting against me in ways that I should be used to by now.

"Finding the music again?"
I used to sing. To dance.  To write. To play. 
Music. 
Somewhere along the way my soul got tired and the music just...evaporated. 
The Carol Burnett Tarzan yell used to be my vocal warmups.
 
I can/could...I dunno...if I warmed my voice up can shout like a gun shot, able to be heard over jet engines and the Kansas wind.
Bark like the biggest dogs and make puppers look at me going "The fuck he say?"
I could yodel Maps with near pitch perfect changes in scale. 
Belt out "Are you going to be my girl" with a smokers rasp. 

Dance to anything that had a beat.  Hell, when the beat hit you couldn't stop me from dancing. 
Song lyrics, pick up almost any instrument and make it sound like something before I set it down again.  

But then the music just...

I think it was when my heart broke. 

Not like dumped by a significant other or having a falling out with a friend. 
Not loosing someone or sitting by a deathbed listening to the thoughts of someone seeing the end of their life coming. 
I've been doing that since I was a kid. 

No.  
It was when I started to feel...alone.
When the realizations really started to sink in. 
The things that happened in my child hood. 
The friends who turned out to be opps when I was a young adult.
Realizing no one was being real with me. 
Accepting that I was actually the smartest person in the room.

"Little full of yourself aren't you there Jack?'
No man.  
No I'm not. 

Ignorance is bliss they say. 
See...
I always thought people did the level of research I did on things. 
Hell.  As a kid I was often told how stupid I was.  
Reminded with a pop up side the head that "They were smarter and to stop talking back."

"The hell?   I wasn't talking back I was just asking a question about..."

I was never in the AP classes even though I read all the books and talked to the kids in them about what they were learning, even snuck their text books during breaks to read.  
But like I said, I thought everyone did that.  
I thought I just wasn't allowed in the AP classes because I was too poor.  
Fucking kids at school definitely made me feel that way.
Then going to work with people at least a decade older than I was. 

"He's just a kid, doesn't know anything." 
"What? I had to learn all the same stuff  you did and prove it." 
"You didn't earn it?"
"Earn what?"
"The job."
"Fuck off."

Then being a Librarian. 
 Working with the smartest kids and people in an area that were just as quick on the pick up as I was. 
I kinda...forgot that I really was that smart. 

But then I left the library...the place that helped my head and heart heal in a way I didn't know it needed at the time. And...was the smartest person in the room again...
Well.  
I never felt like it.  Always thought I was ten steps behind because I was learning from scratch.   
But then I caught up. 
Lifted my head from my work. 
Looked around.
And realized I was surrounded by sharks.
Then the next thing I knew the worst of my predictions were starting to come true.

"The events of the last 10 years that you said you predicted with 95% accuracy?"
"Yeah...those.  Looking around and feeling like Cassandra screaming from the top of the mountain and being told I was Chicken Little."

That's when I lost the music.  
Imagine that. 
Put yourself in my shoes. 
You think everyone sees the world the way you do.
Not necessarily agrees or feels the same way...but sees...the trajectories.  

The market shifts.
The moves on the map.
The changes in the wind.
The books not balancing. 

Like the pipes.

"Why don't we just fix it?" 
"Too expensive."
"But they're putting all this new pipe in over there why can't they fix this?  It's already dug up."
"Because this neighborhood doesn't matter."
"Huh?"

That was the trick they pulled in the 80's and 90's.  
How they paid for stuff and made it look like an economic boom. 
Robed Peter to pay Paul. 
Let the streets and bridges rot under tires to build new roads into subdivisions. 
Patched pipes instead of repairing. 
Cutting the maintenance costs and calling it savings. 

That's the thing kids. 
When you buy a car, build a house, install a power line.  
You have to budget for :  (2.5)the cost.
1. The initial cost.
2. The cost to replace it, either over time through regular maintenance or there's if there's a catastrophic failure.
.5 for the repairs of the heavily used parts.

For a car that's over 20 or so years. 
For a house that's over 50 or so years.
For infrastucture...Not hyperbole, 
150 years. 
Water lines, electrical lines, roads.

Most of the water lines I've been cleaning up after they break are that old. 
The lines that sparked the fires on the west coast 10 years ago where that old. 

I thought everyone looked at things on that scale. 
But they don't. 
It's become even more obvious recently with people saying "I can't believe this is happening." 
And all I can do is sit there watching each of these major events take place going "I'm either schizophrenic and having a paranoid break and hallucinating all of this or...I really am that smart."

So I distract myself with...theoretical physics, neuroscience, and writing stories that may never be told outside of my notebooks. 

"But what about this blog?" 
"Honey...this thing is just stream of conciseness writing that helps my little fingers stay limber filled with minimal editing and maximum ego, kind of like my tik tok but for my brain rather than my body."
And like the little bit of sword swinging I show over there, this is only a fraction of my work and skills.

I have to remind myself that sometimes. 
That yeah. 
I am that bitch. 

Like that little bit of the Musketeers from last night? 
I've already outlined the whole of the story. 
How I'd film it. 
Composed the next scenes.   

"I don't believe you."
"....Oh yeah....I haven't told you about the 3rd time I died."
" You couldn't have died 3 times...you'd be dead after the 1st." 
"Hey, it's not magic. It's modern medicine."  

There are days like today, after the reports of the school in Iran were confirmed by multiple sources, that I wish I was wrong more often.
That's why I like Science so much. 
Because in science I learn more from being wrong than right. 

Anyway...
Until I find the music in myself again I'll just be over here "Twerkin in the rain." 

"But...you haven't told me how you died...the 3rd time." 
"Spoilers my love. Spoilers..."