Decisive Avoidance
He was trying to decide between the train and the bus or the renting of a car. He wasn't sure exactly what time his meeting would be over or whether or not it would snow, which as he saw it were two important factors in determining his mode of travel. If he got out of the meeting early enough to beat or be on the easy side of rush hour it might be preferable to drive as it allowed the most autonomy, albeit at the expense of having to be awake and in charge of his destiny, where to turn, how fast to go, what to look at, when to pass and when to sit back, and which radio station to listen to. Under ideal conditions and with aggressive driving style it was possible to make the trip between Philly and New York in an hour and a half. There were any number of people he could talk to at the business meeting who could make the quick drive claim, some shaving off enough minutes to imply that under their suits they wore another suit emblazoned with the letter S. If he didn't pull away at times to go to the bathroom or make a phone call or pretend he was doing one or the other, he could be stuck listening to a preposterous geometric progression of braggadocio that led to any variety of grotesque and vainglorious chest puffing behavior, all of it eventually ending with a group of, mostly men, staring blankly forward, at walls or each other, realizing that again they have gone too far too fast. Excuse me I need to take this call, and retreat. The drive could also under not ideal conditions take four hours or more.
If it snowed, well then, the only thing he could think to say about that was crapshit. Onto every life a little snow must fall, sure, but man, crapshit and holy hell, why me, why now, why oh why Lord does it all have to happen to me? He found sometimes that a short bout of controlled histrionics helped him to calm down and think straight if not fly right. In this case however he felt every bit as confused after the histrionics as before and so moved directly to plan B which not to oversimplify included the aggressive handling of a matter by putting it out of your mind.
You could then jump ahead two or more steps and be at the conclusion or on the other side of whatever pesky problem lay in front of you. In this case he saw himself already flown from Chicago to the Philadelphia meeting and surviving that somehow transported to Manhattan where he sat now inside at an establishment of haute gastronomy imagining not only what he would order and drink and how much but what he would say. Hey, (and here he winked across the table at his old college buddy even though winking was not something he was especially trained at) is it haute enough for you? he might say before staring down protectively at his silverware to avoid getting in his eyes the ensuing laughter fueled projectile spew of alcohol and ice. The college buddy's girlfriend would think him charming and would engage him in all manner of interesting conversation to further distract him from the possible catastrophic consequences inherent to his skipping through time without a hall pass. But so far this skipping of the precursory was ok, just being forward in time and avoiding all the necessary preparations, it could work. And in this world which did not yet but very well may exist he could find little to complain about excepting perhaps not so much the size of the portions but that his college buddy would not share his glycerin injected rabbit jowl mousse fricassee. Though, this too was fine, in this world or another, as long as the buddy and the girlfriend laughed at his moose fricassee jokes, of which he had plenty.
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