is there ever another place to be other than where you are?

you're in a dungeon, strapped to a table with electric alligator teeth snapped onto your balls. a guy in an executioner's mask has his hand on the trigger and he ain't a dominatrix, he's a motherfucking sadist who will get you to say anything, do anything, fuck anything and you will not resist. if you could 'jump' to a safe harbor, you would, wouldn't you? i would. and so, isn't it true that we're always in the right place at the right time with the right situation or person? what i'm stabbing at here is the realization (increasingly as i get older) that all experience benefits the Self in spite of our too many all-too-human, grass-is-greener complaints. even when it seems the opposite. even when we wish to be almost any other place than right here, right now. ('you ok?' i ask the dishwasher. 'i just want to get the fuck outa here and go home.') but he can't, can he? he has to finish up or quit. that's how we learn. that's how we grow. the unavoidables that we resent and confront and grope our way past. a hairdresser friend of mine put it this way describing parents who hope to protect their kids from hurt and harm: 'we can't keep their lessons from them even if we wanted to.' case in point - i've been a waiter at the same joint for 20 years. my friends can't believe it. 'are you kidding!? 20 years?!' or from a returnee - 'are you still here?' is that running in place or is that running in place? whatever, i love the job. i always have. i actually look forward to going to work. the unpredictability of the customers, the absurd soap opera gossip employees whisper, the kids you watch like a high school teacher grow up and fly the coop, irritated by the parents they once revered, the see-saw variable of tips you make on any given night, the hard elbows of football dykes - all keep the colors bright. hey, i could have left town. i could have moved to Paris. i could have had any number of shit jobs around the globe and seen the rest of this wild planet and been the richer for it. but i didn't. i'm here. the archbishop of rationalization has traveled far in Jamaica Plain. of course one thing i could NOT do was endure a corporate gig, let alone qualify for one. up early, home on a cocktail slide, freaking out the boss with my oddball 'artistic' behaviors. not me. this is where i am, it's where i belong. the tape has not run out on what make's the job and the town new, over and over again. i love it here and i've come to accept that i need to live in one place long enough to get the music done right. if i played guitar maybe that would be a different story. you can carry that thing on your back. but i can't. i look really stupid playing anything but a piano. so here i am, a faux Buddha under a New England elm tree.