Originally Posted Wednesday, December 4, 2013
But as days do, mine became too filled with things to do. There is always more work than can be handled. By day's end, however, I was pooped and sat at my desk with the hundred yard stare. Oh, shit! I grabbed the stack of mail and began to dig through. It was awful. There were stacks of bank statements, several months worth. I went through them trying to figure out what everything was. I began to wonder if I had ever read a bank statement before. I knew I hadn't read anything like these, the new ones since my old bank was bought out and got the new name. I couldn't make heads or tails of it. It was like the bill that comes from the telephone company which is meant to obfuscate and confuse. This was the new banking, I thought. Surely they are stealing my money. For two months in a row, more money went out of my accounts than went into them. That much, if nothing else, was clear. I wasn't playing even a zero sum game.
I opened another envelope that said my license had been suspended for not paying a ticket. What ticket?!? It had been suspended for three weeks now. As I got ready to make a quick call to the Clerk of the Court, my secretary walked in to tell me something about something that involved H.R. I held up the letter for her. She looked at me in "that" way. She knows me. "I need a caretaker," I told her. "I'm a child." I held up another piece of paper. It was a "Final Notice" for payment from the gas company. No, no, no. . . not again. The last payment date was the day before. My secretary left the room. I was only halfway through the stack. I knew it wasn't going to get much better.
I need, I thought, to check my horoscope. What cosmic forces were playing with me now? I felt overwhelmed and alone in the world. Nobody likes a loser. Well, maybe other losers, but it wasn't a club I was eager to join.
I looked to the right of my pile of half-opened mail. There on the far edge of my desk was the retirement news. I'd gone to the company's financial advisor to see what kind of shape I was in. You know you are in trouble when a fellow like that is amused. I remembered a line from "Blade Runner" when Roy had met his literal maker, Dr. Tyrell.
"I want more life, fucker!" says the replicant whose time is running out. But Tyrell can't do it. The dye is cast. The deal is done.
That is sort of how it went with me and the financial advisor. I'd spent the money. It was gone. I had not lived as he had. I had traveled and eaten and drunk more than I should have in places he had never dared to go. I had lived like a super star. Now. . . well now it was his turn. His smiles were for me. His smiles were for him. I was sure the frugal bastard was financially secure and ready for his retirement days. I'd had my time. His, he figured, lay ahead.
"The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very, very brightly. . . Revel in your time!" Tyrell tells Roy (link).
As much as I thought about it, the scene in the financial advisor's office didn't play out quite like the scene from "Blade Runner."
There comes a time when it is too late to turn it around and all there is left is to charge ahead full steam. But who is stoking the coals? From where is the steam to come?
There are so many things to do, I am perpetually overwhelmed, so much so that I rarely let myself think about it. It haunts my nights, I know, and populates my dreams where the good memories should be. There is not winning, I guess, though the smug bastards who have planned and saved, the ones whose wives and girlfriends and later their daughters I used to. . . . But none of that matters much now, it seems. As Springsteen says (who has it all, both past and future, the fucker), "I'm countin' on a miracle to come through . . . ." (if you don't know)
No comments:
Post a Comment