Stuck

Technically I am not actually stuck inside but it feels that way. It is pouring...the kind of rain that makes one say things about 40 days and 40 nights and arks and the like. And I was desiring to go outside but don't quite feel in the mood for a swim. Good thing some random mermaid of a lady gave me an umbrella which some poor soul had left at the bar last night. Since I did my duty and shut down the bar, and sent a few drunk suitors home in cabs, I was handsomely rewarded with this prized possession. A beauteous black umbrella which appearing to be quite new and is now, somehow, lost. Due to my pack on my back days of late this is so very odd to me. I have ransacked this apartment. I am without the tool which allows me to enter more freely and much drier in the underbelly of the slowly drowning streets. It feels like I won the lottery but lost the ticket. I have not given into this feeling completely...I mean things like umbrellas were made to be lost but being that I have not left this apartment since the witching hours, I highly doubt it will remain forever gone.

It is funny stuff like that...things get lost and you know they will turn back up and they do. Usually, items that went off to wander among the ghosts for a bit return in one of two manners. One - the manner of the odd and absurd, e.g. "What is this umbrella doing in the freezer? How did the sausage maker even fit in the sock drawer?". These are so amusing that it is usually worth losing the item momentarily because life is once again a bizarre circus and the ride is amazingly hilarious. The audience of crazy monkeys is golf clapping from the wings. You wander amongst the day with a delicious anecdote, likely a coat-hanger in the mouth sort of permagrin and quite possibly are forced to ponder your mental health, drinking or drug problem, the existence of supernatural beings, or the possibility that your roommate, lover or landlord is having a good laugh at your expense. This silly mixed up paranoid fantasy mini-adventure paired with the return of the beloved item is quite often worth the temporary loss.

The second manner of return of the quasi-lost "truc" is the bizarrely obvious, e.g. "Somehow I managed to lose my glasses for three days only to find them on top of my head." or "I lost my car keys for a week, had new ones made which cost $200 because of the oddities of the car only to find the sneaky fuckers sitting smack dab in the center of my desk." These things give you everything thing that the first manner does - story, amusement, quandaries of life...but adds to oft underrated and rarely sought terror. Am I losing my mind for real? I mean I can accept that I packed the bread maker and shipped it to my niece at camp that is hilarious...but over looked my computer which is turned on and sitting on my coffee table to the point that I had it replaced...clearly - clearly I am insane. Cleary, story number two will only be told to the close inner circle of your entourage to gauge how crazy you actually are and perhaps one drunken night it will be shared with the torturous finger-pointing strangers we label "them".

So alas - the umbrella is still off travelling in the shadows...and perhaps if I never share the tale of its return, you can assume why...