I Remain The Same

I realize that this is probably only interesting to me, focusing upon my taxi navel but it appears to be a permanent change.  As I alluded to in my last posting, I have had enough of taxi.  Why it is so clear now as to two weeks previous  I can't say other than it is all about accumulation.  The dam is broken and my living room is flooded.  It is impossible to ignore the river trout swimming in the bath tub.  Or responding to our incredible local deluge yesterday, I am wet to the bone, the damp penetrating my essential core.  So this is my reality, this is my dilemma.  All that remains is my response.  Do I accelerate my books in progress, a novel known to me as "Flat Tire" and my partial childhood memoir, "To Age Thirteen" or do I just remain floating in the taxi morass while progressively sinking inch by inch beneath the debris?  I know the answer and I will take it.  My third unofficial job, that as local taxi advocate, has to be jettisoned.  I said as much during lunch today with two local officials.  I will slowly disentangle myself from my various commitments and by the end of my current term  upon the advisory commission I will call it quits.  Hopefully in the interval a small miracle will occur in terms of a book advance or something similar.  Because of course I am also ready to completely end all participation with driving.  This weekend the local driving environment became nonsensical, with enough serious close-calls to last a life time.  That my life could have suddenly terminated was clear.  Drivers were beyond anything that could be termed responsible or reasonable or rational.  It was madness. I saw the momentum building, finally translating into horrible accidents blocking rain slicked roads throughout the city.  Neither do I wish to be either participant or witness. So that is the long and short and the everything in between of it.  Sooner or later I will be resigning and this should be considered my letter of resignation, however convoluted my statement might ultimately seem.  Merit is only gained when there is nothing left to lose, or phasing it another way, when winning appears inconsequential and defeat is a misplaced victory.  I think Robert Zimmerman sang something to that efffect.

 Taxi has given me much. What both an insane and invaluable experience it has been.  I feel I have been a good and attentive student. Yogananda spoke of parallel simultaneous worlds and numberless planes of existence. As Jim Morrison advised, it appears to be time "to break on through to the other side!" I am certainly ready for a major transition to somewhere else with memory today taking me back to a much earlier time. I had just turned seventeen and I am hitchhiking from Denver to Seattle in early winter 1971.  Waiting for a ride in Hot Sulphur Springs, Colorado a young newly married couple in a big Cadillac picks me up and off we fly into the night, their sole compilation eight-track tape serenading us as we averaged 100 mph all of the way to the Mohave desert city of Lancaster, California.  The Doors were "breaking through" and the Electric Prunes were reminding me that "I had too much to dream" that night but I was wide awake as we flew through Utah and Nevada.  Maybe I too in this instance have awakened from a twenty-five year long dream world.  Where the hell am I! as I examine the room around me.  I have nothing against Washington Irving but I suppose it is past time being a taxi Rip Van Wrinkle.  Fables are fine as long as they remain literary mythology.  Incorporating fairy tales into everyday life reminds one quickly that prince or princesses rarely kiss the frog no matter how melodious your croaking.  Too often I have awakened from a taxi nap not believing where I am. Is this really Kirkland, Washington?  How could all this be possible but there can be no fooling around this time.  I know where I am!  Though Halloween is nearly upon us I have no interest in further legends springing from drowsy hollows.  That notwithstanding I sometimes act or believe otherwise, this is not fictional.  This is me  and only me living my life and I intend to get something constructive completed  in the actual here and now; and that folks, is the entire story and chapter and verse for this particular evening. Autumn has arrived, the leaves are rapidly turning but tonight I am pretending it is late spring transitioning into summer. Why it is 1969 and for the very first time I have flowers growing in my hair.