I was in this cute little city by the mountains hanging out with a friend and having a great time. Except that taxes were due and I got a new laptop and I was running a little low on money. I worked a couple days at the local club. It was charming, but it left a lot to be desired in the money department. On my third day there were only two customers there about ten o’clock, and I was dutifully sitting with the older one using all my charm and sales skills when the new girl came over and told me my phone was ringing like crazy in the dressing room. It was one of my favorite stripper friends. She was at one of our favorite clubs (a booking type club,which I normally don’t do, but this club is good enough that I chain myself to the paper schedule) annd… someone had called out for that week, did I want their booking? Hell yeah! So I started driving.
I am absolutely certain that it is very unnatural for humans to be hurtling through space at 70 mph enclosed in a couple tons of steel. Fortunately this knowledge and the anxiety it produces usually fade away and after a couple hours I find myself comfortably hurtling along, cheerful in my denial just like everyone else. I like to drive in silence, so I can hear my own thoughts and what’s going on around me. A few years ago I started to feel like the radio was stealing my conciousness. I mean that quite literally – all we have for sure is the present moment, and when you are focused on/experiencing something than in that moment that something is who you are. I don’t need to worry about some womans top falling off at a football game. It has nothing to do with me and very little chance of affecting the world we all live in, but the last time I was listening to the radio they were talking about that womans top falling off and her nipple being pierced, and those are moments of my conciousness that I’ll never get back. I started to feel the same way about pop music after a while, so now I mostly only listen to music I want to listen to, and usually only after I’ve been driving for a couple days and my natural thinking processes have been hypnotized away by the road. Then I listen to Susan Grace and Rose Polenzani.
Anyways. I drove seven hundred miles and got here just in time to mail my taxes, take a shower, eat some very yummy veggies that my friend made me while I was driving, and arrive at the club half an hour late.
So true about the radio. And the TV. And the internet. I’m struggling, fighting for my conscience tooth and nail. It’s tough.