12/22

I wander over to the bar two blocks down.  I make my way there.  End up inside.  On a stool.  Pint in hand.  Sorrows on shoulders.  Blending into the shadows.

This is where I'm drawn on Monday nights in December.  Specifically the Monday before Christmas.  Specifically so.  Here I am.

And I think of the books, stacked on the table in my apartment, that I could be reading.  That I could be exploring and knowing.  With which I could be broadening my being.

But I choose beer instead.  I choose beer because beer is easy company.  Beer doesn't need to be entertained. Beer doesn't need much attention or cognitive assertion on your part.  It only needs a mouth.  A mouth and maybe a few organs and a body to help achieve the goal.  And I'm always striving for that goal.

To transcend.  Cast beyond.  Float above.  Get out.

I need that.  And though the books promise the same result.  Promise that joyful plain of ecstasy.  That heightened understanding of life and love and consciousness, I avoid them.

I avoid them because they require more effort and energy than I have at the end of the day.  More persistence and resolution.  More than I have.

But beer has the fuel to get me to the front stoop of where I always wanted to be.  To plow me past all the problems and plights I disdain.  Just never enough to push open that damn door and shut em out for good.

But I still put my faith in the bar.  And show up there at ten at the night.  And down a few to stumble home.  Instead of winding down with some tea and a shower.  Lying with my cat and allowing a novel to expand my existence across the imagination of another soul.

Right.