Monday 24 March 2025 The Office 6 a.m.

You know you’ve reached a kind of threshold when you get up at four thirty a.m., tidy-up Scruffy, drive to The Office (Mill Valley Starbucks), order a dark roast Grande, set up your laptop at a choice table, get on line, and then...scroll down the free shit on Craigslist.

It’s called Ennui

Pronounced ON WEE. noun

a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement.

Yeah, right. But there’s level’s of ennui. I could go through the levels. But my ennui sez “who the fuck cares?” Nobody’s reading this shit anyway. But wait a minute. I do have a few readers. Maybe this aint a pathetic form of therapy after all. Maybe I’m providing some kind of bizarre solace to a few others.

A carnival of souls!

Carnival Of Souls Ennui

This is probably the most extreme form of ennui: you’re walking around like LIFE aint no big deal. It’s just really really boring. Especially boring today. But no big deal. You think you’re having just another lousy Tuesday. You don’t know it yet but actually you’re dead. The car you were driving went off the bridge and sank in the river. You drowned with the two other girls. The cops dragged the lake. No car. Later surprise you appear on the shore covered in river mud. The rest of the movie you’re walking around thinking, why do I feel so out of sorts? This is the plot of the cult movie CARNIVAL OF SOULS.

Not knowing you’re dead is a real drag…

definitely the worst form of Ennui…

Old Fart Ennui

Not quite as extreme as Carnival Of Souls Ennui, but close, would be Old Fart Ennui. You’re not dead yet. But you’re old. Every day you wake up and you go, man, I’m old! I could be dead any day now. I could croak in my sleep. Or croak driving my car. Or croak just standing here at the ready teller. Or croak thinking about shit. Any minute now I could be dead. And of course part of the reason you’re thinking about being dead is cuz you got nothing going on. Nothing to occupy your old mind. You got no job to speak of. Okay, so yer a Free Booze Sample dude. That aint no job.

That’s just a pathetic Free Booze Sample Dude deal.

It’d be different if you had some sort of future. You see, that’s what separates the more extreme forms of Ennui from the standard ordinary ennui. The kind young people experience. Like, say, this kid for example.

He’s got no future, either. But he’s young. With youth there’s the expectation of a future. He could very well fluke himself into a vast fortune and a wife more lovely than a fresh rose and friends and family who love him for what they believe to be his beautiful soul. There’s one chance in a trillion this will come to pass. But with youth there is the possibility. And naturally this effects the severity of his ennui. The simple fact of looking forward. Of seeing all those years like a conga line of dominoes. Of knowing you got time on your side. This reality impacts the severity of your ennui. No question.

Ronnie’s Shit

Maybe the fact I’m living on a ghost boat is kinda sorta generating my ennui. I’m just saying. Like I woke up this morning early cuz Ronnie is stopping by to pick up his boat tax form he left on the boat. He left a lot of shit on the boat.

Ronnie got a seizure of something or other…you might call it a form of ennui. Hit him couple weeks ago. A kind of ennui that said, you-upended-your-life-down-south-and-moved-up-here-cuz-you- wanted-to-live-the-boat-life-but-now-you-see-you-really-miss-your-garage-and-house-and-wife form of ennui. Maybe not ennui at all. Maybe just extreme homesickness. Anyway, couple weeks ago he up and moved back down south. Put the boat he just bought up for sale. Rented me my old boat for half the slip fee. Left me with the boat! And now I’m living on it, paying half the rent I used to pay. It’s like I won a few grand off a two dollar lottery ticket.

Good old Ronnie. Moved back down south, back to his house and garage…and wife.

And last week he found a job.

In Burbank.

He’s only up here for a day, visiting his mother in Sacramento. He’ll stop off this morning, collect the tax form, and drive back down south to his house and garage and wife.

Here and gone.

But his shit will remain.

His Bukowski books. He reads Bukowski. Good choice of literature.

Seafaring books. Maybe this contributed to his romantic notions of the boating life.

This lamp. Very nautical.

Another lamp with more nautical shit.

Various nautical items worth poking through…

I don’t know…a shark jaw maybe…

And other items not worth noting like his t.v. and cups and plates and steak knives and shit. Lots of stuff. Bedding. A sleeping bag. Foam pad for the bed. Not bad stuff, actually. And not too much stuff. Just enough stuff to make me ask, why didn’t I do more to decorate Scruffy while I had it? I’ll tell you why. Cuz I’m a Boat Dude. Decorator dudes live in houses with garages and wives and a dog or two..

Anyway I’m done talking about Ronnie.

So where was I?

I was scrolling the free shit on Craigslist.

I was telling you that’s how you tell. How you tell you got the ennui. The old fart ennui. You do dead-end shit like scrolling the free stuff on Craigslist.

Old Fart sitting on his ass at the office and nothing to do but scroll the free shit. I’m not looking for a job. I’m not watching the news…the latest Trumpy horrors…I’m not even looking for my next boat on craigslist. I’m not looking for a boat, period. Cuz I already got a boat, my old boat…

I’m just scrolling the free shit on Craigslist.

And what do I find totally free on Craigslist?

Free Art.

With this description:

Free art. Just as long as you place up on your wall. It was the artists dying wish.

The Artist’s Dying wish.

He (or She) just wanted somebody to recognize a talent.

It meant a lot to this artist. And every artist for that matter. It makes them feel what their doing is worth a damn.

I already got a lot of Ronnie’s shit decorating my former boat (which I currently live aboard) otherwise I would drive to Treasure Island and pick up this free art and maybe put it up on my wall. Luckily I don’t have a wall.

But I empathize with this artist.

We all want to be remembered for something.

Nobody wants to be forgotten.