A deadline is a scary thing, especially when you have a mean-tempered editor e-mailing say that if you don’t have a piece ready in time for the March issue, she would fly out and personally kick you in the jimmy.

At last, my writer’s block was cured.

It’s hard to write about the events in Florida. While I was looking forward to seeing my Aunt Red after all these years, the situation was far from ideal. My folks and my little sister had arrived in Indian Harbor a few days before me and I had a sinking feeling about the whole scene. After all, the ugly games of nightclub life are easy to deal with when compared to dealing with your family.

Furthermore, I had nothing but strange, prophetic dreams on the bus to Florida. Visions of past mistakes and future chances to correct them. By the time I got there, I was sick and tired of Great Spirit knocking on my gray matter.

Aunt Red and Uncle Bob live in a small palace on the beach. The condo was so marbleized it was scary, like a museum that didn’t display things of the past, but of the future. Wide-screen TVs, stereos with micro-speakers, wireless I-Net, and a robot maid named Susan, who looked human, but one can never be too sure about these things. In short, they were loaded. This didn’t bother me though. I know they were loaded and had no intension of being shy about taking advantage of their hospitality. My father, on the other hand, was less then comfortable with the situation.

The first few days played out like I had foreseen. My folks were hyper-vigilant of any deviant behavior on my part. They didn’t want any of Red’s rich friends to find out what sort of freak they had raised. Any talk of anti-corporate sentiment or liberal beliefs would be quickly sidetracked. It didn’t take long for me to realize that “being myself” was right out and I resigned myself to hours upon hours of net-surfing. While the folks mentioned that Red’s guests would consider this anti-social and rude, they were mostly glad that I could entertain myself without ripping into lawyers, doctors, and other such agents of the Evil Empire. This was mostly because none of the guests were interesting in any way... save one.

It was the night after Christmas. Some of Red’s friends came over for dinner and they were clamoring to meet her favorite nephew. They regretted that once I met their daughter. Her name was Joanna. At first she was humoring some other couple’s son, another of a million computer programmers. Once my mother (God bless her) mentioned I worked in the nightclub scene, he wasn’t much of a problem.

Joanna was tall, blond, slammin’, and a born talker. I like talkers because they will hand every weakness they have to you on a silver platter if you give them enough time. Joanna was an accountant. She wound up opening up to me about everything, much to the growing discomfort of her parents. Everything from her crisis of faith to her concerns about racial equality.

It was the equal rights thing that I started in on. Coming from a well-to-do family, she felt guilty about her privileged life. She’d been raised in good environs and never had to worry about money or food. She felt that anyone with that many advantages would be able to succeed, and I quietly agreed with her. She went on and on about how she wished she could do something to even the injustices out. I almost called her on her bullshit when she surprised me by admitting that while she thought about it a lot, she did little to change it... and that made her ashamed.

Now this chick did not, could not, have any idea what most minorities went through in America. She was the poster-girl for WASP’s everywhere, but at least she knew all of this and realized that she was a bit hypocritical about it all. She’d hear or read about another injustice to minorities and then do nothing about it except put on Tupac and quietly hate The Man. After all of this, she decided to turn the spotlight on me.

She asked about the book I was writing about wanted to know about its ultimate purpose. She said, “ I thought maybe you had some grand message to share with the world about the meaning of life or something”. I replied that the only wisdom I had to share was the fact that anyone who would willingly become a fortuneteller was nothing more than a closet masochist. Then I told her of what I’d learned about people since becoming a reader. How they’re generally self-destructive and incapable of change, save a few exceptions, and while club life may be a hoot, the work is, for the most part, pointless.

It was at the moment that it all hit me. I wanted out of the fortunetelling business. I didn’t care about selling out to the Evil Empire anymore. I just wanted to leave all the craziness behind. I didn’t care about money or luxuries or anything like that. Just some decent wheels, a girlfriend that wasn’t a metaphysical nut-job, and a place I didn’t have to share with anyone. Basically, I wanted normalcy. She said she didn’t understand why I would reverse myself so drastically. I didn’t have a response.

That conversation lasted about three hours. When she left I was still pondering why my view of the nightlife had changed, and even more, when it changed. Just a few days ago I wrote about how I loved everything about club life. Now I sounded like I wanted nothing to do with it. I figured it was just being stuck in such a small town, so I made haste to confirm the gig in Orlando. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. I was supposed to check out an industrial club thanks to a friend of mine that used to live there. I just could make the connection to finalize the gig.

No, that’s not quite true. To be honest, I didn’t really want to go. I just wasn’t up to it. After Austin and Atlanta and the buses and the stress and the money troubles and all that jazz I was just burned out. Maybe it was this place I was in. This soft place with smothering amounts of Yin energy threatening to make me weak and stupid like the rest of them. I just felt like I had a limited amount of energy and needed every ounce of it just to keep myself from going mad. Or worse, deciding that the angry rants to Joanna were real and that I really did want to walk away from it all.

Since my departure from L.A. I’d been struggling with my financial situation. That’s not a new development. What was new was the fact that I gave a damn. I’m used to doing without. I’ve never had much so I made do without the comforts others have, but now it was really bothering me. Why? Why now is the Great Spirit plaguing me with doubts about The Black Road? This walkabout was about change. Evolution into something greater, not becoming a faceless drone like the rest of my family.

Of course, change is a funny thing. It happens when you least expect it and it happens to the most unlikely of people.

It’s rough being the son of a war hero. My father, although not the kind to talk about his time in Vietnam, is a very proud and strong man. The sort you just know has been shot at many times and lived to tell (or not tell) the tale. My dad is a doer, not a talker. This is why he finds me so alien.

The day before I left for New York, dad and I were running an errand for my Aunt. At first, he laid into my about my anti-social habits and starts telling me how I needed to be less off-putting. I reminded him that I could schmooze anyone if I wanted to. Just ask Joanna. Then he asks, “Yeah. How’d you do that?”

You see, my father is a programmer. He works on AS400’s and if you know anything about that sort of thing, you know that this system is going the way of the dodo.

So, dad starts asking me what he should do. It turns out that he’s very nervous about his place in the company and since I was a fortuneteller...

Holy Jesus, that was weird. My dad was asking me for advice. What was the world coming to? Reluctantly I spent the next hour telling him that he needed start schmoozing more and to get into a management position. After all, he may not be able to work on these new systems, he certainly can tell someone else how to do it. I ran him through the gauntlet of how to schmooze, mind games, making allies, the works. Still, the whole scene creeped me out. I mean the last thing any guy wants is to see is his own father gripped by doubt.

Which is interesting because doubt was all I was about at the time. I had taken this trip in an attempt to change and better myself, yet I couldn’t handle the fact that my father was trying to change himself as well. The thing that really got to me was that while he knew why he needed to evolve, I still didn’t! And if I did, I wasn’t ready to come to grips with it.

Was this part of The Black Road? It just seemed that the changes I was considering, selling out and all, were counter to my initial intents. My recently discovered want for normality was breaking my head in two. This was getting bad. I needed a reading.

I rarely read the rune for myself. I feel like I can’t be impartial normally, so when I feel the urge to do a reading I know it’s going to be heavy. I pulled one rune at a time, a reading called Odin’s Rune, and pulled Tir: The Warrior, then Radeo: The Journey. I had to sit down.

You see those two runes combined are the symbol for The Great Hunt, my personal philosophy and religion rolled into one. It has but one commandment: pursue and devour.

Is this all just another step in The Great Hunt and thus The Black Road? I hate it when metaphysical concepts merge but I couldn’t deny that one was just a detour of the other. And just as the Road diverged from the Hunt, it would soon lead back to it’s beginning.

The New Agey-ness was sickening. I wanted nothing more than to forget it all and go back to just being happy with my work and my path, but I couldn’t. You can’t unlearn wisdom, no matter how dumb you are. Besides, I still had time to let all of this sink in. I didn’t expect any answers until I went home, and I still had miles to go before seeing Hollywood again.

I didn’t sleep that night. Visions of The Rotten Apple plagued me and I wondered if this time would be any different from the last. Me and New York have always had a rocky relationship, and I felt that this fling would indeed be the last. All the while I kept wondering what I was evolving into and why? The “what” wasn’t bothering me much anymore, as I had a certain amount of faith that it would be for the better. It was the “why” that got me. I could only think of one, horrible theory as to what’s causing all of this...

...maybe I’m doing all of this just to impress a girl.