No man, Dave’s not here

I’ve been pretty busy with Real Life which, as it turns out, is much more harsh and crushing than Online Life. I don’t want to talk about it.

>In 1974 I was born in St. Louis, Missouri, a town I have never been to before or since. I bet you didn’t know that. But now you do. I realize using the phrase “before or since” doesn’t really make that much sense, as there was no before in my reality that preluded my birth. “Before or since” sounds better than just the “since”, though. It sounds more confident yet mysterious. I should know, I tried them both before writing this sentence.

Does any of this make me a Mid-Western boy? It does not.

I have vowed to see the Gateway to the West before I die, just as I have vowed to see a certain grave of certain familial significance within the same time period. The problem is motivation. I don’t really have any compelling reason to make this visit other than to check it off my list; and, baby, my list is long and filled with things of actual pressing priority. That arch I’ve heard so much about will always be there, just as the grave, and I’ll get to it some day.

I’ve already, at a mere 30, begun to realize that “someday” is really no day at all. From all casual accounts, St. Louis is a murderous ghetto that is best seen from a speeding jet, or maybe space. And then there’s (apparently) East St. Louis, the visiting of which is roughly akin to suicide.

Which may be why I seem to be rserving it for The End.