The Light That Burns Brightest

I have a luncheon date with some of my old comrades at the factory.  I don't want to go.  I was ill yesterday.  Badly.  I don't know what caused it, but I suspect it was bad alchemy on my part. Very dizzy and feeling like I wanted to puke.  Bloated belly, too.  Just misery.  I didn't move the entire day.  I hadn't slept, as I reported, the night before, and, perhaps, that was bad alchemy, too.  I think I feel better this morning but it is too early to tell. Physically, I think I am able to go to meet the comrades, but mentally. . . I'm not so sure.  They will be shocked by my present state.  I'm not looking so good.  I will not be the heroic figure I always imagined I was.  This life I'm living--or rather, the one I'm not--has taken its toll on me.  

One day, my mother's 91 year old neighbor asked me what I was going to do that day.  Worn to the bone, tired and distraught, I said, "The same thing I do every day.  My life is not my own."  

"Oh, come on," she replied, "you're better than that."

I don't like her as much as I used to.  

I will go, I imagine, to meet my comrades, but I will not be the same jovial cat I used to be.  I am slow now, dulled by the daily routine that grinds me down without cessation. 

"If there is anything I can do to help. . . ."

As I usually reply, "Can you take weekends?"

What they will see today is a man not retired but resigned.  It is difficult to understand from the outside, I know, for I have the freedom to do anything I like inside a box.  It doesn't look like much in a glance.  But I've worn deep grooves in the pathways now.  Incessant.  Interminable.  

They say that a person imprisoned for a certain amount of time loses their ability to function "on the outside."  Recidivism is high.  They just lose their ability to function independently.  There was a truly powerful t.v. series years ago about a man released from prison trying to adapt to life again that C.C. and I were fond of.  

Fond?  Not the right word.  What was the name of it?

I love A.I.  "Rectify." 2013-16.  

That character didn't do so well.  

The thing about prisons is that they don't seem to be a deterrent.  The number of incarcerated has grown past our ability to house them.  I'm guessing--and this is just a guess--that there are simply too many things considered criminal.  Perhaps we should think about reducing rather than increasing the things we consider crimes.  

I don't know.  I'm just considering my own case.  My sentence seems severe.  Of what am I guilty?

"You're shitting me, right?"

O.K.  Whatever.  It is obvious.  Conceited self-absorption. 

"Isn't there another term for that?  More succinct?"

A.I. and I agree on this--the term has been over- and misused in pop psychology.  Let's not confuse it with simple vanity. 

I grow old, I grow old. 

Shall I wear my trousers rolled?

Yup.  Roll 'em up, old sport.  You'll not be offered that peach.  

But enough of that kind of talk.  That's it for the daily whine.  We all live under the curse of a death sentence. Why go on about it so?  

But as Roy Batty so famously says, "I want more life, fucker!"  

At least he got his hands on his creator.  Selavy.