ordinary man

my father has just checked his watch, he’s considering going home. sister is doing the same, and what to do tonight, when to meet p., where to eat, and of course she needs to make time for a shower and a trip to the hairdresser right up the alley only because now she can afford to pay her ten bucks every night to have her hair done right. mom has spent an hour talking to my uncle; recently she’s got to make such phone calls when my dad’s not around, but they’ll get over it soon and daily life prevails as usual. home has started firing up its energy-saving light bulbs, one by one, kitchen first, then the living room and eventually the bedrooms and the bathrooms, except the guest ones of course.

and as all that is happening back there i get on my 6:09 train with manu chao in my ears, bukowski in my hand and a good number of school books in my backpack. i have just finished my first coffee of my daily four, next one to be poured and drunk out of my office mug in exactly 87 minutes now. it’s gray outside, but i’d bet my life it’s going to be just another sunny day with highs in the eighties and lows in the sixties. it’s just another great day to be alive, to work, to breathe, to work, to listen to music, to work and finally to work a little bit more when all is done.

see this is why I can’t write anymore. i’m not sad enough, not drunk enough, not unproductive, not estranged enough. my family is not dysfunctional enough, i mean drama is on and all that, my mom cries all the time and my dad still mishears her worries after a lifetime, but it just doesn’t strike me as disastrous enough. i don’t even hate her anymore, not even that coward of her new boyfriend who used to beat me in basketball when we were still together. my life is not miserable enough, come on life, i know you, what are you waiting for? bring it on damn it. shit I don’t even say fuck as much as I used to. just read bukowski, see that’s why his poems are so powerful, that’s why his books are the first poetry books ever that I actually finish, it’s gotta be the f word, what else? maybe it’s all his women, maybe it’s his meticulous night job, maybe my job is not mundane enough. maybe he was just a bigger asshole than i am, maybe, maybe… maybe i’m simply trying too hard...

the problem is that it’s all been said and done and felt and lied and complained about before. it’s all been observed, most intensely described, most precisely depicted and most passionately denounced. or maybe that’s just me, i’ve lost it, comfortably numb. i don’t bother study the strangers around me anymore, i let the random headlines and silly billboards get away being ridiculously stupid and all that. i’m reading something instead, or maybe even playing sudoku. i don’t even bother write down my ideas, not even the morning shower ones, what’s the point?

gee I can’t even find any differences between myself and the old woman sitting across the aisle from me reading her people magazine. i’m positive her grandson could mistake us for each other from far enough; both have two legs, two hands hanging from our shoulders and a head on top of it all with a gazillion extremely pathetic thoughts inside. maybe i’ve finally become one of ‘them’. maybe i have truly gone ordinary, one in the millions, just another particle, negligible in my entirety, redundant to begin with, insignificant at my best. maybe i’ve always been like this, just too full of myself to admit it.

whatever it is, i’m not complaining. It’s a nice weather outside people, stop reading this, stand up, look around you, breathe, walk away and let it be.