Hotel Gladstone

I woke up with the last line from the Eagle's 'Hotel California' in my head. Not the song, just the lyrics.
As I sat, trying to run down the reason the words were still reverberating in my skull, I could make out the strains of the song re-assembling in the background. It's been years since I've heard it and while I can't remember who you are, I have no trouble remembering, note for note, a guitar solo I heard thirty years ago. The highlight of the song is, obviously, the now-famous guitar dualing at the end, between Don Felder and the 'new' guy, Joe Walsh. If I could hear it one more time, I'd prefer not to listen to the pre-amble. Straight to the guitar rock, if you please.

I read a book a few years ago called 'The Dancing Wu Li Masters' by Gary Zukav, before he dove head-first into his quantum physicist/spiritualist phase, in which he haphazardly assembled a belief system based nearly exclusively on Thomas Young's double slit experiment. Interesting stuff. In the end Zukav came to appreciate the phrase, "what you see is what you get," and for a while I went to bed dreaming of a day when I could harness my mind's full potential and finally become a super-hero. Really, all I was after was a way to see through women's clothing and so far I'm not having much success. What good has physics done me after all?

I caught part of Alan Zweig's "Lovable" on T.V. last night and I've decided that he is the saddest man on the planet. He's discovered that some of us will never find someone to love, or find someone who loves us and that he could easily spend the rest of his life alone. I wonder that it's never occurred to him before. The only thing I learned from him, is that chain smoking really isn't all that attractive.

Practice makes perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lift your ass off the bike when you go over a bump and then you won't find it painful to sit down when you get home. I'm not sure if I want calluses on my ass, but it appears that I've got it coming to me.
I've decided that I don't want people to look away in embarrassment when I take my shirt off this summer. Vain, I know, but I never get tired of people saying to me, "Hey, have you lost weight?" At this late-stage in my life, I've finally realized that a sound body pre-figures a sound mind. I was hoping it was the other way around because it's so much easier to sit on the couch and think than it is to torture muscles into shape. I used to work out regularly but gave it up when my friends expressed dismay at the pitiful amount of beer I could drink. I began a new kind of workout that helped me develop an astounding tolerance for alcohol.

All of this, and it's still there. 'You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.' Cue Mr. Walsh.

If that's the case, then I don't think I'll check-out just yet. And if I'm staying then I'm not doing it like this. I don't want to reach the end of days only to discover that I didn't have much say in how I lived. Intentions are fine but without actions they're nothing more than thoughts. The big questions? "Who am I?', 'Where did I come from?' and 'Where am I going?' can wait. With apologies to Zukav, Zweig and everybody who has seen me shirtless in the past, I have no intention of growing old and decrepit, while I waste time thinking myself into shape.