Contractual Obligation

I am sure most of you have given up on me posting anything substantial ever again. I nearly said "most of us," because I have been wondering the same thing too.

It's tough.

Every step I take, I listen for my heartbeat. Every time I sit back quietly, I listen for my heartbeat. Then I fall asleep and the receptionists wake me up, giggling, as my snoring is disturbing those genuine patients patiently waiting along with me in my potential customer's office.

If I don't hear my heartbeat that is a good thing - it is not racing or pumping, it is just ticking over, as it should. Good thing.

It's tough, you feel like you are waiting to die, that you have knocked and are waiting for the door to open and for the Reaper let you in: "Just a minute...!" If you hear those heartbeats, they are the footsteps approaching from the hallway inside.

You are expecting this hand-grenade, this heart-sized death device, to explode in your chest anytime. It nearly happened three months ago. It could happen now, in my sleep tonight.

You can't help but feel morose, down, sad, depressed, melancholy...

*aside* I just went to my Kindle Cloud reader app (I dropped my real Kindle and it died, slightly) to clip a quote from Robert Burton's Anatomy Of Melancholy at this point - any random quote would do, this is a brilliantly quotable book, words for any occasion), and of course the book wouldn't download. Because, the pop-up tells me, there is a network error. Network error? WTF! Sigh. I invoke Sturgeon's Law. */aside*

OK, using the Tab: here's one. It's as good as any another:

We are worldy-wise, admire ourselves, and seek for applause: but hear Saint Bernard, quanto magis foras es sapiens, tanto magis intus stultus efficeris, &c. in omnibus es prudens, circa teipsum insipiens:
the more wise thou art to others, the more fool to thyself.
~~~~~~~~~

And so you don't feel like writing. Or watching TV. Or turning up at work.

And no-one else you know has any idea how it feels.

Or that this apathy is how it feels.

"I could have died!" Silence.

"Dead!" Silence.

There are more pressing things to talk about.

~~~~~~~~~

Of course, seeing as how E@L has been prodded and punctured, injected and imaged, dilatated and stented, this moment of truth (death = truth, just as truth = death) may not arrive for fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years.

~~~~~~~~~

And so E@L goes out to O'Bama's Irish Pub on Tras St to catch up with friends. Then to some cigar/wine bar on Club St. Then to some other cocktail bar on Club.

And there were so many tall, gorgeous girls to be seen...  Sometimes with a female friend and sometimes alone. And E@L just couldn't help but wonder...

~~~~~~~~~

NEXT!

~~~~~~~~~

Your day in numbers:

1.5
(2:40am to 4:10am) - Hours spent walking home from Tajong Pagar with the futile excuse of 'burning off' the night's alcohol.

71.
% of security guards still awake between the hours mentioned above. Hey, not all that bad considering, what?

12.
The number of people eating in Havelock Rd food court at 3am.

3.
The number of people dining alone in a food court at 3am.

1.
The number of people slumped unconscious on the table at a food court at 3am... (you will have to zoom in for this one...)

1.
The number of people taking photos of the people dining at a food court at 3am.

0.
The number of potential sex partners throwing themselves at E@L during the course of the evening (preceding and including the walk home.)

0
the number of... nothing whatsoever.

~~~~~~~~

NEXT!

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Addendum: Here is the quote I was looking for last night: -

But whereas you shall see many discontents, common grievances, complaints, poverty, barbarism, beggary, plagues, war, rebellions, seditions, mutinies, contentions, idleness, riot, epicurism, the land lie untilled, waste, full of bogs, fens, deserts &., cities decayed, base and poor towns, villages depopulated, the people squalid, ugly, uncivil; that kingdom, that country must needs be discontent, melancholy, hath a sick body, and need to be reformed.

E@L