Third floor walk up

The apartment's not great. The neighborhood's not great. The world itself is a terrible place to release children into. But it's fun to shop for groceries together while talking in goofy accents. It's fun to see her setting up her spice cabinet and letting the new mattress breathe. It's fun, but it breaks my heart too.

Movement

This weekend my daughter moves into a new apartment. I'll be moving some of her things today. Look forward, not back. 

Power Trip

Swing of the Axe

Texas lost two musicians this week. Young guys in their 30's.  One of them reportedly died of an overdose. His father struggled with the same disease, but it decided to take the son. The other one, I remember talking with a little group of hardcore kids at a bar in a small West Texas town. They were telling me about this band, and this singer, with great joy and regional pride. The next time I had access to my computer I looked that band up and agreed with their assessment. I shared a whiff of their enthusiasm for a moment.

There was a lot in that small town to be depressed about. Now there's something else. 

We Were Attacked By a Violent Mob

I took one of those disorienting but seemingly necessary naps
when I got home from work today.
It was not for nothing.
At the forefront of my mind upon waking
was the first line of a new song I was apparently writing.

Kiss my royal ass, I'm Kenny Rogers.

Troubled

Some kind of jitters through the night. Foreboding. What's coming isn't good, you think.

I woke up with a date scheduled for this evening but canceled it first thing citing feeling unwell. Because why?

My undershirts are yellowing, the yard is overgrown with weeds and vines, my high mileage car is missing hubcaps, my shoes need polish and have a broken lace and my pants are shiny and threadbare.

I don't care to improve any of these conditions.

When I am not working, I return to my bed.
If this happens to shift in the future, I'll be in contact. 

For fuck's sake

There was a road killed black bear in the middle of Route 2 around Devins this morning. That's a thing you wish didn't happen - a damn shame - like the cops shooting a man seven times in the back in front of his three children for walking away, or a seventeen year old kid thinking he's doing some good shooting protesters with the assault rifle his parents thought he was responsible enough to own in Wisconsin. 

Notes

You never did like the term "depressed" to describe yourself, but then seem to have spent more than an ordinary amount of time wondering if you indeed met the diagnostic criteria for Dysthymia or Major Depression, Severe, Recurrent.

That's not very hard to do.

But your contention is that it's not clinical, it's existential. In this case, a man dealing with himself in the context of the world with all that it entails. Medication doesn't make that flow any smoother, you posit.

So sometimes you find yourself sleeping a lot without much energy and enthusiasm for the other stuff. When it's like that, you have to start taking notes to help you remember that you're still alive and not everything is shit.

Like tonight, you noted the bright half moon, the temperature falling into the 60's, the crickets more sonorous and active than you've noticed in some time, a friend told you about a positive outcome for another person that was the direct result of an action you took, she checked out the trumpet sound of Chet Baker on You Tube at your suggestion and liked it a lot, your son wearing the silver chain his grandmother gave him and his faithful intention never to take it off.

There are these moments. Beautiful things.

Neither Fox nor Jesus

I got up earlier than necessary and drove about 150 surplus miles to the wrong work location this morning, but I guess I had time to get a cup of coffee and clear my head before getting to actual work. They screened me, as they do, and did not try to stop me from going in. I read that a friend in Big Spring contracted Covid-19 in the hospital she works in, as did three others there so far. It's been over 110 degrees in West Texas lately so if you're one of those who believe it's just a little old flu the summer heat will take care of,  you better revise your propaganda. 

Anxious-ambivalent

Within two minutes of initiating our first telephone conversation, we were talking about our attachment styles. Might as well put it out there.

Providence Laundromat

A Providence laundromat is
As good a place as any on a hot afternoon
The owner speaks Spanish, he's Dominican I think
Seems to make a fuss over me, making change and getting me a card
Showing me where everything is and how everything works
Everybody's darker than me here - a woman smiles shyly and
Some men stare openly, suspicious.
I'm washing clothes - that's all.
Happened to be here with a basket of dirty laundry in my car
And a couple of hours of free time.
Unlikely, I know but
Mostly true.

Another light skinned man comes in with a dark skinned girl
And a mountain of laundry between them in several giant laundry bags.
He's wearing a T-shirt that says
SCARED MONEY DON'T MAKE MONEY.
Later, I'm waiting in my car for the machine to run it's course.
I'm not scared, but there's a pandemic on and we should give each other space.
He's in the car next to mine smoking weed with the windows closed
And the music turned up very loud.
He's in his head looking like he's just trying to keep it together.
I walk to the 7-11 looking for cold water.
It's very hot. Hace mucho calor.
I know a little Spanish, but not very much.

The quiet here this morning

I woke at 6 am to such quiet. Temperatures are in the 50s. It's that time of year when we go back and forth between hot days and cool nights, and the portents of Autumn reveal themselves by the hour.

The loneliest place in the world

I woke this morning with the dawn, naturally.

A few minutes later, an acquaintance I haven't heard from in nearly a year texted to tell me her former lover had died, unnaturally.

Suicide.

I saw that void again.
Immediately.

Awful in a way nothing else I know is awful.
Awful in a way that travels from outside of you to inside of you and stays.

She wanted to know what I knew about healing from it.

I remembered seeing you in my mind's eye, my friend.
You were walking on a blanched desert road.
No people, no cars, no buildings, no signs
No airplanes or clouds or satellites or angels
Just the unblinking sun and you walking
Carrying whatever was happening inside you.

At some point you came upon the skeletal remains of a phone booth.
All the glass had been broken out.
The black phone, metallic reenforced cord and receiver were there.
Maybe someone came to mind.
Maybe something started to rise inside you.
You lifted the receiver to your ear - silence.

The severed cord fell away, dangled, slowly swung.

Untold miles from anywhere,
Anyone.

No one to see or to hear or to understand
Or to try with you or to cry with you, Jim.

Sure

A lightning strike nearby shook the house during a late afternoon thunderstorm today. I took a walk after, around dusk, and saw the setting sun reflected in the clouds and along the top of a fog bank that had nestled among the trees in the distant valley below that loop we used to walk before dawn in the winter back in another lifetime.

Someone tried to talk to me today about trusting that your needs will be attended to by another person. I realized then I truly believe everyone is just passing through and that is just not going to happen. 

What in the ...

Check in with your body and find it in disrepair. There's a nerve issue on your left side which now has no push strength. Do some kind of workout anyway in a busy but not really crowded gym. Most of the people are trying to stay masked even when struggling to breathe. I am using a small barbell facing two girls, maybe sisters, who are working out together. I notice one of them look at me and then position herself between me and the other girl. The other girl is using the assisted pull-up machine. She is wearing some unbelievably form fitting one-piece outfit which I had not noticed until the other's accusation drew my attention to it. I felt like a creep anyway. Eventhough I was really just a befuddled older guy standing there wondering why my arm doesn't work and what in the hell is going on. 

Remarkable

I may have just experienced an entire day without lethargy. Now that's remarkable.

Took a brisk walk in the woods after getting home from work at about dusk harassed a little along the way by horseflies. They're why horses grew tails, you know. I tried not to swing my hands around too much. They only live for two weeks. They need a blood meal to reproduce. Show a little compassion.

A good sweat. A little exertion. An early bed time. 

Semi lucid

It's been cooler and overcast this weekend. Hints of autumn and a glimpse of the corresponding annual awakening.  A restlessness, a feeling of loss, missed opportunity, squandered potential, wasted time. Why am I here? What am I doing?

Picking up on a change

I don't know if it's sloth, age, Covid aftermath or just a general lack of toughness (I don't want to crush any goals), but I just took a quick walk down along the power lines, lifted a flat rock over my head a few times, walked some more, squatted with a twenty-five-pound-or-so stone a few more times then turned round and did the same thing up the hill on the way out. It was more strenuous than I remember it being in the Spring. The woods have changed in so many ways since then. The world has.

That story

The spin cycle of your mind.

You have gone over this from start to finish many times. You have, without a doubt, made edits during each retelling. Chopped out some words and events. Embellished, maybe even invented, others. Read and reread again and again. I always turn the pages with care from the top right corner.

We wrote it together. The events were what they were. They can be located in time and space. What they meant, though, is the story.

Last night I wondered if we were ever actually in love together or if I was there alone thinking of you.

Romero

Romero locked the door to his apartment with his key, slipped his key into the front right pocket of his pants, walked quickly to the end of the hallway down several flights of stairs through the building's back fire exit and out into the alley as usual. And as usual, he was of two minds.

He was the youngest in the room by twenty years at least. The others, well dressed in old clothes, sat in pairs and small groups waiting for the monthly meeting to begin. Waiting for something.

"Kid!" one of the older men called, "Come and sit." He joined them at the table smiling and shaking hands - the shrinking number. Each year they were fewer. He was proud to be among them. He was also ashamed.

The January meeting of Picador's Union Local Number Three was called to order.

Less than 30 seconds into the Chair's introductory remarks, Romero's phone began to vibrate in the inside pocket of his blazer. He was mildly embarrassed and annoyed.

Romero ducked, made himself inconspicuous, turned his back to the speaker and whispered, "Digame".

"Mr. Romero? This is Maurice from Hilton Hotels. How's your day going?"  The caller spoke in southern accented American English.

Romero, confused, responded, "I'm not interested."

He moved his thumb to disconnect.

"We know where you are right now, Mr. Romero. The animals know. The horses, los torros, the cows, the pigs, the chickens, the geese, the eagles, the jelly fish..."

He terminated the call with his thumb and tried to collect himself before raising his eyes and rejoining the meeting.

Welcome

Disembarking from the skiff, I felt wide awake and clear inside my head. The morning smelled different from any other I had known up until this one. The voices of the people sounded like music as they shouted from the river bank up the trail and beyond to the village. Voices of children, women, and men all sounding true to my ears, genuine, even though I could not understand a word that was said and not one of them did I know. The river had delivered me to this very place at this exact time and the moment was brilliant and unmistakeable. I walked toward the village with a gladness slowly rising inside me.

Half-assed attempt

A.M.

So, I didn't get out there until 5:30. The grass was wet and it seemed cloudy. I saw the moon in a-just- starting-to-brighten sky. I saw a bat circling for mosquitoes. I felt pain in my neck not allowing me to look up for very long anyway. Aw, what the hell.

P.M.

The child on the radio said she would make the Commander happy to repay his gift of school supplies. So, I'll tell you this even though you're not asking. I think ass clapping for the camera is beneath you. That's not a queen. No, not at all. 

95

It was steamy in Fall River at the foot of the Portugese cathedral this morning. Once inside the hospital, I nodded at Jude on his pedestal. He's the patron saint of lost causes, last stands and hopeless cases. I have an affinity for that guy. He's got guts and he understands about folks.

In the morning, I'm going to get up and get outside to walk at 4:30. They say there'll be a meteor shower directly overhead.

We should pay attention to what's going on around us. No?

Generational

Sitting at a table in the street under an umbrella distant enough from the others to take masks off and talk a little, the three of them and I, as we wait for our breakfast to arrive. You worry about what will become of them. You worry about the example you may be failing to provide. You try to restrain or at least filter the advice they will likely not heed if you issue it. It's going to be a hot day, but September's just around the corner. Two will return to school soon, virtually, while the other will struggle to find her own place to live which she cannot afford with her college degree and a full time job. She talks about government assistance. The ghost of my step-father clenches my teeth.

Guardians of Dogs

The boy had been talking to me for nearly a month about a Japanese lunch date with a friend of his. His plan was to try several different items from the menu. He said his friend was quite serious about Japanese food. It's kind of a grown up event. I left them at the restaurant and walked around the depopulated campus of Mount Holyoke College. I imagined there serious, studious, young women from around the world living there in community self-developing, seeking mastery, strategizing to save or to conquer the world, falling in love, discovering their sex. I walked across the bridges and around the pond and wondered what poets, luminaries, artists and suicides had done the same. I watched the chipmunks and squirrels, not bothered much by my presence, a swimming muskrat, the sweltering geese and ducks clustered in the shade of broken trees, manic dragonflies enacting indecipherable ritualistic behaviors. Placarded pin oaks, red maples and littleleaf lindens (that last one I adopted as my own name for the outing) towering like majestic art installations around the campus. Someone might use the words pastoral or bucolic. There is almost a hallowed feel to the place when it's deserted like this. I am talking to myself walking in the shade of the treeline along the edge of the lawn of one of the empty dormitories when a young woman comes up the walk carrying bags and boxes, walking upright, chin thrust forward with an air of official interest. She must be a Resident Advisor, I guess. When she sees me, she thinks psychopathic or psychotic. Presented with those options, I try to influence her toward concluding the latter. A psychotic just walking the path of lesser static, harassed but harmless. I felt shame to be the other option in her imagined perception. The psychopath stalking the campus. Seeing a girl alone. Hunting. Those are not thoughts I want to think and I shake them from my head with a short bark. I smell the dryness of the cut grass, almost hay in this drought, and also the humid green of the flowers and bushes when I pass. I sit on a shaded bench among empty chairs and fresh cut lawns and no students and think about the intention of community.

Tina Turner

A moment arrives that just wakes you up. Sudden clarity, energy, vitality. That drowsy shroud under which you half-live most of your days is lifted. If you counted up the moments you've spent in each state, what would the ratio be? Yeah, I don't want to know either. I would however like to know how to string a few of these together. 

You cannot stop the rolling

A toast to the flowers of late summer coming into blossom now
Especially the goldenrod that made him sniffle and sneeze mercilessly
My small portion of divine vengeance for his making me work the fields in the heat covered in            Poison ivy.

A toast to the proud willfully ignorant angry American
A perverse offshoot of this experiment in democracy
And to the now coloring leaves of the poison ivy and the browning ferns of late Spring
 Nothing really lasts, not even the bad shit.

A toast to Beirut's newly deafened and to the sweating crack dancer on Main Street, Worcester Oblivious to public health concerns but offering a window into enhanced brain chemistry
And also to the progressives of color elected in the spirit of change - a branch of green growth in
 This desolation.

A toast to the Death Cult in power, may they die out in accordance with their Apocalyptic wishes
We are not only this ugly-bloated-ignorant-petty-selfish-greedy-sickened Monster
Though we are this - in part at least - I say to thee we are also something else
 Something higher - something true - something not yet fully formed.

Something surely greater than just hucksters and dupes.

Red

I got all the sleep I needed, which is something to feel good about, but I lost a few hours of the day and my loose plan has been aborted.

Walking to the bathroom I had a flash of memory. Watching you doing your routine in front of the mirror. I remember my heart sinking the first time I watched you, though I was trying to be supportive. How desirable you looked and how threatened I felt. More evidence for the fear inside that you were moving away from me.

No WiFi

I don't really have the stamina for talking into the wee hours anymore. There's nothing to be discovered there.

A relatively new friend calls to let me know she's been suddenly and rudely let go.  She contracted Covid on the job, and it nearly killed her. She worked from home when she was well enough until she was strong enough to return to the hospital to face more Covid cases while well into her 60s. They didn't say thank you when they fired her. A business decision. She came to this country about 40 years ago after her husband was killed in an assassination attempt on a local government official. She had been through medical school. She had a small child. She knew no one in America. She managed to work her way through her residency without support. She eventually found a good job and got married. He eventually killed himself. She's alone now. Her son has grown and gone. Her work has been taken from her. She says it was nice to work with me. Jokes that we should retire together. I tell her I'll be in the tent draped in blue tarps out behind the Walmart.

I conduct an inspection of the psychiatric unit. It's poorly ventilated and hot. A paranoid young man wants to see my ID, know my name, file a complaint. He tells me that he only wants to see his wife. That's it. He wants to know if I am for him or against him. I am for you, but I'm struggling to tap into any optimism. One of the walls has a hole punched in it. I write this down.

The tropical storm with the exotic name toppled one of the dead trees behind the house which is now hung up in some of the live ones. I think the hummingbirds are nesting in there. I'm glad they made it, if they did. I drive out under an arch of fallen trees hanging over the road. The wind, and the rest of it, doesn't take your plans or your schedule into consideration.

The social worker in the hospital is very cute. Younger than me by too much. I haven't seen her in almost a year. We're wearing masks. Her eyes drift down to my belly which wasn't there before. Covid pounds, I want to say, but don't.

The lady in the pizza place is happy that it's closing time. She says her legs are still sore from yesterday, like she'd run a marathon. Lots of people lost power and ordered pizza when the exotic lady blew through town turning little worlds upside down and inside out. 

Date night

She asked why I didn't ask any questions about her. I told her I was a narcissist - benign not malignant - but a narcissist nonetheless. She said seriously though, it felt as though I wasn't interested in her. That stopped me cold. Was she right? Even then I was coming up empty. I could make her laugh. I was content to sit there and talk with her. But I guess I had no questions.

She would eventually tell me what she wanted me to know. She would probably never tell me what she didn't want me to know.

I am here because I want to kiss you. What information do I need? You have questions because you wonder if there is something to gain or to fear. I have no questions because I know ultimately one of us isn't staying. Maybe now or maybe later.

Manchester

Someone unlocks the door and invites you to step out into the light. You surprise yourself by sitting there blinking and making jokes but no movements at all. 

My new shucker, pork clouds, and the first real talk of our lives

Bought an oyster shucker and shucked a few oysters with my boy today. We finally got those steamed clams we'd been wanting too.

I saw a woman outside the fish market who looked like you wearing a mask. About the same height, hair length, complexion, posture. A pang of something. She asked if I knew how to shuck an oyster. Told her I never had.

When it was our turn in the store, I decided it was time to learn. We bought a half dozen along with the handy new shucker, but she was long gone. We ate the briny oysters out of the shells in the shade of the building next door.

Went to a farm store and bought some native blueberries. Speculated a little about what Pork Clouds might be after reading the name on a bag .

He talked to me today. Really talked. It was a real honor.