Fun

" 'Cause I'm sick of life, yeah it's easy to do, when everything so hard has been handed to you, yeah I'm sick of life, 'cause it's lost it's fun, I'll see you in the next world, if there is really one."

John Mellencamp  -   "A Graceful Fall"

See if you identify. I don't have a lot of fun in my life. The damn thing rolls along, I go to work, I come home, clean the kitty litter box and watch True Detectives. Go to bed, get out of bed, go to work, come home, wash some dishes, watch House of Cards and go to bed.

Fortunately I have a lovely wife to come home to. We have peaceful nights. Easy conversations born of 36 years of co-habitation. 36 years of beating back life as best we could to get to this comfortable place.

And that ain't no small thing. I spend the entire day fighting back the urge to kill many of the people I work with. Carrying around a New Hampshire State Liquor Commission approved box cutter and indulging in wild dreams of severing jugular veins.

And creating new and unique art in blood on the walls of The Asylum.

Carol has these urges too. She doesn't carry a box cutter but she could bludgeon certain enemies to oblivion with a box filled with computer paper. Or maybe inflict fatal wounds with a tastefully designed letter opener. Or flatten somebody in the parking lot with The Peace Mobile.

It is a relief to come home to what passes for zen in our unenlightened lives. Although I am beginning to believe that gaining enlightenment happens naturally as life weaves it's unpredictable course. Carol in some ways is more enlightened than I. But I'm getting there.

But I digress.

Whatever we have, wherever we are at, it provides great solace. Immense satisfaction and a sense of safety and warmth and a natural flow, a connection with life essence.

I wouldn't call it fun in the kicking up your heels, oh boy ain't this a hoot sense of the word.

Fun is that thing that gets your adrenaline flowing. It distracts you from life, actually makes you forget about how small life can be and brings you back alive.

Fun could very well be the key to survival. To longevity.

The human spirit did not evolve to bow to the agenda of a less intelligent, soulless, self serving boss. The human spirit did not evolve to be crushed by routine. Punch in, punch out, yes sir, no sir, way to fucking go sir.

Fun happens until obligations come around. Then we bow our heads for forty years and hope to live long enough and accumulate enough cash to reignite fun when we finally flip the bird to the work-a-day world.

I don't have that kind of patience.

There is this thing we call spring. It comes around on March 21 or March 20, depending on how long you have been around. Spring sprang on March 21 for my entire life until some  brainiac decided it actually begins on March 20.

Just one more of those things cast in stone that is really not cast in stone. And people wonder why we have a sense of impermanence, why we are all antsy and unable to establish a concrete base.

Cool things become available in spring, the best of which is outdoor concerts. Big ones, little ones, local ones, and those that require planning.

Eating outdoors, both at barbecue home and in outdoor cafes. Outdoor marketplace type thingies and celebrations of all kinds.

You can take walks. You can listen to birds. You can go see a movie at a cool place like Red River Theatres and grab a drink on the sidewalk afterwards at some funky joint.

I am going to participate in every single one of these things this spring and summer and I am going to drag my lovely wife with me. I will try to incorporate friends and my sons and their women and my brother into as much of it as I can.

In other words - we are going to have fun.

The blood is going to flow freely and the mind is going to be stimulated. Smiles (remember those?) will erupt in abundance. There will be a sense of abandonment. A sense of just being.

Life will serve us instead of the other way around.

My goal is to pursue fun like an addict.

Which I am. I am addicted to fun. I believe in it and in it's life extending and therapeutic effects.

Somehow I have let that die. Maybe even killed it.

But I am still standing and surrounded by loving, sensitive people who are fun in and of themselves, and who can only hyper-accentuate my indulgence in this thing called fun.

Fight back, people. Don't let drudgery imprison you. Work around it's edges, undermine it. Send it the message that even though you are owned and commanded by drudgery for a good chunk of every day and every week and every year and every decade, there is still a part of you that is fiercely human that longs to cry out in exultation and sweet release.

Let's band together in fun this spring and summer and shake the foundations of the scum who condescendingly laugh at us as they pull the strings.

Let's reclaim our humanity.