Mentalechoes

Once I got home I realised I wasn't going to sleep for a while so I turned on the TV and stereo and put on a dvd. It was Planet Terror by Robert Rodriguez, I was in the mood for some serious gore and over acting bullshit to match my attitude. As the film got going, I decided to ply myself with whiskey shots from my Glennfiddich bottle that was still mostly full and sitting quietly begging to be used. The blood splattered, the whiskey flowed, and a couple more lines got done. At some point before the end credits, the whiskey won in the fight for my consciousness and knocked me out cold on the couch. And it was there I found myself several hours later, with the dvd start page on repeat at high volume, and my head feeling pretty much like it was going to explode at any second.

Hangovers when you're 22 are hard things to cope with, but hangovers when you're in your late 30's are cruel vicious bastards that hurt twice as bad, because you should know better than to get one in the first place! So there I lay, for the next few hours sipping water and watching movies trying to get myself together so I could go and get some food.

It was at some point in the early afternoon that I realised The Shark (my red fiets [pushbike] named in honour of the fireapple red cadillac convertable Hunter S Thompson drove in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) had a flat tyre and that I wasn't going to get anywhere without that being fixed. My head had subsided to a dull throb, that kind of pulsating rhythmic pain that feels like it's in tune with your heartbeat, but could be coped with as long as I didn't over exert myself, or have to deal with a bout of constipation in the toilet. I grabbed the puncture repair kit, a bucket of water, the tyre pump and my sony walkman, and headed outside to The Shark to get the poor baby sorted out.

On my walkman I had a DJ set playing by Buren and Lieskowkski, with this one track, a remix of "When We Were Young" by The Killers, which is one of my favourite progressive electronic tunes. The rest of the world was drowned out as I turned my bike over and began stripping the inner tube out from the tyre to find the leak. It became a practice in meditation at some point, the slow methodical movements, with the uninterrupted lulling melody in my ears. I found myself taking great pleasure in the exercise, and the simplicity of the actions. I realised that this was a microcosm of life; simplicity in our every day lives and simplicity in our actions is what gives the greatest pleasure, this way we can experience pleasure every day, and not have to wait for some future moment for it. I smiled at the people in the bus stop opposite from where I was working and felt very satisfied with being outside on a cool autumn day.

All told it took about an hour to fix the bike, as I wasn't in a hurry and I was enjoying taking it easy. By the end of it my headache had passed and I was feeling up for a ride to get some food as chronic hunger was setting in, and I badly wanted something to eat. Maybe a nice turkish pizza with meat would be the go. Picking up my stuff, I felt good, and had a sense of peace, though I knew me and the whiskey bottle would be making our aquantance again sometime later. But I swore it would be different than last night. I always did! Maybe one of these days, it will be!

Padwanna!

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