12/3 Desk

I told Michael I thought we should get the guys together.  He grinned while playing and nodded.  He's been waiting for it for a long time.  I hear the anger in his riffs when people talk about politics in the lounge.  Later he sat next to me at the bar and rolled a couple cigarettes.  "You know you can use this place," he said while fiddling with a cig.  I asked him what the fuck he meant.  "The first American Revolution sprang from taverns.  That's where the ideas percolated.  That's where the ideology and the will formed.  You run a tavern here in a city with major university founded by one of those Revolutionaries."  He pointed the fag at me.  "It's about fucking time you woke up."

I looked down.  I knew what he meant.  Long Ago, we wanted to Change the World.  Twenty years later, the world is sure changed, but we had nothing to do with it.

Or I had nothing to do with it.  I still find it hard to believe that Edward and Harrison, Darren and Jack, George and Bella are happy with the changes.  The guys -- the things we talked about all those days and nights.  George always encouraged us so much in our thinking.  He prodded us to take things farther, follow them deeper, develop or most radical ideas to their logical fullness.  He wasn't doing that so we would further the creation of this present Monstrosity, was he?

He wasn't doing it so I could manage a mediocre fucking restaurant in a mediocre fucking hotel in a pinprick town on the fucking map.

The voice spoke to me again.  It's such a deep, powerful voice.  It rumbles up from the depthless well of my soul, louder and deeper and gruffer and more commanding than ever my father's voice .

"Create your vision."

"Create your vision."

My vision.  I knew instantly what it was talking about, even though I hadn't thought about that in decades and never really thought of it as "my vision."  It was just some ideas I used to have when I was a kid.  I put a little research into them at UVA.  I tried at Oxton, but their reaction was swift and terrible.  George encouraged me.  But that was it, just some ideas and fancies of a naive idealism married to a cynical fatalism.

"Create your vision."  It was a powerful command from a presence in my brain that demanded obedience, and yet was full of love.  I saw myself kneeling before the shadow and answering in my most manly voice, "I will serve.  I will do as you command.  You I serve."

Ten years ago things like that freaked me out.  Now I know I'm insane, so it doesn't faze me.  I will do it.  I will follow this voice and see where it leads.

I want to see my son.