A brief tear in the fabric of denial...

Rewind to Saturday night.

Standing in the basement bar, with the fine music ("She lives in my lap"), tall long island ice teas in hand, surrounded by hot clientele, but nonetheless my mind was far from where I was in the moment.

How can it be that on a night where all circumstances, environment, ambience and climate appear so conducive to oblivion, I still felt so distant?

Nothing could move or animate me. Not even the presence of my closest friend and confidante, nor the unexpected presence of an obscure object of infatuation from a remote period in the mid-nineties.

A couple of days' rumination has spawned a sparse theory - maybe this sense of the vacuousness of the moment was a revelation. A spontaneous, unsolicited confrontation with the dystopia of which I am in constant denial. A revelation of wastage, at the most inopportune moment - I'm wasting myself, my youth and the meagre talents bestowed by nature in her unforgiving mockery.

That night, as I left and made my way home early, a cut from the film Raising Arizona dropped into my head and decided to squat for a while. Utterly incongruous to the milieu, but it invaded my mind, and felt sorely relevant:

PAROLE BOARD ROOM

Hi faces the same three PAROLE OFFICERS across the same table.

CHAIRMAN
Well Boy, you done served your twenty
munce, and seeing as you never use
live ammo, we got no choice but to
return you to society.

SECOND MAN
These doors goan swing wide.

HI
I didn't want to hurt anyone, Sir.

SECOND MAN
Hi, we respect that.

CHAIRMAN
But you're just hurtin' yourself
with this rambunctious behavior.

HI
I know that, sir.

CHAIRMAN
Okay then.