Go Outside & Drive

I've been reading a lot of good stuff lately, like Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius, and it had me wanting to write something deep and important - something about my generation's apparent fear of anonymity, as displayed in all the various ways we've found to make our private lives as public as possible. (yes, like this weblog.)

But then I turned on my radio and it was Blues Traveler! An old favorite song, from my all-time favorite album, a song which anyone who isn't a fan won't have heard of, because most people aren't nearly as familiar with Blues Traveler as they ought to be. So, for everyone's enrichment, and because it happens to be very appropriate to my life at this moment, here's the song. The other stuff can wait.

Go Outside And Drive

I've really got to clean up my room, you know it's been so long since I've seen my floor. It's getting kind of scary, in fact I suspect that when I finally clear away, I won't know it anymore. And we'll have grown so far apart from those early days with a fresh new start. So in the end it won't matter at all, so why should I bother with the rise and the fall? So I quietly lay back down and watch TV.

But these are the things we tell ourselves,
eventual stories designed to amuse.
It's a game we play, and we play it well.
In fact we're so damn good that we try to lose,
so we can keep hiding, so we can survive,
and keep on believing someday we'll go outside and drive.

I have resolved not to leave my house till my floor comes back and my room is clean. So I'm really kind of glad that my TV's here, while I concoct my plan to fulfill my dream. Now won't that be wonderful when I'll finally be done? I just can't wait for it, then I'll start to have fun! It's getting hard lately to concentrate, all my appointments canceled cause I'm horribly late. You know, I think I need a prison in order to dream of being free.

But these are the things we tell ourselves,
eventual stories designed to amuse.
It's a game we play, and we play it well.
In fact we're so damn good that we try to lose,
so we can keep hiding, so we can survive,
and keep on believing someday we'll go outside and drive.

Now weeks have gone by and my room's not done, in fact I could say that it's gotten much worse. Old Chinese food and ravioli cans amongst the crumpled letters, the mood's quite perverse. But I got a new TV with a remote control. Styrofoam and instructions fill that hole where I once cleared a path, where I once blazed a trail to the bathroom, but I fear that a nail is buried there now, and I step very rarely and try not to get out of bed.

You know, tomorrow I'll get up and I'll walk out that door, and life will return to the way that it was. But I think I'm getting sick, I better give it a day. It mustn't be the flu, but it usually does. So I'll sit right here till I'm old and gray, I need my rest, after all I'm wasting away. And I just saw a cockroach crawl out of my sneaker. I think he's biding his time till I get somewhat weaker.

Things could still work out for me as long as I'm not...dead.

But these are the things we tell ourselves,
eventual stories designed to amuse.
It's a game we play, and we play it well.
In fact we're so damn good that we try to lose,
so we can keep hiding, so we can survive,
and keep on believing someday we'll go outside and drive.
We're gonna go outside and drive!
I'm still alive!
Is it sunny or is it raining? I wonder if it's light outside?
What's it like outside?