DOWN and OUT of TOWN III... GOAT SONG...

The Goat drove out, showed up at the Salt Mine just before the end of the day, we got the hell out of Dodge for dinner, and then we went back so I could carry the flag and lick the boots of the Visiting Principals, while the Goat stayed in the back of the room, schmoozing whatever low-level minions and hangers-on looked like they needed a dose of conversation. He’s one of those people who can’t let someone get within arm’s length without breaking out with a smile and a greeting; I will, left to my own devices, find the three people in the room I know and cling to them in rotation like a limpet—in the absence of anyone I know, I tend to stay in a corner and pretend I’m a potted plant.

Of course, I’m the person who’s meant to be schmoozing, if only in the interest of parlaying this stroke of luck, this lightning-strike, into something more than a one-time chance at a walk down Memory Lane. I’ve never been able to do it. Schmoozing, that is; walks down Memory Lane come easily enough…

What I have done, at least, is thank all the people who put in a good word for me. And reconnected with people attending the presentations, many of whom I knew back in the day, when we were all starting out. There is the dread asymmetry of their having clawed their way to the top while I seem to been de-clawed and slid relentlessly off the up-slope onto that slippery one, where a move up becomes less likely all the time.

Everyone’s very cordial, everyone's very “nice.” But I am left with the conviction that the train has left the station, and there is no second train, not even a local, that comes in later, to get me back on the tracks, back on track. In short, I think, I am given the peculiar privilege of attending my own funeral service: all the nice things are being said, but there is an air of finality, of nostalgia, of “that was then,” about it all. And I am finding that it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump from nostalgia to the recognition that the past is everything and the future is not just a closed book, which it is to everyone, of course, but in my case, simply… closed.

The Goat, of course, is full of enthusiastic chatter about what this will all lead to, for me. Well, I will be delighted to be proved wrong, even if it means that he is proven right… again. Well, I am feeling a bit low, now that I am coming up on my day off, and the Goat has to leave by 9 am the day I finally have time to spend with him. Because he drove out with a friend who needs to be back at their grindstone before he does.

At this point in my life, you would think I would be used to coming in third place, but I never quite make it. Always longing to be in first place, and never quite making it. And I can't leave home over the issue this time; I don't even have a home to leave...

Some things just stay the same…
or refuse to improve, refuse to approach my idea of how things ought to go...

Hang in there, all. C