Completely in the Dark

Oh, to be so certain you know what you desire, and how you will go about getting it.

Or maybe you’re in the other camp: you let the world “happen” to you. That way there’s no responsibility for your actions and their consequences.

Lemme explain. Here I am, early December 2011. I’m reading the past and taking the temperature of the present: on the cold side, quiet and solitary. I’m unhappy. I feel stuck, uninspired, unloved, unmotivated—and I’ve been here before. Things could be happening, warming up, heading in a new direction. Or, maybe, that warmer place I want to be is the place I’m already at—I’m just not able to see it yet.

That’s an accurate distillation of the fall and winter of 1976. Sure, a new school year had just started, but so many things were stalling: the ambiguous “relationship” with Linda, the grind of the busboy…