Does it suit me?
Wherein our narrator gets a bit neurotic about
bespoke clothing, but a phone call spares him.
It's 2:39 PM on Monday afternoon, and I'm on the
train bound back to Sydney from Epping. A short day today because I have to go
into town to get my suit fitted. At least, I hope that's what I get to do.
They said they'd call, but so far I haven't gotten any messages. Which is
making me a bit worried. On Saturday I had a picnic in Hyde Park with Bernard
(my landlord), his girlfriend Heather (from SF, recently arrived), James &
Connor, and a few other assorted Sydneysiders. We were directly opposite Second
Skin (the bespoke clothing store), so I decided to drop in and check how things
were going. Fine, just fine, they said. Probably be around 3:30 or 4 PM on
Monday, when we can do the fitting. Great, I said, I'd be by. Hence why I'm on
the train right now, riding into
downtown.
And now I get to be neurotic.
What if my suit isn't done? What do I do? I do have other clothes that I can
wear in a pinch, but nothing with the panache that will be transmitted by that
power suit. I'll get by, but the whole point of blowing AUD $1200 on a suit was
to have something completely captivating to wear at SPAA.
For the moment, I can only sit and
worry.
The last few days have been a
flurry of activity. Yesterday I sat before my computer and wrote my SPAA talk -
all 5000 words of it - in just about 4 hours. While that's prodigious output -
even for me - it's also enough to put me in pain. I get an RSI from long hours
on the keyboard, and as the evening wore on, I realized that I was sore in just
that space along the back of my neck and upper back that caused me so much
trouble the day I wrote 13,000 words on
The Playful
World. I couldn't write for four days, and
spent two of them lying on my back, prone in bed, just waiting for time to pass.
The problem is, I never think about it at the time. When I'm in the
flow,
man, I don't interrupt it to get up and stretch or relax or whatever. I just
sit and work and work and work till it's done. Four hours doesn't seem long -
and I even took a few minutes to cook myself lunch - but doing the same thing,
over and over, for that length of time, leaves a
mark.
On the upside, the SPAA talk is
one of the better I've written It's tight, it's concise, and it's a little bit
evil. In the grand tradition of cult initiations, brainwashing, boot-camp and
EST, it's broken into two half. In the first half I work as hard as I can to
break the ego of the listeners. In the second half I fill them with my version
of the truth. If it comes off as planned, I'll be hailed as the prescient voice
of new media in Australia. If it fails, they'll probably just label me a
pretentious Yank and leave it
there.
(Ah, success! Second Skin
just called. All is in readiness.
Whee!)
And in the talk, I say all sorts
of very ungenerous things about my own country which will certainly earn me
kudos here, but I'm wondering if I might be arrested under Patriot Act
violations when I return? I do, in a roundabout way, compare George W. Bush to
Mussolini. Is that treason? Is it a crime? Who can say anymore? What kind of
world are we living in where I trust another country's free speech protections
more than I trust my own? Is America turning into a banana republic, a
third-world plutocracy, a Haiti?
In
some ways, Australia is looking more and more
attractive.
Here's the thing: if I do
give my talk a proper delivery on Wednesday morning, it's the best shot I can
possibly provide toward finding another gig in Australia. If they hear me, if
they hear the intelligence and intensity and sense behind my words, they should
know that I'm available to help them - at the appropriate rate, of course - on
their own projects. I'm just wondering if I'm canny enough to translate a good
talk into a good gig. I don't normally think in those terms; either I overshoot
the mark by being too aggressive, or fail to follow-through and fall short.
That's the story of my life, the reason I'm not a wealthy man. It's not for
lack of talent. It's for lack of accuracy. Somehow I don't seem to have the
gene for business. I'm too busy thinking crazy thoughts or chasing my own
windmills. Some of those windmills are interesting to others, but many are not,
just my private musings on the world. The joy comes in those moments when I can
cross those distinct paths, and share my musings with folks who might care.
Which is why I greatly enjoy the entheogen conference
circuit.
But back to where I am now: in
order to stick around, I'll need to come across as the indispensably wise
adviser. I don't know if these folks can use talent like that - or, if they
can, can pay for it - but perhaps some combination of events will play in favor,
and maybe, just maybe, this could be the start of something new. I am feeling a
bit chameleon-like, wanting to change color, adapt to new surroundings. Already
I'm growing visibly thinner (day 5 on Atkins), healthier (no smokes, swimming
700m Saturday, YAY ME!) doing everything I can to change the outside, with yoga
and the Tradition to work on the inside. Perhaps I'm at Mark Pesce 9.0, to use
Rob Reid's phraseology, ready to release a new
version.
We'll know soon enough.
Posted: Mon - November 17, 2003 at 03:02 PM