Friday, December 14, 2007

Every Drunk Must Have His Drink

Sometimes I feel bothered by my own sensitiveness. My senses seem to pick up more than those of the average guy. A little wild flower hiding in the grass by a roadside delights me with its unassuming beauty, the rustle of leaves in the wind talks to me of ephemeral lushness and the ensuing cold deprival. When I lie on a hilltop staring into an immense blue sky, the fear of loneliness is so overwhelming I have to clutch at the earth around me the way a shipwrecked sailor would clutch at a piece of flotsam.

Then there are snippets of forgotten days, which emerge from some dark recesses in my memory when least expected. Just trivial impressions from the past, but somehow they manage to retain the vividness that makes me feel with them and laugh or groan accordingly. Like the time I won all the marbles of a neighborhood kid and he came to the back door of my house crying until I put the whole loot in an old sock and returned it to him, or the moment a lovely girl smiled radiantly at me and I was so dumbstruck I just stood there staring at her like a bonehead.

I feel old each time I catch myself dwelling on memories as if I had no life in the present, and sometimes I feel embarrassed for possessing a sensitivity which is almost feminine in its delicateness. Surely an average guy should be planning for his next exploit and not supposed to notice a maple leaf in autumn or to reminisce of a childhood game. But then I don't go bawling in a bar nor exchange dirty jokes with my buddies over a beer either. As Billy Joel put it in one of his songs, every drunk must have his drink. Maybe I'm a drunk in my own way, so I might as well have my drink when it comes and be happy about it.

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