119. Freeze Frame

There’s a point in some mornings, or whenever I wake up, at which I’m conscious, but haven’t yet remembered what all I have to worry about. I lie there, content with myself, until I realize there’s something I’m supposed to be doing, or something I wish I had done.

The moment before stepping on the stage is sometimes like that. Not the long minutes standing in the wings, just the one moment on the threshold between waiting for it and actually doing it.

Many times I’ve tried to write a song about that moment, that feeling, but they never quite come out right.

It’s that moment though, when I feel whole, that convinces me I could be. Whole. Happy. And not to give up.

I slept late. I’d gone to sleep at only two but when I climbed out of bed, the end of the day was already happening. Golden sunset light came under my door from the hallway and the sky outside my windows was deep blue.

Doctor Moondog pronounced a case of exhaustion, maybe drinking too much. I didn’t feel great. Not wrecked, but not great.

I lay there in that gap of time, looking at the last of the golden glow, and almost reached down for my crotch to prolong that feeling into whatever fantasy I could conjure.

But my stomach suddenly hurt and my hands went cold when I thought about what I had ahead of me: a talk with Ziggy I knew would be a struggle no matter how it seemed to go, and a talk with Bart I’d tried to play in my mind hundreds of times but never liked the outcome of.

I wished I could go back to sleep.

Instead I called Bart’s answering machine and asked him to come over.

Then I called Ziggy’s–but hung up when it came time to speak. I just didn’t know what to say.

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