Scare City

Where every Nightwalking citizen finds less coin in their pocket, among other various anxieties

I WAS GONNA trot out a new Stargazing piece on “imagination and vision,” tentatively titled “The Inner Eye,” but realized I need more work on it, so it got shoved to the back burner. Hey, all good. Writing is ready when it’s ready.

In its place, this piece (more for you Nightwalking fans than Stargazing ones due to its murky emotional nature), is a passing observation of mental states rather than a deep-dive longer piece. That might shake out differently down the road, but for now this is what I’ve got.

The emotional aspect involves two completely opposite states: abundance and scarcity.

How you deal internally with these states depends on many factors, not the least of which is nature and nurture. (I’d add to nature the physical, such as health, wellness, etc., as well as temperamental factors, and nurture involves family dynamics, socialization through friends and mentors, and education or lack thereof.)

Let’s start with the former state over the latter.

Hittin’ a Fun Dance Floor

Cornucopia literally means: “Horn of plenty.”

It’s also the “gift that keeps on giving.” Abundance rhymes with “a fun dance,” which is sort of the same idea. I mean, what’s not to like? More is more.

Until it becomes less.

But that’s the bit I’m holding off on.

My history of abundance is rich with memories—for the most part happy ones. I had a solid family where I was raised to believe my skills and talents would always secure me a roof over my head, good relationships, and food on the table—right smack dab there in the middle of the table—a huge honkin’ horn of plenty.

In the past, when I ran into financial trouble, I always felt there was going to be a turnaround at some point—a correction, if you will. If I did what was necessary—looking hard at the pros and cons—things would improve in the end. Eventually.

Wishful thinking?

Well, sort of. But it also formed a protective layer that made the idea of scarcity less threatening. Lemme explain, because it’s mostly psychological (which covers the nature), and also family attitudes (that’s the nurture bit) that is deeply baked into the cake that is me.

The driver was my late father.

He always believed in improvement—his own as well as the family’s, well, up until when he lost Mom, and I think the wind went out of his sails. But my early memories of him always involve a striving person—churning away late at night or in the wee hours of morning—to get… one…More... Step... Down the line. It was inspiring and tiring to watch—yup, all at the same time. Imagine what that does to a young boy’s imagination.

Here’s my theory: it had to have rubbed off on me.

My late father’s striving meant I was destined for success. I had to keep working. I had to keep impressing others. I had to do more. So I felt safe enough to experiment and test things. Be cavalier, indifferent, mercurial, even.

In short, “It would all work out in the end.”

Or else you’re…

“Yeah, right.” (Screengrab from The Prisoner, written by and starring Patrick McGoohan, “The Chimes of Big Ben,” 1967.)

Livin’ in Scare City

I’m a realist, but a flimsy one.

What I mean by that is I try to be realistic, but I’m also a diehard daydreamer. I’ve discounted the daydreamer bit, so there’s a lot of facets to it that some people don’t understand. That’s why “The Inner Eye,” is on the back burner and this is on the boiling hot front hob. It’s foremost on my mind and last week I started to see that it’s a emotional mindset you can…well, RESET.

Let’s start with this contraption:

The Tower Wherein Corporations Go to Die (photo by StoryShed Media).

It’s where I “work.” It includes a city, which I think needs changes. (Actually I’m remote three days a week, and only in the upper second-to-top floor of this contraption two days a week.)

Wow. Must be a lot of people there!

Nope.

And I don’t think they’re comin’ back.

Scarcity has become Scare City: Crime, assault, violence, drug abuse, homelessness, no doubt collateral damage from the pandemic, but not exactly bouncy-bouncy on new ideas about how to move the local culture forward without false smiles, promises, and Mylar “Yay!” balloons which are essentially screaming it’s the End of Times.

I guess what I’m getting at is, at least for me, my brain’s gutterball is scarcity, even when, if I examine the facts, that’s not the case. Financially I’m more solid than I’ve been in over a decade.

My social life needs repair, but hey, get in line. The world got in a hole and is still crawlin’ out. I get that.

But when things are missing, you get the bead on that fairly quick. Here’s the thing about scarcity: it eats into your brain cells until you think you’ve had a stroke, and you get spacey. I get spacey. My doctor says, “Take some Prilosec.” Is that good advice? I doubt it. Like all human beings, he will die, like me.

Lately my work-life mantra has been: “Will work for companionship.” That sounds at first a bit sad, but when you think about it, why not? There’s more to a job than a job, and most jobs you get hired to do involve bailing others out of work they’re either too lazy or incompetent to do. So you become “the fixer.”

Do you want to be the fixer? If so, you’re good to go.

I’m not so sure I enjoy that. I think I like building things, and contributing to the building. In the past, many of us post-Hollywood screenwriter types flocked to groups, which in some ways became social clubs over “moving the needle” on film careers. I quickly grasped that, but always tried to be helpful, in whatever way possible.

But scarcity—at its psychological white-hot core—hits in weird moments. That’s its Nightwalking quality, if you ask me. Something like melancholy, but not enough to get you back on serotonin uptake meds.

Because it’s emotional (if it could talk it might say, “There’s never enough…[money, love, time, interest]…whatever!) it doesn’t have the resources the mind can give to fair deliberation of a problem.

That’s where I felt saved late last week.

My Nightwalking conjured up Scare City.

I took a hard look, bro.

Then I hit back with A Fun Dance.

Because guess what … when you’re having fun dancing in Scare City, you live to see the next day. Just keep Stargazing, which is the next post.