On Whose Terms, Mr. Thurm?

Here is your horoscope for Tuesday, June 6:

"While it's important to have appropriate emotional boundaries, make sure you don't stay behind them longer than is necessary. There is a difference between a sense of privacy and simply isolating yourself."

I'm in a rather peculiar state of mind which has been brewing for the last few days. I've written before about what it means to be dissatisfied; or at least alluded to it in my post about Jennie the Sealyham terrier in Maurice Sendak's book, 'Higglety, Pigglety, Pop'. Today, I am caught by a feeling that the shape of my life is not exactly being formed by my own desires or needs. I saw this horoscope this morning and I thought, "How ironic. Isolated is exactly how I feel." It was a sensation quickly felt and it passed almost immediately, to be replaced by the realization that I need to figure out where the responsibility for this feeling lies. I've spent most of my adult life without a family and as a consequence, a connection with the world has been of the utmost importance to me. My friends are my family; my various jobs have mostly been the conduit to constructing this gossamer, yet resilient network. It stretches from one coast to the other, but in this town the threads are sparse. I spend vast quantities of time alone when I'd rather not, but I've also grown rather resourceful at creating my own entertainment. Writing is certainly one form. If you know me at all, then you're already familiar with the attributes of my life in its present configuration, so I won't bore you with the "minutiae of me". Having discovered last night that I've been passed over for a promotion, I was irritated last night and irritated this morning, and actually I was irritated when I started composing this post many hours ago, but now I'm fine. I'm fine with just about everything when I really stop and consider it all, but the thing I'm not so very fine with is that the nature of much of my life sometimes feels as if it's being dictated by others, but is that really the truth? Living as I do, in this land populated by legions of the overly self-contemplative and self-obsessed, I'm giving myself permission to "go native" as it were, to wonder why I've been O.K. with this state of affairs for so long. Why have I been willing to find acceptable what feels and looks like a mere two-dimensional representation of the world that I want to live in? Incomplete relationships that start and stop at the convenience of others, jobs of no particular weight or heft, the occasional care and feeding of the creative genius who dwells inside me; half-measures all around. Who's in charge here? Do I really want more than this, or is this actually as much as I need? "More" would take change, "more" would take action. Heavy lifting would be involved, I fear.

I pause this rant for a sidebar. Back in the 1980's, SNL had a brief season of glory when the cast consisted of, among others; Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, Martin Short, and Billy Crystal. This was the season that gave us Short and Shearer as the incredibly earnest, yet athletically-challenged synchronized swimmers, and it's just about the only skit they trot out to represent this period whenever they do a retrospective of "greatest hits". There was another though, that a few of us will never forget and still refer to; the 60 Minutes parody. Shearer's performance was uncanny as an overly made-up and very intimidating Mike Wallace and Short played Nathan Thurm, an attorney retained by the company who produced the "Minkman Schnoz", a prosthetic gag nose which was the centerpiece of various litigations; all stemming from its tendency to explode. As "Wallace" hammered away at the details, "Thurm", who was smoking a cigarette with the longest ash on record, grew sweatier and sweatier, refuting comments he had made seconds before by looking at us through the camera and denying them all. "I did not say that. Did YOU hear me say that? Is it me, or is it him? It's him, right?"

And that brings me to now. Unable at some level to accept the fact that I alone am responsible for whatever this is that I've created, and that I alone can defend it, change it, or pay the court costs; be it a dangerously explosive fake nose or a life lived under the radar; sweating profusely, I turn to face the camera and ask, "Is it ME?"

One final note. This is my 150th post, and for that I do take full responsibility; along with the trash that needs to go out, the bills that I've been neglecting, and the black coffee I'm consuming since I can't get it together to walk to the store for cream. A life of the mind can sometimes be so, uh, sedentary........