PART 32

I don’t want to wake up and complain, but it really is rare to get paid to do what you love. Every podcast or GQ artical with a successful musician or architect or actor or rock climber contains the words, “Do what you love.” As if there are not MILLIONS of other people out there who tried to do the exact same thing as they’re doing, but just didn’t get lucky. They weren’t at the station the particular second that one lucky train pulled up and said, “All aboard you dreamers! Destiny awaits! And a book deal to boot!”

AND if everyone was out climbing mountains… who would pave the streets. If everyone was a poet… who would run telephone lines? If everyone owned a vintage printing press… who would bury our dead? If everyone was exactly what they wanted to be… who would take care of everything else? Chaos. Mayhem. Extravagant tragedy. Elaborate failure. A mass opulence of the horrific.

I’m looking in the paper with my red pen. Dark coffee steaming against the widow. Black clock ticking on the wall. I find the ad:

WANTED:

We’re looking for a bright, late twenties, pessimist who doesn’t actually waste his pessimism. His eye sight should be getting slightly worse and must have a propensity to doodle dark creatures on any piece of junk mail in his vicinity.  Bad dancer, but quick on his feet. Clever, but doesn’t get in the way of a good idea. An allergic lover of black cats. A weak memory. An interested disposition. A vain reader. An understander of the human disposition. Reply immediately by fax with your blood type and most recent brain scan. Don’t think. Just go.