The Escape

Today I watched "Memoir of an Invisible Man" for the first time in probably ten years. Something about that movie I missed when I was younger was how Chevy Chase was already an invisible man before the accident that made him transparent. I'm not quite like that. I have family, friends, people who care about what is going on in my life. But I do feel invisible sometimes. I suppose everyone does from time to time. Just that feeling that other people wouldn't really notice if you were there or you weren't.

I just want to flee sometimes. I entertain a notion often that I will have a small ocean side bar in some tourist filled country. I'd hire some cute local girl to tend bar. I'd build a little studio apartment into the back of the bar and I'd live there and occasionally wake up with a bottle of rum in my hand and the warm morning sun on my face just inches away from the ocean. There it wouldn't matter if people noticed me. They'd come and they would drink at night and I'd just sort of be there. Eventually some of my friends would join me, and help out at the bar or start small businesses of their own. Someone would buy a boat and take tourists out fishing and they would bring me back fresh fish every day and I'd hire someone to cook them up and then we'd sell them. And occasionally I would write something and get it published. But it would be a simple life. I'd live off of the profits of the bar and my friends would live off of the profits of whatever they were doing and everything would be nicely self contained.

That probably won't happen. I am a coward. I am probably not going to actually take a chance on something like that. I should. I really should. Dealing with the occasional tropical storm would be better than dealing with the rest of the crap that life keeps throwing at me.

I keep looking for ways to turn myself into a professional in some field but more and more I realize I will never be qualified for anything. And I'd love to occasionally wake up with the ocean lapping at my feet with a bottle of rum in one hand.