Fate is a fink

So, the concert...ahh, the concert...that which has occupied every nook and cranny of my increasingly-convoluted brain for the last few months. Surprisingly enough, it's all coming together beautifully, with 13 days to go. I expect the inevitable tornado to touch down any moment now. The guitarist will break a hand, or the church secretary will realize someone else had already booked that night, or I'll come down with laryngitis, or I'll think of something crucially important that hadn't crossed my mind before, and about which it's now too late to do anything, or any of a myriad other possibilities on the unspeakable fan of evil destiny which waves about on the periphery of my mind and sends its foul swamp-gas wafting past my nose every so often.

Or, simply, nobody will show up. The thought corrodes my insides, surgical mesh and all. And I'll spend the summer careering along a mad parabola of self-recrimination, into the mythical Oort cloud of scuzzy bars where the has-beens hang out with the never-weres. And even there, I'll be on the outside looking in.

And so I surf the waves of anxiety, sucked back out yet again as the breakers roar...