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springsteen said After sleeping in hour bursts, I crawled out from underneath some blankets and realized that the temperature must have fallen during the night. I didn't mind. It felt good to be able to sleep with blankets again. I would rather shiver a little than sweat when I am trying to sleep. One is far easier to correct than the other. It was a typical Tuesday for me, where I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do and in the end did nothing. In the morning, I was relaxed and calm, but as the day wore on I started to feel as though I should be doing something productive. So in an effort to do something I cleaned my desk. I sorted out what needed to be kept and what could be recycled. Then when I sifted through the magazines that I get each month, it turned into a afternoon project, because I can never just throw something away without first looking at it. I have to page through a magazine one more time before I get rid of it. There might be an article or picture that I want to save for some reason. The amount of paper that I generate amazes me. Actually I don't generate the paper, most of it comes to me in the mail. I have a habit of saving all of my bills for the year and various other receipts. Then at the end of the year I have a huge accordion folder full of paper that I don't know what to do with next, but at least I look organized. When I finally did venture outside, I saw that the day was actually tolerable. The oppressive heat and humidity had vanished just as the weatherman had predicted. So to celebrate in a small way I opened all the windows in my house to let some fresh air in for the day. I think that I can hand over my hip music listener card that I may have earned years ago. The four cd box set of Springsteen songs that I ordered arrived today. I truly doubt that most people under the age of thirty consider Springsteen hip or even care what he is doing. Well, I take that back, there must still be a few people who care about him, because he has sold out fifteen shows in New Jersey alone this year. I was never that impressed with the Born in the U.S.A. stuff, and prefer the less commercial stuff not often heard on the radio. The songs on Nebraska and Darkness on the Edge of Town are so different from that stadium sound that he seems to be so well known for now and I can relate in some ways to the blue-collar imagery that he uses so often. The seedier side of America comes through him and his acoustic guitar and harmonica. Milwaukee is, as I have said many times before, historically known as a blue-collar city with its beer and Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Now I may not have worked in a steel mill or an auto plant in New Jersey, but most of the jobs that I had before and during college were factory jobs. I have worked alongside people with missing digits and teeth. Years ago the steel toe shoe and safety glasses look was very common for me. All that I was missing was the pack of smokes in my tee shirt pocket. One reviewer described his singing as cookie dough vocals and I can see their point, but the lyrics are what really grab me. They have an earthy quality and a mythic image of their own that I love. For me it sounds like Steinbeck put to rock music. I imagine that if someone doesn't like the motifs of cars and women that he often uses then most of it will fall flat, but for me it works. Now that I have the early recordings, I can see how he evolved over the last twenty-five years. Sigh. This next part I have started numerous times, but always throw away in the end. I can't seem to find a way to say it without sounding fake or pathetic. All of this has to do with me finding a new girlfriend, lover, companion or whatever description is most appropriate. I'll be the first to admit that I don't go out of my way to look and I have been busy doing other things. I also like having all of my free time and fear getting involved with someone who will take up all of my time. Women who look for a boyfriend as a source of continual entertainment are not for me. I refuse to have to entertain someone all of the time. I just can not do it. There will be times when I will want to be alone. There will be times when I won't feel like going out. There will be times when I will not feel like talking. There will be times when I will seem like the biggest asshole in the world and I only care about myself, but that is who I am and I doubt that I will change. I am not someone to be molded into something else. I am the finished product and whatever changes I will make will happen very slowly. Now that I have gotten all of the negatives out of the way, I will admit that it would be nice to meet someone new. Obviously I miss the physical aspect, which is only natural, but there are times when it would nice to have someone to talk with for a while. As much as I get along with the people at work, they really don't constitute a social life. Nor do I want to sleep with any of them. On the other hand, I really don't want to be going out every night either. I have left that lifestyle behind me. What my last girlfriend and I did was a pretty good balance. Some nights we would stay home and it would be just the two of us. Other nights we would go out to eat or see a movie. None of this was earth shattering, but it worked. Then there were the nights we spent hanging out with her colleagues from work, which I really didn't like that much. Almost always the topic of conversation would touch upon work at least once. Nor did I enjoy spending Friday nights at her aunt's house playing cards, because I always felt uncomfortable there. This is the same woman who didn't like me in the beginning and was probably thrilled when the relationship finally ended. I did like hearing about her day and having someone there to ask about mine. I did like hearing small pieces of her childhood come to the surface now and then. I got to see how this woman that I knew now came into being. I was given the missing pieces of the puzzle or what she wanted me to know. Slowly our lives became more and more intertwined, which is certainly what should happen between a man and a woman who love one another. For now, however, it is just me and that isn't the end of the world either. I seem to be doing just fine.
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