Vacation

I feel like a gypsy squatter right now. Life is so confusing. Some property managers came by my house today, completely surprised that I was living here. I try to convince them that I have an agreement with the landady that lasts through the month. The old guy tries to tell me a different story that he heard from the landlady. Does he believe me? I don't know. "What can we do to make your part easier?" he asks me. I'm thinking, "What the hell is my part old man?" True this house is messy and filled with all kinds of crap, but it ain't mine. I didn't make the mess. It was a hole the day I moved in a year ago! Why is this my problem? Gimme my frickin' security deposit back, you wench of a landlady! You better not try and screw me! Oh, so I may have to vacate by the end of the month. No problem! It's only the middle of the frickin' school year.

I feel like there are forces at work more powerful than me. There was definitely an agreement, and encouraging words that this house could very well be mine for the rest of the semester. But now I feel like a squatter, and I want out.

I wish I could say, "no problem." I wish I could just put on a vinyl record and sing:

"I get by with a little help from my friends
I get high with a little help from my friends"

Apparently, in his later years, after the complete divebomb of his career, Orson Welles was a bit of a transient, somewhat of a Hollywood nomad, rooming and boarding at the hospitality of friends. It must have been like housing a timeless relic to keep this broken-down man, this forgotten and abandoned genius of his time, at one's estate. You would be living not with an ordinary tenant but a genuine, mysterious piece of history!

This, however, is not the aftermath of my life. Actually, I don't know what it is. So many strange, often difficult occurrences have been happening in my life lately. And so many sad, confused feelings have been now and again invading my mind. And they are triggered by different things, the thought of a friend, an envisioning of the future that is just as assuredly dashed by my doubts as it had been brought into confident focus. These property managers have disturbed the temporary piece of mind that I had been experiencing. They are like a car that has driven through a beautiful reflection of the city skyline after a refreshing rain. Forgetful me. I mistook what I had been looking at as the real thing. The image of my life that I had been dwelling on was only a distorted replica. With difficulty I attempt to pinpoint in my memory the time that this beautiful, upside-down picture caught my attention and began to put me into this trance that I have finally been awaken from.

Is it just reality come raining down? Is it a confrontation with inevitability? Aren't we all meant to be drawn from our luxury and comfort at some point in our lives, to be dragged out into the pouring rain? Where are the cameras? What is the name of this "reality show?" But I am not in the pouring rain. Some people are. I am simply in a doorway. Or a threshold. In some stories I have often read of certain characters who are introduced "on the threshold." We have a literary term for this. It is called a "liminal" description. Perhaps I am in a liminal existence. Ever since I heard the knock on my door this afternoon, it has been as if I could begin to see the individual pieces of this house fade away from existence. I need to escape before I am swept away. This is cleaning time. Reality is expected at any moment. I have stayed here too long. But it's more than just this house. Something is catching up with me! And I don't know where I have to run to stay ahead.