change of the guard

tonight i'm in a hotel room, waiting to get sworn into the bar. i can no longer say i'm gonna be a lawyer when i grow up; i'm gonna be one tomorrow. that's deep enough. compounding matters significantly is the fact that this ceremony happens in a place that is thoroughly chocked to the gills with memories of the old life.

so how do i handle this? simple: by replacing bad thoughts with good ones. i drive the streets with a new companion, writing a new future over the old, dead past. it's largely successful so far, except for the weird gnawing sensation that i am nothing more than jimmy stewart in "vertigo," dressing the new love up to look like the old one.

my rational mind knows that this too shall pass, that the old life holds no dominion over any geographic location, that tomorrow will be one of the proudest moments of my life. but the man by my side will be different. there's a new sheriff in town. it'll take just a little more time, it seems, to fully grasp what that means.