INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

No complaints from me

Anyone who knows me is well aware of the fact that I enjoy complaining about things. It doesn’t really matter what I’m bitching about, either. It could be the devil Bush, it could be the weather; like I said, it really doesn’t matter.

I don’t plan to stop complaining, either, as long as there’s injustice in the world and as long as there are people, places and things that exist solely to piss me off. It’s just the way that I am.

But as I grow older, I am beginning to mellow out a bit, something I swore I’d never do, but circumstances have brought me to this point. Don’t get me wrong. We still have an outlaw government, the economy is horrible and the level of human suffering I see downtown on a daily basis is astonishing.

But yet … But yet …

In a lifetime filled with chronic depression, an abusive childhood, health problems galore and enough blown opportunities and regrets to fill Conseco Fieldhouse, things have never been brighter and shinier in my universe.

One of the unfortunate side effects of growing older, so they say, is an increasing sense of your own mortality. I’ve had that sense since I was a teenager. I was convinced that I wouldn’t make it to 25, let alone 30 or 40. For much of that time, I did just about everything I could to make that idea a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And, as a matter of fact, I’m not too worried about my own fate to this day. I could keel over dead after typing this paragraph and still feel like I got a better shake out of life than most people.

I’ve met presidents and rock stars and have interviewed almost all of my heroes. I get paid decent money to vent my thoughts and hypotheses in print every week and, better still, people every week spend hours of their lives on the Internet trashing those thoughts. Apparently they don’t appreciate the irony in that fact.

I certainly hope I don’t keel over anytime soon, because there are still many more things for me to see, more people to piss off, more good times to have.

But mortality has been on my mind lately, given the number of celebrity deaths in the past few months and given the fact that the 10-year anniversary of my mother’s passing isn’t too far away.

Time is not on my side, or anyone’s side. Hank Williams Sr. has a song called “You’re Getting Closer to the Grave Each Day,” and it’s probably the most honest song title there is.

But I don’t really care about that, because for the first extended period of my life, I have a contentment and inner peace previously unknown to me. It’s not that I’m rich; I’m actually pretty close to broke. Hopefully, heaven holds all of my treasures.

Trying to quantify this happiness, though, would tax the ability of a writer far more skilled than me, so anything I write will seem even more trite than what you usually get from me.

I was sitting with my wife in a Frisch’s Big Boy restaurant in Anderson the other day. The exterior was straight from the ’50s and the interior was ’70s kitsch, both of which are irresistible to me. Our waitress was exceedingly doting and friendly and the food was top-notch. I was in rare form, making my usual sarcastic observations, and I looked over at Katie.

In her eyes was a sparkle of humor, compassion and love that was so astonishingly beautiful that I literally gasped and went silent for a minute.

Jesus Christ, I thought. It really doesn’t get any better than this, does it?

Just before I got up to write this piece, I was lying in bed with my wife, not talking, just embracing each other tightly, our cat curled up next to us, and I was filled with the same feeling.

Like I said, I’m not eloquent enough to express the full extent of just how wonderful those moments were. A better writer could describe the shadows on the wall or the light fixtures in the restaurant and paint a more vivid picture.

But the most amazing thing to me is that moments like those aren’t rare random moments of bliss, as they were for me in the past. They’re constantly happening at the most mundane times, such as when I’m playing Grand Theft Auto IV while Katie reads the New York Times in our living room.

So no matter how much I scream about my latest complaint, it’s all just an act. These days, I am immortal. I am impervious to all negative forces around me. I would wish the same feelings for anyone else, even my worst enemies.

Life gets funny that way.