The Wire

Strange days and nights.  I'm out of my rhythm.  I've made a decision at the factory that is causing me anxiety and sleeplessness.  It is what one gets, being foreman and all.  That and being the sort of human being I am.  What I want most now is to get back to my old patterns, my old routines.  The old comforts, more or less.

But what is it we tell people who are going through rough times?  "You'll be fine, you'll be fine."  That's what Donald Draper taught me.  When something bad happens, you take off the rest of they from work.  "You should go home," says Double D.  "Why?"  "Because," he says, "that's what people do."

It is easier to see from outside, of course.  Things will go as they will, and there is little you can do to control it.  Q is going through some rough times.  "You'll be fine," I say.  "You'll suffer, then it will get better.  That's what people do."

True enough.  There is little variety in the grand scheme.  They are all well-worn paths.  Nothing new happens to us.  It just feels like it.  Even your own mother will say it.  "You'll be fine."

It is best, though, to keep a weather eye out for calamity.  Walking the tightrope comes with its own set of rules.  Not everyone goes up there but they sure like to watch.  People don't go to auto races to see the speeding cars go by.  They go for the danger.  They are looking for the inevitable crash.  That is when all the old assurances go out the window because that is not "what people do."  Nobody at the races is saying, "Don't worry, it will be fine."  Don't try to be a hero if you don't want the consequences.

Today is tax day.  I must go and file my extension.  I have forgotten to do so every day this week, and now I will have to stand in line with everyone else who has done the same.  You can file it online, I'm told, so perhaps it won't be bad, but I have a feeling that the post office will be full of old people who don't trust online banking.  Require a signature.  Return receipt.

If you live long enough and live a certain way, I imagine that you are constantly haunted by the accumulation of sins.  You must wonder why you've done these things over and over again.  Then, if you live longer, I imagine, you just don't care.  What was right and what was wrong have long ago been displaced by shifting values, by changing cultures.  You realize then that there is no keeping up, that you've simply done what you've done and nobody gives a shit.  It has to be why Robert Durst decided to go on t.v.  He wasn't stupid enough to leave the open mic on himself on two different occasions.  Certainly, even in his drug daze, he knew.  One last time, he must have thought, I have to walk that wire.