Tuesday, November 19, 2013

DOWN DOWN DEEPER AND DOWN






I was chatting earlier today with an old friend  I hadn’t spoken to since mid-summer.  I had been worrying about him because the last time we tried to communicate, he left a voicemail with what sounded like terrible and disturbing news about one of his children, describing events that couldn’t have made any father happy.  That message arrived over a crackling, distorted cellular connection replete with drop-outs, latencies and echoes. I wasn’t sure I understood exactly what he was saying.

Today, though, he sounded great.  Newly NYC-repatriated following another long European business jaunt (his business activities are never entirely clear to me), he seemed to be taking his parental travails in stride, much more so than I ever could.

My friend thinks “big,” some would say excessively so. His nouvelles and spun-sugar descriptions of things always sound fairy tale grand fantastical and he is forever in mid-quest toward a definite goal, but with no set itinerary or arrival time.  It’s the sort of thing that drives me crazy because although what he’s shooting for sounds semi-plausible sometimes, it is far-fetched in terms of its show business success probability, which virtually guarantees the certainty of a micro-return on time and effort spent.

I think smaller and squarer, but am not doing much better. I rarely project anything like my friend’s gaiety or enthusiasm.

We fish in different parts of the ocean with similarly mediocre results.

I believe the “recovery” is still five years off.  What do you think?





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