Day 9

October 28, 2007
People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within.
Ramona Anderson

Sunday Night Pathos

Sunday night is the most dangerous night for a serious drinker. On the weekend the bars are packed and you can blend in with everyone else, but on Sundays the dust has settled and the line between the amateur and the professional is clearly drawn.

Sunday night drinking is all about dread. After a weekend of drinking the sense of guilt one feels is spectacular, and to make matters worse the pending doom of a new week of work hangs over you like a dark cloud. A weekend of serious drinking leaves your body in physical pain from dehydration, poor sleep, and the inexplicable injuries that all drinkers know too well. The bind here is tremendous. One option is to sit and live through the punishment you have inflicted on yourself. This will be the longest day of your life. Simply leaving the house is a tremendous chore, and what food you can eat will be only for temporary comfort. Time will come to a virtual standstill, and you will become overwhelmed by a sense of your own inferiority.

Or..... You can go to a bar and find some of your own kind to share the load with. This is not drinking for pleasure but drinking for relief. Relief from your filthy home and relief from your filthy thoughts and relief from your filthy life.

I've always been partial to jazz bars on Sunday nights. The dark poetry of the saxophone cuts through me like a knife, and it is strangely cathartic to let this music overwhelm you. Much of this music was written by people in pain. Much of any music is written by people in pain. So it is with great trepidation that I walk into my local bar and sit down. I walk over to the jukebox and look for some money to play a song. I select Neil Young's "Unknown Legend" and sit down, hoping the waitress won't see me for a while. I select this song because it reminds me of how a person may have alternate lives. I have an alternate life in mind for myself, but I don't know exactly where the road forked. Where should I have zigged when I should have zagged? I can't picture where that life might have gone, and I have a very unclear picture of where this one is going to go. All the same I am strangely comforted by hearing the song. Luckily the waitress was too busy to wait on me and I am able to finish the song without a drink. As I walk slowly to the door I see a man and we lock eyes and slowly nod in each other's direction. It's likely we have met before, perhaps even had an in-depth conversation, but for tonight we are strangers and this makes me happy. I turn and exit the bar. Having escaped, just barely. Cleansed of my iniquities for tonight and thinking about different realities.