1337philosophxorz

When you wake up in the morning there is an impulse to look back over the previous day and look for omens and portents. At least this is how I feel when I am staring at the ceiling from a lonely bed. I normally resist these urges but yesterday was a bit of a different type of day.

It started with a day off from the soul sucking fluorescent tubes – this is how they are powered right? – to attend the convocation of two friends. I wore my standard attire with a blazer draped over my unimpressive shoulders. They wore gowns.

The graduation ceremony was basically the same as my own. Families gathered, brimming with pride, and the students oscillating between happy, sad, and nervous. I thought it was not going to affect me. I really did. I was wrong.

When my eldest friend, who we will name Spock to preserve some of his anonymity, went to get his degree he ended up crying and hugged the dean of the university. I was taken aback. I barely reacted to getting my own slip of paper and have been lost, rudderless, in an ocean of confusion ever since. But here was a man that reacted to all this lead up to his calling. This confused me and I dwelled on it during the day as I spent in it my usual way. Reading philosophy in order to figure out a question I developed in my undergrad which still consumes what remains of my soul.

After dinner and a disco-nap I went out to meet Spock for coffee. We had scheduled dancing and drinking to celebrate his trot past the finish line.

Over coffee I asked outright “Why the breakdown?”

“I didn’t breakdown. I just did what felt right. You should try that occasionally.”

Usually the sage-like wisdom is flowing in the other direction in this relationship. The little train on the second track of my mind started visiting all the old stations of my path to this place while the train on the primary track did the usual talking about nothing.

We got kicked out of the café at closing time and proceeded to head downtown. Back to Tribeca. It was his choice this time.

This time, arriving later than I arrived last week, the club was already starting to upswing. There was some nervous dancing and people drifting like tumbleweeds between the bar and groups of friends.

After the first drink we both decided to hit the dance floor. Specifically because Abba’s Dancing Queen came on and he is the follower of the Great Religion of Abba.

I wish that was a clever euphemism but honestly it’s not. His patron saints include, Judy Garland, Cher, and Barbara Streisand.

Despite him being my closest friend I still won’t dance with him because I am pretty sure that would scorch any remote chance of having feminine company on the way home. On the plus side he did find some friends to dance with amongst the nervous dancers.

I was doing my usual thing of dancing in a reserved manner. The music was the same as usual and it was not very busy but then suddenly the Djs started to spin Bel Biv DeVoe’s Poison and the train on that second track of my mind derailed.

Before I went off to boarding school, and was completely stripped of privacy, I used to watch Much Music and do that type of bedroom dancing that you only do when you think no one is watching. This song may as well have been Alan Bates turning to me, in his white suit, and saying “Zorba, teach me to dance.”

The stick rattled down my spine and out of my butt. All those years of arrhythmia melted and I was dancing for fun. There was no object to the dance. This was just for fun. The fact that I didn’t care what other people thought of me was helping and I may have even been smiling.

What was stranger still was that even though I was not aiming at anyone I was gaining traction on the dance-floor. Girls were paying attention to me and were even dancing with me by their own manoeuvres and not mine.

My mind, which was very sober, turned to the Origins of Inequality and the thought that maybe we started dancing just because we were innocent and bored. Then I quickly dismissed it because I really hate Rousseau and I am hardly innocent by this point.

I caught a look on Spock’s face and he was a little confused as to what was going on with me? To be fair so was I. Why would my childhood self attract more positive attention than what has survived to adulthood?

The night obviously didn’t end in some hook up but I was still happy if not a little bit sweaty. All the girls I was dancing with got dragged off by friends and each one left with an odd shy wave on their part. I have never actually seen this behaviour before and I have no idea what it means.

I found something deep within me that I had been ignoring during my darker years. It is odd that a man, who had just been called, knows more about how to be happy and how to listen to those old ontologies. These prison cells, that I have locked away a great deal of my past, seem to be holding wise people. These former selves seem to know what joy is. I am still learning.