zen and (the art of) beer goggles

It is a lovely evening shortly after Memorial Day weekend, and I’m downing a superb plate of kielbasa and splitting a couple pitchers of Hoegaarden at Astoria’s legendary Bohemian Hall with Jen and my honorary baby brother Brandon (in town from LA). The sky is clear, the sun is setting, the trees are still. There’s a kid at the next picnic table with her beach pail and plastic shovel playing in the gravel. It reminds me of when one of my neighbors in Albuquerque would baby sit for me. The big thing we used to do over at her house was we’d go out into her backyard and she had these palm-sized flat, oval rocks in her yard (very zen) and she’d bring out a sponge and bucket filled with a little dishwashing soap and water. I’d wash the rocks like dishes, both sides, till they were all gleaming and shiny and then I’d set the rocks out in the sun to dry. I tell Jen and Brandon this story and, of course, they say This explains everything. It’s not like the rocks needed washing, but at four years old, it was an act that I liked – taking something dull and dusty, something that most folks would think was really just fine the way it was, and fixing it up, making it better.

Now, I work with Jen at my dayjob – it’s ironically how I’ve met some of my better, more creative buddies – and during the course of this evening’s conversation that ranges from museum visits and odd performance-art films and photography classes and f-stops, we also discuss the old daily grind. Jen gets better dirt than I do on my floor, and two large rumors (that are shaped more like fact) get handed across the picnic table tonight and swallowed down with a cold wash of the wet stuff – 1) IT is going to start limiting access to certain websites (I may only be able to satiate my MySpace OCD during the early and late hours of my day, heavens!), and 2) they’re not moving my department upstairs like they’ve been talking about for ages; nah, they’re just going to move 700 employees to an office in Jersey.

I can feel my hands fidgeting, like I’m playing with something tangible – which is just as well, because I’ve been sitting still (literally and figuratively) for a while now. It’s the comfort factor, and we all do it: I want to do this, I want to do that, but maybe not right now. It’s like having that option of getting up out of bed and going out in the rain to run errands (the stuff you need to do), or staying right where you are when you’ve hit that position that officially feels cozy and you really just don’t want to move. It’s safe, it’s comfortable, it’s what we know, and it doesn’t require that we do a damned thing except show up.

I’ve gotten very good at phoning it in. I regularly stroll into work 20 minutes late and people just say good morning. I just renewed my lease on my solo 1-1 apartment for two years (occasional mites, mice, cucarachas and all, the bastards) and my salary makes that possible. One more year at this stinkin’ company with rapidly declining perks and I get a third week of paid vacation. So it’s comfortable - more comfortable than trying to find a new job, a new place to live. That requires time and energy and impetus, and why bother when I’m comfortable? But this news is not comfortable, and combine that with the fact that there’s just something about conversation across one of these beer garden picnic tables that makes me want to play with fire. Maybe it’s watching the old European guy back behind the grill. I’ve felt that way about the place ever since I first walked into the joint with some buddies after rehearsal one day, and we split a pitcher and discussed the theatrical project we were working on at the time, how direction was lacking in just about all aspects, how all of us were capable of more, damn it.

So what should I be doing, besides screwing off all day on websites that are like crack? I should be looking for projects to audition for. I should drop the $400 required to have my new headshots duplicated even if they do just wind up in some casting director’s “circular file.” They can’t cast me if they don’t know about me, so I should be working on mailings to market myself. I should be submitting my poems to literary magazines instead of just letting them sit on my hard drive. I should be participating in some kind of writing group and acting workshop on a regular basis. I should be going to the gym every day after work instead of making excuses and allowing my disillusionment and bouts of crankiness drive me to a late night snack equal parts Haagen-Dasz and rioja. My financial situation is a punch line. I drop three quarters of my disposable income on eating out and meeting for drinks. More meeting for coffee and less dinners. More picnics in Central Park where everyone brings a snack to share. More bars with great happy hours where I can see many friends at once, nurse one drink instead of two, share an appetizer instead of four and call it a night. I am pushing $20k in debt. I’d like to fix this situation, do some traveling and buy a house before I need a walker to cross the threshold, and there’s power in writing it down.

I guess what’s happened is I’ve hit a spring in the mattress and it’s time to get up and do something. I don’t want to be working admin when I’m 35. I sure as hell don’t want to be working it when I’m 40. So I take another sip of my beer, wave my hands because I’m antsy and tell the kids it’s time for me to go home. Jen’s making fun of me because it’s early and I’m tired, but what it really is is it’s time for me to make tracks through the gravel, to take stock of the rocks I have in my head – gently, with love – and wash them.