reflections on a post-thanksgiving dinner:

i had the opportunity to have a couple drinks and dinner this evening with a good friend, her fiancée, two of her sisters, a mutual friend, and a few other friends in the crowd. sifting through the details of the evening, i finally happened across the topic of importance as i sat quietly observing my surroundings: i did not belong. it was not the lack of intellect, it was not the lack of class, nor the lack of the care of the people around me; it was that i simply to not fit with the "independence" and capabilitty of savoring the higher cost joys without finding the sum in the background dwindling, diminishing significantly, maybe a more accurate word would be noticeably.

i cannot blame them for accepting a challenge placed by peers and the predecessors of peers, nor can i say that the luxuries should not be enjoyed. what i can say is that i really no longer have a place in the festivities of a voluptuous bacus and her rowdy entourage. what was once a place that i belong without any doubt, has now become the figure that casts a shadow over my corner of the table. bacus now appears to have slimmed greatly, becoming a near anarexic shadow of the lover who prostituted herself to the mortgage of a man.

past "lives" have offered me events hosted and attended by only the elite, being a guest of distinction at one, a simple wall flower at another, and at best a buzzing fly for a third. a question comes to mind: what story is it that age then begins to tell? is it the same story of a progress toward "greatness" that just doesn't fit without the tight confines of the über elite? or just finally being able to recognize where it is that one actually fits within these crowds and mini-classes? the reflections of this evening bring me closer to a moment of understanding an "artists" discomfort with the world of "fine" things when those things are not something that should be so easily attainable for such a short period of time.

they are the shadows of the ghosts of what could have been at that moment, under different circumstances and with different influences. born to more over-worldly pleasures, and distanced from more grounded, simple joy. how long can you belong to something that cannot possibly imagine you within it before it recognizes your presence and spits you out the rubbish discharge, trash not dissimilar to the worn cog, that always refused to fit properly wearing the edges of its own cogs, as well as the cogs that tried hopelessly to fit against it, and finally being chewed and spit by the machine for which it was supposed to be a functional part?

not really a relevent photo