On the Cross

Sometimes when I'm cruising over to Silverlake I get a suburban sense. It's not the flowery air I don't think and the houses don't look familiar, neither are the palm trees or the winding hills. I wish I could figure it out, but I can't. We do not have to know the something, we need only to recognize the something and not ignore it.

I've been failing more, which means expanding the odds. I biffed it at a stand-up set. Why not? I said going in. Can't hurt. In hindsight, perhaps it hurt. You never know when someone is keeping a tab, or a list, and blacklining your name. There's something to wasting people's time. But there's also something to risking wasting people's time to make people's time. There's also something to be said for building up that callous of opportunities miscarried. I'm in denial it's almost May. LA has that same Time Stands Still Syndrome that keeps everyone in Arizona in Arizona. It's as though no season has passed. I wonder if we stop feeling behind when we get out from the backside or if we stop feeling behind when we stop feeling behind.

The stress I think most people feel doesn't hurt me. I came from humbler beginnings, so I have less to lose. My stress is a particular kind of twitch between my brain and my eye hole from refreshing application pages and proofing my script for the four-hundred-millionth time. Not stress, but my wheel is from spinning over the same conversation I plan to have with a coworker who hates me, a conversation she will never agree to. I focus like a laser sending in my materials, zap, zap, zap. Puhg in bed for an hour reading. He says, "I bet you a million dollars your next opportunity does not come from whatever you just did." And he is very likely correct.

Meanwhile I find, in general, here, people look inward more. The benefits are the "energies" and "manifesting" and the possibilities. No one decent soul will judge a dream. At the same time, I admit I call my Congressman less. I wait to be told more. I have become optimistic about enough change in two years that all is not lost, which I was certain of in a winter city.

There's a ball of hairy pressure on seconds, I explain over a bowl of spicy gnocchi. If I loved something the first time, I am worried it cannot be surpassed the second. I worry over this on multiple levels. If you and I have so much fun, how do we even go up? If I had a perfect day at that theme park why would I chance a second trip? Isn't there that fact about drug hits? That's what someone told me. She had done acid exactly one time because scientifically it would never improve. I'd never do acid, but I would relate that logic to seeing a movie twice.

Millennials need more signposts at their careers, I'm told. More promotions. This has been true of me. I have never stopped moving. What would it be like to be in the same groove for ten years? Even five. I am relieved I do not fear a stable day, but I am certain it is an ocean away.