Dear Catastrophe Waitress

The name of the album playing on the Pandora stream right now got me thinking.  I've been in a thinking mood most the evening, but it got me thinking on a silly, impersonal way. When I haven't been thinking, I've been reading, mostly.  And I've been mostly ready A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby.  In the book one character brings up Nick Drake as an artist, so I let Pandora acquaint us all day.  Nick died by his own hand, which is what the book is kind of about.  I like his music though, and I bought it today on itunes, wondering at the time where exactly the profits of his sale go.  I also bought music today by Nick Pitera, because I promised myself I'd buy his covers that I had already recorded off of youtube after I got christmas iTunes money.  It's been kind of a Nick day I guess.

So what if there really was a Catastrophe Waitress? I'm thinking like a metaphysical being that appears during tragic occasions, the kind of accidents that people gawk at, maybe a car wreck and maybe just a really bad choice of venue for a "heated discussion".  I don't think the catastrophe waitress would show up to offer service to the victims of the catastrophe, unless waitress was used in a very loose way.  Most catastrophe victims have needs from a very specific and urgent menu.

But what if she showed up among a crowd and asked stunned, dumbfounded people if they would like a drink, or if they needed a minute to look over the menu, and the stunned people just mumbled something incoherently.  Maybe if it was really bad she would return with a watered down cola and they would numbly take it from her.  I don't really see her offering a food menu, no one would look it over anyway.

Or maybe the catastrophe waitress shows up at disaster sites, like when that crane collapsed in House M.D. or that whatever crashed in Grey's Anatomy (I don't watch).  Those emergency workers work themselves to exhaustion, and often will find ways to slip back on the site even if they're ordered to rest.  Maybe she shows up for the food bank and passes around submarines made on the spot and gatorade, to the people who are working or are recovering and have been okayed to drink.  Shock victims are usually very thirsty, I know that much, but you're not supposed to give them water until they've been checked for internal damage.  The Catastrophe Waitress probably knows all about that, she's clearly a professional.

The album artwork that shows up on the Nick Drake album looks a lot like the kind of albums you come up with if you do that game where you take the random article from youtube and the random quote from the quote page to name your band and album and then the random photo from Flickr's photo pool and pretend they're an album.  This little exercise always amused me the first time it went around and I saw another friend do it again yesterday on Facebook.  I meant to save his fake album into my photo album I have up there from the first time around.

A girl named Kayelee told me that only restaurants have restrooms, everywhere else has bathrooms.  I hadn't heard that before and I was impressed with her.  Later on I thought about how they were probably called restrooms in stores too, because they don't have bath tubs in them there either.  It was still interesting to hear, and helped pass an awkward moment while we were at dinner with her boyfriend and her sister.  The dinner was fun though.  Kayelee is engaged now, to that boyfriend, and that's pretty good because he was an alright guy. When I think about my friends in high school, and then picture their alright parents, I can kind of see this guy being like those parents.  Most everybody doesn't turn out to be a somebody except to the people they love the most.  If you've got that down, you can really turn out alright, and even be a good dad.  They say most of it is learned as you go anyway. Good luck Kayelee and Chris, you're on a good track.

The messed up people in A Long Way Down go through a lot of development, but it's believable, and I devoured it like the juiciest pear.  One of the characters reflects that when you're unhappy, all of the things you usually do, you've done while you're unhappy, so even if you're trying to feel better and you go and do some of those things you like doing, they still have unhappiness attached to them.  She thinks that doing the same thing over and over again if you're already unhappy is only going to reinforce how unhappy you are.

One of the other characters is frustrated because he can't understand why he acts the way he does.  Eventually he works out that he needs to figure out what's going on in his head, but the only tool he has to do it with is that same head.  He decides that he needs a second head to figure out what the first one is doing, and since he only has the one, he has to call on the help of others.  It's a pretty straightforward concept, seems obvious, but it was an interesting way to getting around to pointing out that when you're stuck in your own thoughts it takes someone else to help you out.  He decides that's why most people have friends.  I think it's also why we also seek out partners in life, because you can't deal with everything in your own head without someone else to do the sorting out from time to time.   You can pay a counselor I guess, but they're about $60 an hour and are going to want to see you at least four or five times just to figure out where to start. Friends are a lot better because they already know what's going on, and you're going to see them anyway.

It's kind of like the wine I brought to dinner, the cost is the same I'd pay to buy a dinner for myself, but the wine lets everyone enjoy and I'm getting food out of the deal.  When you pool what you have, everyone can come out a little further ahead.  Plus the conversation is better with some wine, even if the late night blog posts are not.

Can't sleep.

I feel like a hamster in a 1' glass cube, sitting in the middle of a field.  Outside of my cube I can see all of the other hamsters running around, occasionally pausing to look in on me and have a little sniff, but mostly just scurrying about gathering all the abundant grains and food.  Occasionally there's a cat that comes by, or some birds fly by.  Sometimes it rains, mostly it's sunny.  In my box I can sleep, I have enough to eat and my waste doesn't pile up, it's not too hot and doesn't get cold, but everything else is outside of the safe little box.  I don't want for the basic necessities, but the greater experiences like exploring, bonding, facing life's challenges are beyond my reach.  Maybe if I was a hamster I'd feel happy.