To Breath Free Air

Operation GTFO has a timetable now. An anonymous hope-donor has given me the vague possibility of living rent-free in the KC area until I get established, and I even have a more-or-less guaranteed part-time job lined up at around that same time (working with Herr Vogler, for he is wise and kind). That’s extremely good, but the down side is that it can’t happen until late November. So now I’m job-searching in two cities (again), constantly tantalized by possible futures that are always in motion. It’s so possible, yet timing continues to screw me.

I spoke with the K-Man, whose contract as church music director expires in one year. From time to time, we talk about what he might do next, and I always half-jokingly tell him to look for work out here in Missouri. Well, it’s not a half-joke anymore. By this time next year, maybe the two of us will be roommates in Kansas City, playing Frisbee at Loose Park. It’s one possible future. Possible. It’s possible. It’s possible.

I officially can’t bear to live here anymore. Every time I turn around, my sister-in-law verbally ambushes me with things that are atrociously presumptuous, not to mention conveniently impossible to disprove. She is convinced beyond any shadows of doubt that I possess every character flaw in the book, that everything that has even gone wrong is my own damn fault (I didn’t know I single-handedly caused the mortgage crisis that laid me off and flooded the market with insurmountable competition for jobs). She is convinced that essentially I am someone I’m not, convinced in all the worst and most hurtful ways. It doesn’t help that she’s so Goddamn vociferous about it, either. There is simply no changing her mind on the matter anymore.

So I guess one of two things will happen: either I will find local work by then and they can get off my back, or I will be out of their hair entirely by moving to KC and scrambling to find a second part-time job. Either way, my family relations have been stretched to their limits. No need to analyze it for you. You have your own dysfunctions to worry about, I’m sure. The damage is already done, and I think only my sister “Starbuck” doesn’t resent me. Gotta love family.

Every minute, in the back of my mind, I fantasize about being able to live alone again, across that vast and glorious buffer space, where I can get off work and go train karate with people whose respect and camaraderie I’ve damn well earned through years of hardcore discipline (of course, I’m in horrible shape now). I fantasize about the taste of a fine, bourbon-dipped cigar on a cold and still winter’s night. I fantasize about raising goblets with Dean and Brad. It’s not that I’m the master of my own unhappiness because I refuse to make St. Louis work for me; it’s that I have to escape the here and now to that “someday” when I can breath free air, and right now Kansas City offers a glimmer of hope. And I had given up on Kansas City until this option presented itself. I tried to make St. Louis work for me. I tried. Maybe Kansas City can work out after all, but it’ll be a good year before I’m in a comfortable position, and that’s speaking optimistically. It’s possible. It’s possible, but the timing is far from auspicious.

A fool’s hope is still a hope.