What If I Took A Hiatus And No One Cared?

I suppose that would be the ultimate feeling of liberation. That I work my way back from notorious fame to blessed obscurity. So that I'm able to step out on a morning and fling a dead mouse to the road without paparazzi and hangers-on worrying whether it was a 10 or just a nine.

There aren't really any paparazzi of course. Just a little joke on my part. I guess that means something, that through it all, in everything I've suffered through here I'm able to laugh again. A chuckle anyway. Who knows? Maybe I'll get everything back and will be able to chuckle everyday. I can almost see myself. Let's say I get everything back. Then I'm smiling, chuckling, laughing.

Just as I stood in the middle of the half acre in proud, fist-shaking defiance, it could happen that I could stand there and laugh myself silly. Picture it with me, if you will. The rain is streaming down. I'm looking toward the west at the deadly lightning. I'm laughing up a storm. Finally I collapse to my knees, laughing, oblivious to everything around, knowing that nothing means anything. I'm just completely lost in this body shaking, lightning-defying laughter.

I think I've got quite a ways to go to get to that. I've never done it in my life yet, to tell the truth. And I have a hard time seeing why I'd do it now precisely. But there's something of liberation, the sense of being totally cut free in it that sounds appealing on the surface. But then what? See, that's always my hang up. So I'm standing there, collapsed, totally laughing. What? Do I just stay there wallowing in the mud? What happens when the laughter stops? Do I keep fake laughing all night? Do I fall asleep laughing? I'm going to wake up sooner or later with mud caked on my face. Maybe I'll drown first. Or do I stop mid-storm, go inside and get dried off, sit in the chair and read movie magazines? Grandma goes, "What you been doin'?" And I'm all muddy faced, going, "Oh, nothin'." That seems like a let down.

Nothing about it sounds right. But I should wait till something remotely like that happens to worry about it.

I've taken the hiatus, that's a fact. And just like laughing in the rain, I wonder what to do with it next? It's true that people did care for a while, but they're all gone. All I have to that phase of my life are the memories. The blog "followers" -- Judases each one -- all left. They kissed me off faster than a boy with his portly aunt with the small whiskers. All my "friends" are off on a tangent somewhere, I don't know. I hope they get stuck in quicksand. If there are any quagmires like that near where they live. Life would be so much better if quicksand had a mind of its own.