Here comes the sun

Something about the sunrise seems more optimistic these last few days. It wakes me gently. It appears unconcerned with Corona or the plummeting stock market or the skyrocketing suicide rate or an unhinged, off-the-rails government or who's doing what in the Democratic primaries. Maybe the sunrise is cheerful because of these things - a little bit of chaos in the human world. A species correction, where the hype settles, and we humans are reduced back down to something closer to our true relative value. And the natural world, over which the sun presides, carries on naturally. 

Magical thinking of my own

Woke up just now without an alarm at exactly the time I planned to when I laid down last night. The timing wasn't great though because I'd been ordering ice cream at a counter with a Mexican girl. We were giggling quietly at all the choices, standing close, like you do when something is new. She was bumping me gently with her hip, and I was smiling easily. It had the makings of a good day.

May it carry over into this one, as I've got things to accomplish today. Things that have accumulated, things procrastinated upon, and today is the day I aim to tackle them. I need some coffee beans and postage stamps first though.

Last night a determined wind pushed a cold front in here. The moon was just a crescent with it's two horns pointing up, and there was a visible planet aligned with it off to its right. I meant to google it later to find out if it was Venus, but I didn't.

At the counter of a burger place, I was waiting for the food to cook. A girl siting there told me she was waiting for her mother who was, in turn, waiting for a cab.

She is planning on getting her GED and then to go on to college and, after that, further on to become an actress. She told me that acting asks a lot of you.

I said I thought that was very cool and asked if she'd ever acted before.

Yes, she said confidently, in a play when she was in the third grade.

My heart filled and then broke so I put the now completed cheeseburger and fries into my insulated bag, wished her good night, and stepped off into the night.

She wished me a great night which made me feel careless and stingy. People don't have much protection out here. Sometimes you don't want to leave them alone.

The weird moon and planet constellation was still out there when I stepped back into the wind. I felt it staring down at me, wanting me to notice how beautiful and strange it was. I could tell it had something to do with the wind's horseplay by the rough and tender way it jostled me.

Yeah, it was Venus. Google just told me so.

In a Sacred Manner

Woke up thinking about what a man told me once about walking in a sacred manner. 
Check yourself throughout the day.
You'll know if you are or you're not.
When you are, it feels right.
I'm most often not.
I think we need more people
Doing it more often
Right now.

Thinking on something

You are dancing your way into the kitchen to a Stooges song.

You are laughing at my signature "back it up" move.

I'm getting the chance to sing Fly Me To The Moon to you, in person.

We're driving together, I sneeze and make the guy in the crosswalk leap into the air,
     you say "Geeez, Mayham!" and make me cry with laughter.

I miss you so hard sometimes.

What if you and I went out one night to eat fried pork chops and violate a few municipal ordinances?

I understand things can't be as they were, but it's not right that we no longer have each other's friendship. 

None for me, thank you

There's nothing really hostile to me here anymore. Especially not the sound of rain on my roof and on the trees behind the house. Those are the sounds of a quiet friendship now.

This house is not yet a haven, or really even a home to me, but it's no longer actively trying to kill me. Perhaps it would abstain from taking heroic measures to revive me if I failed to wake in the morning, like a tired but dutiful caregiver, but it's no longer trying to smother me in a pillow either.

There were no voices here today, until the phone startled me late in the afternoon, not mine or anyone else's. And that was fine.

Someone told me yesterday that I've been hiding out. Told me I should get some therapy, square a few things away, and then find someone else - as though that's what everyone wants and needs. The formula for well adjusted happiness.

On more than a few occasions I've noticed something bland and generic about her. Something flavorless and without soul. She would take the prescribed route without question.

I wanted to tell her that I reject that. To tell her that she feels empty because the world she inhabits is empty, and what she thinks she wants is empty too. But I didn't because I don't really have anything better to offer.

Just this, talking to ghosts and listening to the rain. 

Roaster

There's a new coffee roaster in this small town, I learned about it yesterday. That's something to look forward to.

What I found demoralizing a few weeks ago - money seeks money in matters of romance - I have now swallowed, digested and internalized. Go for it, I say, lots of luck. There's no more sting to it. There's no more attraction either.

It's interesting when someone points out in dinner conversation, matter of factly, that you are a member of a lower caste. I found this illuminating. I saw you illuminated.

You need less and less as you go, I think. I find I want less of it too.

Some coffee would be nice though. 

I'd like to remember it differently

My last memory of your face was imprinted in the morning while laying in that luxurious hotel bed.

You rolled your eyes impatiently.

You were distant and in a hurry to leave.

The drive back to Worcester was tense and nearly silent.

And then, you were getting out of the car, not looking at me, closing the door, walking away.

That was the last time I saw you.

No words at all. 

I don't want to get up

A poet I used to read a lot recommended going to bed for a few days when you find yourself feeling low. Sleep can be a healer and a refuge. I've been following that advice for some years now. Most days my objective - that which I am striving for - is to get back to my bed. Drowsiness and twilight are the states in which I seem to spend most of my life. Part of me finds this disturbing. The other part is in the majority.

Chicken facts

Among other things, I dreamed that chicken eggs are healthier for human consumption during the colder seasons. I think we need a fact checker to verify that. Has fake news infiltrated my dreams?

The dream got me remembering the chickens and all that went with raising them. And then on to thinking about how happy I felt doing basic domestic chores with you. Making a bed, doing laundry, feeding and watering the chickens, collecting the eggs, preparing a meal, walking the dogs, mowing your grass, making espresso, checking out all the items on store shelves, criminally disposing of the chicken waste. I liked to do some of that to help you manage your busy life, but I really loved when we did those things together.

Of course, now I'm wishing there was more of that.

I liked being around you and your sister, together, and your collective dogs. Listening to her playing Chopin in the other room, hearing you bantering back and forth, watching you manage your household. I liked dreaming about becoming part of your family sometimes, and about you becoming part of mine. I liked your brown birds, and all your flowers, and the lovely retreat you made out on the the porch - the home you created for yourself. I liked seeing you in it.

I loved waiting for you to come to bed.

Safer

Last night's dreams were tedious, anxious, and repetitive and they're already beyond recall. I want to go deeper.

Heading out today to an emergency department to finish a project. Yesterday was illuminating.  A weighted chair was thrown over the nurses' station, and the staff fear getting pelted with the cordless patient phone. Steps have been taken to make the place safer but now it feels like a lock-up. For every solution there often seems two new problems.

When one of the patients is suddenly transferred, the protective garage-style door is raised. Daylight streams into the unit and changes the feel of everything. Sometimes kids are stuck waiting in that room for weeks with the door pulled down to ensure their safety. One of the staff tells me it's very sad when a child has to ask you if it's day or night outside.

Let's wait

1.
Something about sublingual medication and subliminal fields, but most of it is forgotten while transitioning from dreaming to writing. Taunton is my destination today as billionaires arrange themselves to plunder further what there is left to plunder. They don't perceive limits while we, on the other side, are constantly restrained by them. What am I on about? I'm not sure. Muddy water obscures the shallows.

2.
My car has had a bent front left rim for a couple of years now. It's the direct result of hitting a guard rail while executing a turn and falling asleep simultaneously. That's definitely not a best practice, and I do not recommend it. Too many jobs and not enough sleep back then.

Anyway, I still drive that car. It's got very close to 300,000 miles on it. The rim is still bent.  The bent rim caused a leak in the seal so I have to fill the tire with air at least once a week. I guess I could order a new rim, but it's an older model, so it's supposed to be hard to find. I haven't tried. You get pretty good at limping after a while. Then it just becomes the way you walk. 

Writing in Bed

It's a work day, and I've managed to get up at 4:30 AM for the purpose of writing before work. Just half an hour to start and maybe more later if I can make, or better use, the time. Sometimes there seems little or nothing to write about.

My stomach is making odd sounds, likely because I ate something containing lactose last night. The microwave is chirping mechanically every minute to let me know the coffee I reheated is ready. That sort of synchronized repetition eats away at my patience if I let it. I'm distractible. Something like how whistling tea kettles sound like panic to me and cause me to run to make it stop or respond with verbal anger. My tee shirt smells like perfume. Cars are beginning to move out there. 

It's still winter, but snowless and warmish, as far as I can tell from in here. Yesterday, I didn't speak to anyone except the young man at the supermarket check out when I went to stock up on antacids, and then only to ask him how he was doing. He was doing alright, and since I didn't have my own card, he was willing to use the store card to save me a few cents. I found that encouraging - the thought, I mean. 

I'm waiting for my paycheck to hit the bank and was disappointed to see that it hasn't yet. The microwave is still dutifully chirping. If I respond aloud - either sharply or thankfully - it will make little difference. I don't know how long it will continue. At some point the microwave will get distracted, become bored, give up hope, say screw you, or get caught up in other electronic activities and desires. Another car goes by.

In sitting down to write - actually I'm sort of laying down, propped up in my bed - I can choose to look around, look back, or look forward. Or I can look within and start inventing things.  H.P. Lovecraft, for example, "idiotically digging in a grave". I read that last weekend and it stuck with me.

Pure spontaneously invented fiction is difficult and of little interest to me most of the time. Fictionalized non-fiction works a little better. That's what I call writing about something that actually occurred but with a twist, or some embellishment, or distortion that makes it story telling rather than journalism or a confession. I read a description of creative nonfiction that I liked - true stories, well told. I often find myself aspiring to that. 

It's probably a good idea to write with purpose or a plan, but right now, I'm just happy to be writing at all. I should have done this daily practice thing years ago, but then I should also avoid should of's. That's just another patch of quicksand.

The microwave has given up, by the way. And the Indian psychiatrist I recently worked with advised that one should only use the bed for sleep or for sex. Definitely not for writing, he'd say with certainty, no.

I wish I was alive...

Alone and strange

From above, one might think that I am living in an uncoupled state temporarily while passing through a transitional phase of life. Well, the duration of that phase is approaching four years now, and the only desire for coupling I have is for the brief and occasional kind.

I enjoy the company of my children when I get to see them. It feels good when my youngest is sleeping in the next room. Socializing with other people, when I meet them out there, is often fun, interesting, or gratifying in some way. It's a moment in time to be enjoyed. But for the most part, being around other people for very long causes me mild to moderate irritation. Sometimes more than moderate. I feel substantial physical relief when I'm alone again. This is usually true in more intimate circumstances too.

Recently spent a few hours with a friend who also lives alone. She's been dealing with a stalker and isn't sleeping much, so company, for her, is welcome. She did a lot of joking with me about my obvious state of tension. I could see it myself in the reflection on her television screen. We laughed about it, but it didn't begin to dissipate until I was walking back across the dark parking lot at midnight listening to the gurgling of river water and looking up at the stars.

I can't imagine, in any realistic or optimistic terms, living with a woman again. The biological imperative has been fulfilled. The only yearning I feel is for memories which are maybe more dream than fact. I have quiet here. Space. I'm not exactly at peace, but I'm not tense either.

Crow at Dawn

The insistence of a dawn crow and the urge to urinate wake me up. My youngest boy is here, sleeping in a room that needs paint and window treatments.

I was up late with the middle child who called from a Tampa emergency department with what he thought was his second sports related broken nose - the result of a skull and face colliding at athletic speeds.

Turns out it's not broken, just swollen and out of alignment, for which we are both grateful but we can expect a $150 bill for the out of network co-pay.

I had just been mulling over how to pay a $1,500 medical bill for the oldest child I found in the mailbox yesterday which our high deductible commercial health insurance plan that costs about $350 a week doesn't cover.

Then one of the lenses in my glasses popped out when they fell off the table while I was straightening up the house a little. I managed to jerry rig it back together, but it feels a little tenuous.

It's not bankruptcy, you know?  But it keeps you on the treadmill.

Ironically, before any of this transpired, I made $50 in my spare time yesterday responding to a government survey regarding my personal consumption of health care. Fifty bucks for a half hour of  saying "no". Not too shabby. 

Everything

I can't remember exactly where I was or what I was doing, but a couple of nights ago I saw something that made me think of Liam. Liam was a friend of my brother and I who died after battling cancer for several years.

In his last days, he received hospice care at home. That is to say a nurse came regularly to medicate his pain. He did everything else on his own. By then he was eating through a port. He could speak, but it was difficult to understand him, and his mind was sharp and clear. His family came by his apartment to help and to keep him company until he'd get tired of them and kick them out. They were understanding, and he was able to be direct about what he needed. Politeness wasn't necessary.

Liam got in contact with my brother and I when he knew there wasn't much time left. He said he wanted to spend his last days with friends and invited us to visit him. It was harder than I thought, for me, at first. I hadn't seen him in quite some time and the cancer had ravaged him in the interim. He was in his early 40s but looked more than twice that. I'm impressed now remembering how honestly he looked at us, giving us time to get over our shock, before getting into things. His eyes burned while he talked and listened. His humor was still there. And he wanted to know about us.

We talked and laughed for a couple of hours. At some point, Liam said he wished now that he hadn't wasted so much time being hung up about sex and women. He had been pretty introverted and mostly single or quiet about whatever he did for companionship.

I said, kind of thoughtlessly, that I didn't know what I would do if I wasn't thinking about love and sex. I mean, what else was there, really?

I think I've written about this before. I remember his response often and vividly.

His eyes opened really wide. He stretched his arms out to his sides as far as he could, made a slow arching movement with his head, looking from on end of that expense to the other.

"Everything."

Being with your friends, being alone, breathing, eating, walking, shitting, reading, listening to music, watching movies, laughing, crying, politics, trivia, art, mathematics - living.

Living in this world.

Nothing was boring or tedious or unappreciated where he was sitting.

I caught just a glimpse of what he was trying to show me. And I try not to forget what I saw. 

Stay...

Beat it

The cold swept in last night, and it's a fine morning to stay in bed with someone you feel good staying in bed with. This particular morning, I'm that lucky guy.

The Valentine's Day hustle is on. A manufactured crisis of expectations, disappointments, anxiety - a set up for failure. Next year you will be quietly expected to out perform this one. Consumer love.

I'm counting myself lucky not to have to contend with it again this year. Cuddle oneself, I always say, it's cheaper.

In Lieu Of Valentines

Sometimes I write to try to relive a thing, to recapture how something once felt to me. But that can really hurt - either because it doesn't happen when you want it to, or because it does when you just think you do.

Sometimes I try to write about other things that happened between us. I never really get beyond the setting. What became a religious practice of candles and a certain kind of music. A transition from profane to sacred space. An elemental opening up and an involuntary outpouring. It's true to say I never wanted to leave that place once we found it. It is also true to say I wanted to die there.

And here's where writing can be useful. As I wrote the last paragraph, I realized it was the depth of the opening up that made it so different for me. And that space we entered, I wondered if it was really we or only me. It's hard to look at things sometimes.

Basking, you called it. Yeah, I sure was. And I was awake to every second of it. I miss that place, like water and air.

How close your soul...

Sleeping and dreaming

And I often find myself remembering the feeling of you falling asleep beside me even though it has been a long time since you've done so. Sort of a descent, a slow softening, you melting into me. Then I'd start to radiate whatever that was coming out of me. Laying there quietly, beaming something, glowing in the dark. Holiness.

I can't really sleep next to anyone now. There's no rest in it, no glowing, nothing holy transpires. Maybe I don't want to have that with someone else. Then I almost allow myself to think about you sleeping beside another man. That thought used to drain me of life. Now I can sort of see it in my mind from a distance. I hope that you feel safe there, and I think you do.

There was the time on the deck of the ferry. It was bright and a little chilly with the ocean breeze, and you sat somewhat snuggled against me for warmth. I held you like that and was glad we weren't talking because I don't think I would have been able to speak. That was the first time I felt you fall asleep. My heart was so large, I thought it would burst. A sacrament.

I don't know why it meant so much to me. But it did. And it does now. I don't know how being close to you made some kind of energy stream out of the palms of my hands and from my solar plexus. But it did. It hasn't happened since then.

It's hard to accept that something that powerful just ends. I don't really believe that it did.  As long as I can remember, I don't really believe that it will.

Desayuno Guapo

One of those top to bottom gray days
Made entirely of rain and no snow
A friend, first met in transit, checks in saying
She's still waiting for summer to end
Another texts that she has sad news and then disappears
Immediately I am thinking suicide - one of the staff or
Possibly, one of the patients - all of their faces running through
My head - it could be any one of us, I can't rule even one out

The river, free of ice, is winding it's way between low banks of wet trees
Seeming still, I want to take it's picture but I keep driving toward my scheduled day
We've been passing acquaintances for many years now, Merrimack and me, it's a
River that has undoubtedly seen too much, and now it sees me stopping for breakfast

It was one of the comedians I watched, clenched the whole time, do his routine more than once
In a bar, he was very brave, I thought, to get up there alone and put himself so far out there
With nothing but a microphone to shield him, walking a tightrope over an audience of hostile
Drunks staring up in mostly uncomprehending silence, waiting for him to deliver something
Maybe one of them is saying to his buddy,  just give him enough rope and he'll...
But that rope didn't hold him, and now his relative is thankful but concerned, wanting to know
How to pull him out of that low, pressed-flat-by-sadness place, he tells her that only up there
On the tightrope is he anywhere close to happy

Maybe he can write his way out, I tell her
He's smart and he writes really good comedy bits
Give him a pen and a notebook and ask him
To write the whole truth.

Already?

I remember my grandfather falling asleep whenever he sat down for any length of time. The setting didn't matter at all. I had to pull off the highway this afternoon to sleep for a while in my car. That after a full night's sleep and having done nothing particularly strenuous today.

A dense fog settling down onto me. Perpetual drowsiness. Not the best use of it. 

Great

Walked with my youngest son through a casino today. We were in the neighborhood checking out the Dr. Seuss museum which he's wanted to do for a few years now and I thought they might have some interesting restaurants in there. They didn't. We walked around the edge of the gaming area - you have to be 21 to be on the casino floor - and I felt nauseous inside of three minutes. What an absolute drag those places are. The whole thing designed to stun then fleece you. It's news to no one that the house always wins, but they still stream in by the bus load. See them sitting there entranced, vacant, washed out. Willful zombies. I was embarrassed to be there. Reminded me a lot of the current political situation.

Teachable moments

Many of the people in town said the man was hard working, a role model, and even generous. The word petrified means absolutely still and it can apply to the thought process just as well as to the body. The petrified boy had those words describing the man frozen in his mind while the man, blind with rage, beat the terrified German shepherd with a heavy chain. A lesson was being taught, and learned.

What the...

Twenty four hours or more of light rain with temperatures just below freezing. Then a sudden wind, gathering strength, inciting the tall trees to pelt my house with ice. I ran around and looked out all the windows to see the rioting mob of forty-footers thrashing about, heaving ice bricks down upon me. Nature is apparently sick and tired of my shit.

Bittersweet

Last night brought me a mix of rain, snow and sleet here at the hermitage. This morning I was surprised to see visitors in the backyard. Two eastern bluebirds, two American robins, several chickadees, a nuthatch, and a woodpecker. It must be the berries of the bittersweet that brought them in. They have apparently achieved the proper level of fermentation.

Those were the first robins of the year. It's early for them, but then natural rhythms are shifting unnaturally. And the bluebirds. I've not seen them since you and I discovered those nine, together, perched in just about the same place, among the snow blanketed branches. My Deepak did it's thing immediately when I noticed them.

I went and found my glasses, thought of you, and watched them until they moved on. I felt the memory of your presence without any pain or sorrow accompanying it. It just made me smile, and I embraced it all.

Love. You don't really have to be here for that, but I'd feel better if your were.

Gig

Today I sat for eight hours with four young people. They came to this place looking for help, with life. Their openness and sincerity made it difficult for me to contain myself. We really can be beautiful.

Just getting something down before going to sleep.

Tried working from home today with the attention span of a gnat. All kinds of things happening on the political front. We are drifting further and further from truth into a willful mass American delusion. Limbaugh getting the Presidential medal of Freedom. Everything is tarnished here in Opposite Land. Why not, let's call it shiny.

I put a hand on my thigh while reading slides from an on line Power Point presentation and felt no resistance in the tissue that should be housing my quadriceps. They've departed. This caused me to go out for a half hour walk just to push some blood through my veins. The air was cold on my face and hands, my eyes teared, my lungs burned a little. I got sweaty and out of breath pretty quickly.

Friends from Texas have been reaching out on Facebook. Feels pretty good.  All in all. 

Memorium

I guess the poet I read yesterday - the one who failed to move me - did leave me with something. He wrote about being lonely for his father, about being in love with him. Reading that must have slipped a seed into me.

What's it been now, four years? I lose track, but I know it happened right around this time of year. You were in the hospital, rendered low by a very tough combination of illnesses and conditions. The rest of the family had been visiting. I was sick at home with a fever and would not have been allowed in anyway. Something in the back of my mind told me if I was going to visit though, I'd better do it soon.

On this particular morning, I woke up sweating after a night of crazy dreams and high fever. There was a snowstorm in progress. This particular storm was unusual because the sun was shining brightly when the heavy snow began to fall. Your wife and daughters wanted to come to see you, but you told them not to chance it with the storm on it's way. When the nurse left your room that morning, you turned your face toward the window and died. I like to think you saw the sun shining and the snow falling together as an auspicious moment. In my bed, my first thought upon opening my eyes was he's going to die today.

We hated each other. I've tried to modify that perception over the years. I rationalized things, pieced together alternative narratives from scraps of anecdotes about your life. Yes, there were periods of truce between us. You did generous and helpful things for my family, and for me, from time to time. But I know you never liked me. Things said and done cannot be unsaid or undone.

I'm glad it ended the way it did though. For you, and between us. You died quickly and alone, so no one would see you. That's probably the way you wanted it. And you and I didn't have to look at each other, across all those years of antipathy, and lie.

Holyoke Dusk

Jack and I went to the town library together so he could knock out his Social Studies before going to his friend's house for a Super Bowl party. I lifted someone's 504 page collected works off the shelf and spent an hour reading though it. A poet - the professional kind - who probably has a lofty faculty position somewhere, gets paid to show up and do readings, gives authoritative interviews, and is probably quoted frequently. I read a significant portion of his work - early, middle and late - and I didn't feel anything. That sucks. That really sucks. The culmination of a lifetime of effort.

What did you think?

Well, I was unmoved. 

What makes a writer write? What keeps a writer writing? Who is he writing for?

I saw bare trees filled with crows silhouetted against the Holyoke dusk tonight, and I wanted to show someone. 

This movie made me remember that feeling

A boy is in the water
Where Pennsylvania and Ohio meet,
Where two sinister tides converge.
Abandoned entire residential blocks and former
Centers of industry, sources of gainful employment.

The tongue of his sneaker is moving in the current.
He is a part of this ecosystem.
The tides are methamphetamine and opiates,
And they have drowned a good percentage of the remainders.
The others move about as only hosts to their parasite.

She's on your front seat on a beautiful summer day,
Lovely thighs glistening in the sunshine in a rainbow striped dress,
Fifties rock n' roll hits playing on the radio.
She's napping in a stranger's car.
You cannot wake her.

You can get everything you need in one neat package
At the drive-up window of the liquor store.
Nobody's worried, nobody's hiding.
She sends you to the black folks dollar store
For hair ties and a very specific set of hair pins.

The other one, she bought a house on the Ohio side,
On a near ghost block for nine thousand dollars.
It's spare, but she travels for her business, so doesn't need much.
It's not a bad neighborhood, she says, unless you're scared of blacks,
But you can't really live here.

They voted for Trump here, the statistics say,
But I don't see anyone that would even know
Where to go for that, or when it happens.
I cannot imagine that they feel - or are - represented by any candidate.
When she returns after a long while, her eyes are bulging.

The high for me was what the other one said to me,
right there in the doorway, I replay it in my head sometimes.
Even outside this half-dead city, out in the sunshine and the strange fields of green
You can feel there's a horror on-going here,
A Beast being fed with Souls.