A Catalogue of Failure
Four metallic blue, star-shaped balloons have reached a sad end in my room. One spins, crushed and trapped between two blades, near the center of my ceiling fan, throwing the rotation out of balance just enough to lend a slightly crinkly whee-oo, whee-oo to the sound of the fan, so that it announces itself, gently, but relentlessly, even when I'm not looking at it. The second is harder to ignore. All four were tethered to the same weight, which sits on the floor of my room, and from which the string of the first balloon stretches taught to the hub of the fan where it is wrapped fast. There was no escape for the first balloon, doomed to be destroyed by the vortex. The second balloon flew to the heights with the first and was caught in the fan as well, but it's string broke, and it was thrown free … but only temporarily. The second balloon follows a slow, erratic, and brutal orbit around the tips of the blades, which beat it back, two, three, four times per cycle, sometimes hitting it hard enough to throw it several feet, almost to the corner of the ceiling, where it may enjoy several minutes of dignified rest. But anything that floats is drawn ineluctably into the fan, and soon it is being battered noisily around, refusing to fall. From another room, it sounds like it's being attacked by a declawed cat, or punched by a frustrated and mute child. The most merciful end came to the third balloon, which also broke free of its string and the fan, but then fell to the floor, where, in repose, it looks more like its former self than any of the others. This third came to rest in the corner of the alcove – the closest to a remote spot the room may boast – where it sits, just beyond a curl bar, with on point on the wall, two straddling a yoga mat, and one each atop a Strength Shoe and an AbWheel. None of this equipment has seen as much action in the past three years as the poor balloon did in a few short minutes this afternoon. It chose a good resting spot. The most pathetic end was reserved for the fourth balloon. Lacking the gas to reach the heights in the first place, it was never beaten down by the fan. But being tied to the other three, it was drawn higher then it could have gone on its own, and now it bounces and dangles from the tangle of strings and pull cord halfway between the weight and the fan, buffeted by the downdraft, without quite enough lead to finally lay down on my bed, just above which it does an appalling imitation of floating. It is a zombie balloon.
When I found them, the symbolism of the balloons was too powerful for me to ignore. I couldn't bring myself to just “clean it all up.” I felt it was something I needed to live with for awhile. I was moving the Sharp Select booth out of my car (I sell knives in box stores. I used to sell knives in box stores and grocery stores, but I felt grocery stores were too trashy on average, so I moved to a company that does only box stores; though now I believe the trashiness of your work is measured neither by the clientele nor the venue, but by how often you have to listen to Michael Bolton. I have not escaped Mr. Bolton, not by a longshot.) to make room for the two comedians I'm driving to the Maine Comedy Festival tomorrow. Officially, I hope for nothing more out of the festival than to have a good time and make a lot of people laugh, and maybe make some friends. Secretly I pray, as I do at every festival, that this will be the turning point, when I finally impress the right person, and can leave behind all the dreary day jobs, the life of compromises and half-measures, and start, finally, to make my living as a performer. The balloons float above my booth in the store, so that even people locked in the profoundest shopping daze can find it after my three loudspeaker announcements. “That's the BLUE GIFT COUNTER, located in the BACK, RIGHT-HAND, CORNER OF THE STORE, go down the FAR RIGHT SIDE of the store, until you hit the BACK AISLE, RIGHT THERE, between the CHILDREN'S SECTION and the SHOES, you will see the BLUE GIFT COUNTER, with the BLUE BALLOONS ABOVE, you CANNOT MISS it, you'll see a CROWD GATHERED ALREADY, we're handing out, FREE KITCHEN TOOLS, your REPRESENTATIVE is RUSHING to MEET you, RIGHT NOW,” goes the second half of my third announcement.
I had moved the ridiculously obstreperous booth (10 pieces of heavy particle board plus 1 card table) out of the trunk first. The balloons had been on top of the booth in the trunk, of course, but over the past two weeks, when my booth was not needed in the store, the anchor had become trapped beneath the booth, so the balloons came out of the trunk last. I was glad to get them out of the trunk – having half-crushed balloons pop out of your trunk every time you open it, trying to stuff them back in before anyone notices … that's not a good look for a guy like me. I struggle with the creepy enough already. So up they came to the corner of my room, and back down I went to the car to clear the stock and other booth materials out of the back seat. On my way back up I heard the violent scuffle between the fan and the balloons, and thought, as I said, that the downstairs cat must have gotten into my room and attacked them. When I reached the room, and saw the developing chaos above, I knew the course of the day had been set, and that it was not going to be as I had imagined. John was already gone, Paul had jut broken free, George's line snapped as I watched, and Ringo was, well … Ringo. I don't want to diminish the daunting personal meaning the balloons held for me, but for convenience, I did name them, and the Fab Four fit.
On the previous trip to the car, I had already begun to realize that what I thought would be a 30-minute job before I threw myself into a day of planning and practicing my set, and perhaps some writing (I'm always inspired with new tags and tangents when I prepare long sets) was going to be a much longer process of getting the car ready to have not just guests, but colleagues that I'd never met as passengers on a 7hr trip. Because under the layer of work crap in my car was revealed the detritus from the last comedy festival I'd gone to … five months earlier. It wasn't a big deal, just stuff I hadn't had time to deal with when I'd gotten back from my road trip two months ago, I figured it was a good opportunity to get it out of the car, it was going to add maybe another half hour to the job. But when I saw the balloons, and the thick swatches, no, pelts of dust that they had thrown from the top of the fan all over my bed and the room, and as I thought of the time it would take just to untangle the strings, never mind clean the rest of my room, I understood that all my messes had merged, and ganged up on me in a coordinated attack to foil my creative intentions for the day. That I had abetted them by devoting the morning to an indulgent tug and six Family Guy episodes accompanied by two BLT's from the corner bodega, I understood, but the corruscating sense of guilt and shame, accompanied by the unshakeable and suffocating apprehension of the inescapable mediocrity of my life, of the fatedness of it all, of the sad, absurd cycle that I have no reason to believe I can break, this did not set in until I had put my armful of items down on the floor – the blue fabrics for the booth, the complimentary paring knives (“you can never have enough paring knives ladies, one of these is always in the dishwasher”), the two pieces of wood which we cut with the carving knife, the bucket for the trash, where we throw the paper with the filings from the hammers, which we also cut with the carving knife, the hammers in the bucket, in the bucket, too the sponges, which we use to wipe up the juice from the tomatoes, which we also cut with the carving knife, both before and after the wood and the hammer, to show it's still sharp (“guaranteed never to rust, tarnish, corrode, damage, break, or dull, even if the damage is your own fault”), also cleaning fluid, a small notebook to record sets handed out, a “magic” smudge remover sponge which I NEVER use because I don't give a shit about the booth, pens, rags, scissors, and other odds and ends from the booth in the bucket, all this I set down in the corner of the room, before I fixed upon the final element in the tableau, which, I suppose, carried its title as well: a book, which had been kicking around the floor of my room since 2012 (when I returned in disgrace from Ireland), Ekhart Tolle's The Power of Now.
Now I don't know how the Universe likes to communicate with you, but just once I wish she'd send me a big-titted angel bearing a divine hand-job that would inspire me to write the great American novel. Not a vicious, snarky punchline that blares at me from every detail of my existence like a radio that only plays pop tunes that you can't turn off or tear out of your dashboard. Yes, Ashley, let us examine the extraordinary nature of this ordinary moment, find the divine in the base, and peer into the mirror that the Universe is holding up to … you.
In the self-help books they make it sound so wonderful, this notion of every moment being filled with meaning. But what if the meaning sucks? Sometimes you just want to clean your car, and not spend every second thinking about how the mess is an outward manifestation of your inner truth. That's fucking exhausting. Maybe I don't wanna learn anymore.
But I said, “OK.” And so I left the Lads from Liverpool where they were, as a talismanic installation to keep me focused on the lessons my many messes had to teach me, while at the same time honoring the inspiration that was beginning to grow in me, I determined to make a list of all the artifacts of procrastination which I removed from my car today:
Item: the aforementioned booth, stock, and sundries connected to the selling of knives, including one item not mentioned before, which I note here to illustrate the absurd massiveness of the booth: a footstool, which I, at six-foot-three, must stand upon in order to be seen properly when behind the booth.
That through some miracle had never ruptured in through all the untold months of violent bumping and pressing and sliding and crushing it survived to reach its post-putrefactive state.
This is a job for mediocre man!