Surrounded

It is amazing at the amount of day to day chores that pile up when you have been drunk for almost two whole days. Where in the blue fuck did all this trash come from? Why are all of my clothes dirty? Has anyone ever run a dust rag over this joint before? Perhaps I should pay more attention to household chores, and less money to my barkeep. But, it has been a rough week, and it certainly isn't looking to get any brighter anytime soon. You see I am surrounded, surrounded by people with whom I share some fundamental differences with. They have every doorway covered, and there is a bunch of them. There is, thankfully, only one me. They're going to get me eventually, one day I will zig instead of zag, and poof! There I go like morning mist when the sun comes up, I will be gone. I am not delusional enough to believe that I will be missed for any considerable length of time. If I was younger, stronger, and more clever, I might give them a run for their money, but even as I write this another birthday is only a week away. Another year of wear and tear, in which I got older, slower, and dumber, making myself an even easier target. Eventually the number of them needed to surround me will begin to dwindle, not because they are getting weaker, but because they will need fewer people to keep me in line. None of us can win the battle with the years. The years pile up like dirty laundry (have I mentioned I hate laundry?), but you can not throw them in the wash, and have them come out smelling fresh and being clean. Nor can you tumble dry them low, and have all the wrinkles magically disappear. The years do not stop, they are merciless, and uncaring. Not even the 296 men and women that I call my heroes can stop them. Most of them have yielded to the years already, the remainder will eventually. It is a dead cert, much like Spain underachieving in the World Cup, it is inevitable. And so, we try not to make any sudden moves lest someone get hurt, but looking out and seeing yourself surrounded can be demoralizing. And morale is important it helps keep the natives from getting restless, and nobody wants restless natives. Rimbaud once wrote that "I is someone else", and a lot of people have pondered what the hell he meant by that. I am far from being an expert, and my scholarly days have long since passed, but maybe "I" needs to be someone else. Perhaps instead of "acting" our lives, we should "direct" them. Write the script instead of reading, or memorizing it. After all, "I" is the only real thing we, with our limited knowledge of any possible afterlife, can rely upon. Maybe if we direct our lives we truly make "I" someone else, and from that new, and novel vantage point clarity can be found. The changed angle might be the best thing for us, or it might horrify us so badly that we never return to the directors chair, but stay trapped in the "I." Frozen in stasis for the remainder of our day, terrified by what we saw, or perhaps what we didn't see. I am quite sure this is not as simple a task as I would like to think, and before I can yell "action" I need to yell "cut!" After all, I have laundry to do.