Seemingly each and every time the inclination to quit everything comedy comes about and presents itself even more uncomfortably, the universe intervenes and provides me with even less of an anything to which to devote myself. And, then, faced with this even vaster, if possibly differently unfulfilling void, it seems most natural to again turn inward.
For instance, the other Sunday, looking for a belt, damn near the entire goddman day was spent wandering around in search of a belt. And it wasn’t the entire day, but maybe too much of it nonetheless. It had been a long while since the belt with which I’d grown comfortable over the years had come apart in a way irreparable, and I figured that it was time to no longer think about it as my last (i.e. ultimate) belt.
But it started coming to about 5:00 and it was Sunday, and the stores, so I imagined, were about coming to their close, and it wasn’t even the thought of likely going home without a belt, so much as the end of the search itself that was most unsettling. Because—and this may end up being a terrible sentence fragment—throughout the day—though, granted, any prospective new belt wasn’t essential, given my already being able to walk through the city in pants—I had the very strong sense that if my entire life consisted of nothing but this looking for a belt, that would be ok.
Could there really be/have been a belt with which I’d be happy? Possibly, sure. But, would it be/have been likely? No, absolutely not. Plus, though I can now remember where and on which trip I’d purchased the last belt, I couldn’t, on the day of the searching discussed, remember how I’d felt at that previous purchase.
Certainly, the love of a belt is something that grows over time.
Anyway, I ended up happening upon an in-the-end quite disappointingly cheap place selling things leather—which I was hoping to refer to as a leathery but which apparently really isn’t called that—and purchased just some ridiculous piece of belt because it was there, the talking down to $35 of which shouldn’t have mattered at all.
It’s as bulky today as it was then. And there’s no way they’re taking it back. And I’m not a cowboy. And it’s been just sitting there, on a shelf, the entire time.