I come in peace

The air changed overnight with the arrival of the rain. It's chillier now, less humid, more like the September in your mind. You think maybe you are singing along a frequency the mushrooms will understand. You keep remembering a band of them growing on the trail and imagining they had a message for you. What if you missed it? The call that would have changed your life. 

She said if I stood still with seeds in my hand they would sense my peace and come. This morning I stood holding a bowl of sunflower seeds while the chickadees and a titmouse fell upon the feeders. I got to within about a foot of them - one edge of the platform feeder to the other - before they became too apprehensive to land. 

I held the cup of seed out until my arm started to tremble and my shoulder began to ache. I remembered times holding a rifle out that way, and heavy lead x-ray tech vests in both hands with arms outstretched to the sides while gagging on bite-wings shaking hard and bleeding sweat, and other similar things I inflicted upon myself in the service of preparation and purification. I remembered the sun dance, chest pierced, leaning back with my weight against the rope under a pale hot sun trying to transcend. Tension, will, sacrifice, endurance. Trial by ordeal. I don't know how that relates to peace. 

But the birds couldn't find it either. 

Sorry ass

I didn't swear an oath this morning and as a result some time was spent in procrastination. Maybe more than some. But I did get out of bed and stayed that way. Went out for breakfast and saw way too many Trump flags on the drive home. That filthy rotten symbol of everything that sucks is debating a plain vanilla nowhere man tonight over the fate of the nation. Yeah, I'll vote vanilla, but the times call for something stronger. And I don't mean the weak and poisonous prick who's in there now. I scrubbed out the birdbath and refilled it with clean water today. Lots of thirsty birds and squirrels appreciated the effort. I stood for awhile among the feeding chickadees trying to put them at ease with my presence. Not yet. Not entirely. Scrubbed and put away the hummingbird feeders for the Winter and wondered if they'd return again in May, if I'll be here then, and if there will even be a here or a then. I paid the phone and the internet bills and took out the trash. I participated in some conference calls, made coffee, went out for a jug off wine, wrote the minutes to a meeting and made a plan to get up early tomorrow to do the rest of the work I had planned to do today. This time I'll swear that oath when I wake up. I swear. 

Contact precautions

The nurses and the CNAs, in masks and face shields, have been doing this every day all the way through the pandemic. Gowning and gloving up to go into the Covid positive rooms, then taking it all off and cleaning up to go on with the rest of their patients. A different rhythm, if there is a rhythm at all. A different routine. They talk about food - splurging, dieting. They're giggling about a batch of peanut butter chocolate squares someone's bringing in tomorrow. I catch a glimpse of the reaper ducking into a closet. I'm glad he's classy enough to stay mostly out of sight.

Reasons

I do solemnly swear to take my ass out of bed today. There's birds to feed, laundry to do and two boys to take to the fairgrounds for curbside pickup of classic state fair foods.

Maybe swearing an oath in the morning is the way to go. Today I did those things I swore to do, but had to leave one boy behind because he was neck deep in his Economics midterm. The fair food was reduced to three food trucks and their crews who weren't getting a whole lot of business. We tipped them all, and they appreciated it. All the people working the trucks were happy for the work and appreciative of us coming out. As we were of them being there for us. The food wasn't exactly magical, but we had fun with it anyway. 

The pandemic is getting to the boy. He's talking about Fall being maybe the best season to die in. I suggested to him that it's also the best season to be alive, which is really saying the same thing. 

We have this. Right now. Together. 

That's all we know for sure. 

Company

Putting yourself in the company of others is a gamble if you're doing so to try to change your mood.

There's that after 5 o'clock crowd of guys at the bar who always seem to say the same stupid shit as loudly as they can anywhere you go. An almost identical group of guys probably yelled the same shit this very evening just after 5 o'clock 5 years ago and 10 years ago and 20 years ago too. These guys have never been any help with what you need. 

But then there's a park bench, a warm Indian Summer night, and a half moon just above the trees. Talking there for awhile feels pretty good. A lady with Spanish eyes returning to love.

You wake in the morning after a warm night with the slider open and cricket song and you drift in and out of sleep until noon resigned to the fact that you must have post-Covid chronic fatigue or something. It feels good just to lay here with the crickets and the birds - nuthatches, chickadees, woodpeckers. They're very active at the feeders and the birdbath all day. Winter's on the way. You stand out there for awhile among late blooming wild flowers and their attendant honey bees. This is where the help is.

You get a text message from a black eyed girl far away, and the memory and presence of her has you feeling better. She sees what the matter is with you and sizes you up perfectly in a meme. You think of another who used the word "whimsical" to describe a bird so naturally that it broke your heart. And another who likes your face, you like hers too, and in your mind you saw yourself kissing her in the wind under iron grey skies along the shore.

 Love is all of this, braided like sweetgrass inside you. A sacred thing all twisted up.

Not feeling it

Part of the problem is being awakened from dreams involving people I no longer see, interactions and activity interrupted. This morning made me think of a kid being removed from a foster home having to face placement in yet another one. When loss becomes routine, you no longer attach.

Nature boy, muddle through, try to remember what to do...

The compost is coffee grounds, occasional egg shells, and whatever turns green on the counter or spoils in the refrigerator. I carry it out to the far corner of the yard, now overgrown with goldenrod and milkweed and some other plant that's currently flowering. Late season bees - one honey and one bumble - are still doing their work. I treat them like unicorns or hobbits. I'm walking the same path whatever creature eats the compost and tips the birdbath over uses on it's rounds. The chickadees on the feeders don't move much when I come out. They give me a few feet of space but they don't fly away. Feels good to see them eat the sunflower seeds I leave them. The sun sets a little earlier tonight. The crickets seem kindly, calling me toward sleep. I could be alright here.

Weather

Blahs. Blues. Blechs.

And during my favorite season in a spell of such beautiful weather

Someone well intentioned asks, "But why are you sad?" 

As if reason could somehow disintegrate the thing, and besides "sad" isn't really the word

It's a force, like a silent hurricane of downward pressure and drowning rain 

Pressing flat and slapping you, sapping you - all of you -  it ends when it's done and not until 

Maybe you'll still be alive then, watching weirdly some new sun rising in it's place

But efforts made to cheer someone in that state now won't have the desired effect 

Snapping out of it isn't possible, an umbrella won't do, and your concern will turn to frustration

Long before it stops blowing through here, so just

Let him weather his weather as best he can

There's nothing else to do

Tonight

I miss you. You often say that before falling asleep in place of prayers. Who you're talking to is not always clear, but the sentiment is.

Quitting time

I was getting ready to leave on a bus. Starting over in a new state somewhere else. I was saying goodbye to a client who was misinterpreting the way I tried to sum up our relationship. A child was asking another man if he'd be able to sit still in some sort of restraint chair the boy had been made to sit in. Trying to connect, I told him I'd scream like I was in the electric chair. But it wasn't me he was asking. 

I was skipping out on going to a wake - a former coworker had died. The people who were planning to attend were people I had worked with in the past but people I no longer knew. I was not obligated and I was not attached. 

You and I were in a classroom waiting for dismissal. I was acting like I didn't want to see you, but I stole glances in your direction. You actually didn't want to see me, and you never once looked up. I was standing by the door waiting for the bell to ring so I could run down the stairs and out of the building proving to you once and for all that I wanted nothing to do with you. 

You looked like you were wearing a disguise. I couldn't see your face. You seemed to be trying to be inanimate. Absolutely still, like you might be if you wanted a strange dog to leave you alone. 

No pony express

She says she's been having persistent suicidal thoughts lately. I don't really have a lot to counter them with. The best I have to offer is what I try to do - break it down into manageable units. One step at a time. Try not to look down or up, forward or back. Take the next breath, then the next. Or just hunker down and rest. 

After that, it seems to have kind of seeped into the house. This is not a place in which to nurture life, to recharge, or to feel sheltered. I don't have the energy to get it that way. Daunting. Resort to internal things - relationships, fundamental beliefs, self care practices. I see deflated pool toys scattered across the surface of a giant lake. Faded images, faces, words, meanings. There doesn't seem to be anything there. 

This gets you thinking about what you've provided for your kids. What their structures look like. What shelter they have access to. This line of thought offers no buoyancy either.

This day has arrived. We have awoken into it. This day will end. And so will we. 

There's no need to hurry.

Getting ready for hibernation

In bed for too many hours trying to shake off a tired feeling that's like a weighted fog pressing down on me. Yesterday, I walked in the sun for a couple of hours with my remote learning youngest son. I had other plans after, but ditched them in order to take a nap at about 6 pm. On my way home to do that, I saw eight turkeys and a black bear walking down the road in broad daylight. 

I smell heated dust this morning. The oil heat came on for the first time last night. I think the thermostat is set at 40 or 45 degrees. Yesterday we watched them picking up butternut squash trying to stay ahead of the frost. Winter's around the corner. Facing that here takes a certain amount of strength I have yet to muster.

Blue jays replace the hummingbirds.

Ick

Without notice, I dry up. Wither, crumble, blow away. I feel a sort of nausea - stop talking, stop writing, retreat. Compromised or something. Over exposed. 

All at once, I don't know how to be and am disgusted with myself. 

I guess this is what happens when you forsake the living and take up with ghosts. 

Perspective

Depends where you are, I guess. 

I got my Covid results back yesterday. Negative. So I traveled through two high risk states without consequence, and that concern is now behind me. Out of mind. I'm worried about the election. The direction of the country.

I spoke to a lady who'd come from Idaho. Her lungs were bothering her from all the smoke in the air. The smoke came from the fires in Oregon and California. That got me thinking about a friend in the San Francisco area so I reached out to her.

She told me it was night for a week there. The sun had actually been blotted out. The end is nigh, she said without irony. Come east, I suggested, we don't know that here yet. Maybe you'll forget. It's September. The leaves are changing and the nights are cool. She said she wanted to, but flying now didn't seem safe. She leans toward anxiety and depression during less stressful times. All of this happening is just proof.

I go to sleep later and dream that I am taking a rafting trip. I guess I'm on a river. The water is deep. A couple, two women, head out together before me. They're happy. I'm alone but undaunted. It crosses my mind that a raft may be awkward to paddle with just one person. I am sitting in the raft thinking this when the woman managing the business hands me the paddle. The paddle is a round point shovel. I push off from the shore. 

The woman managing the business is joking with me from somewhere behind me. I can hear her voice. She makes a suggestion that I can no longer remember. Next, the entire raft is under the surface of the water. Before I can respond it sinks to the bottom taking me down with it. Below, it's a forest of aquatic plants growing up toward the filtered light. It's all green. I move for a minute, trying, but it's not a struggle. I want to swim up but I'm not getting there. Drowning is different than I imagined. It happens quicker. 

You can't die in a dream, I'm thinking, but here I am. 

Everything is changing, the scenery is no longer a river bottom, but something surreal and alarming. Not of this world. And I am there now. 

Neighbor

 I was just out walking along the posted 40 mile per hour small town road that I live on. A vehicle approached from behind beeping it's horn rapidly but gently in that way someone does as a greeting or salutation. I raised my hand automatically to wave. It was a pickup truck with two big signs in the back. One said, TRUMP. And the other said, Protect The Blue. He had one of those blue desecrated American flags flying back there too.

The driver was wearing a suit and waving out the side window while watching me in his mirror. I rapidly modified my form of salute to one more appropriate and made sure he saw it. 

Trump and his slimy campaign have just about worn out the entire catalogue of cheap tricks and shallow cons. This one is what you call a false equivalence. Trump and Protection. Trump and Law and Order. Trump and The Police.

The true equivalence is Trump and Oppression. Trump and A Quid Pro Quo Protection Racket For Himself. Trump and A Police State.

The driver seemed very happy to be out there parading this message around like a deranged Easter bunny. 

Earn your keep

In my dream a boy, pre-teen, is trying to impress some men with his hard work. He is moving and sorting gear in his assigned bay in a garage or hangar of some sort. Then he is digging a hole in beach sand down near the water's edge with a round point shovel. Deeper and deeper. A narrator is talking about how every year thousands of North Americans disappear into the cities and jungles of South America. The boy seemed familiar. The story lacked cohesion. 

Shhh

Checking boxes and getting more done the last few days. Every plate, glass, cup, bowl, and piece of silverware were washed today. I got some work done for work, paid my bills, and took a walk/run in the woods for about an hour. I'm trying to take good care of my mind as the world is coming apart at a faster pace all around.

Slim chance

You're probably still not ready to be in a relationship. 

No, I'm just not ready to put up with any shit. Not even for a minute. 

Define shit?

Okay. Tension, questioning, arguments, criticism, unreasonable - no - ANY expectations whatsoever, the slightest pressure to change ANYTHING.

Wow. So what's safe to do?

Lay up and chill, whisper, be easy.

Pleasantdale

The kid across the street and his monotonous dirt bike is edging his next door neighbor toward murder. I've lived here nearly 20 years and have never been in their houses. And they have never been in mine. I talk to exactly one of my neighbors maybe once a month. He's done construction all his life and now he's in his middle 60's with shot hips and knees and just a little left to go on his mortgage. He has to think about winter in a subsistence economy kind of way living on social security. He needs to expand his pile of seasoned cordwood and he prays for a deer in the freezer. 

My car is down with a suspicious tire injury. It's a breezy, sunny Fall afternoon. I have been a sluggard lately. These are the three reasons I walked the mile and a half to the corner store for my morning coffee at 3 pm. On the way there, I decided to order my brunner through the take-out window at the summer restaurant and ice cream place next door to the store. Brunner is the combination meal you eat when you've wasted the day, you've put on weight over the past year, and you're awake to these facts but you're hungry. 

Now I am walking, and it takes a little while before it feels good to do so. I left town last Tuesday for five days and so much has changed since then. Last night was all-my-blankets chilly. The leaves on the maples have turned. The poison ivy on the road's edges is reddening and drying up. I think the hummingbirds have set sail. Just before I left last week I noticed a woman putting a Trump campaign sign out at the end of her driveway with two little girls maybe 5 or 6 years old. It made me wonder what she was trying to teach them by having them there with her. I thought maybe walking by their house today would provide better insight but the sign wasn't there anymore. In fact, for a mile and a half there wasn't a single one. There were, however, a total of two Black Lives Matter signs in that same mile and a half span. Not one actual black person lives there, but the signs are a healthy start. 

There's a green slope off to my right. A former Christmas tree plantation gone to grass. Along the crest I see movement. In the infantry we were warned against skylining ourselves while patrolling or setting up firing positions. No one apparently told the turkeys. I can see their heads randomly bobbing up over the horizon keeping watch. Sniper bait. 

Proximity to wildlife is one of the benefits of living out here. For example, there's what's let of a roadkilled opossum. Just it's naked tail and a flattened hard mat of fir. And a little unmangled chipmunk on it's back in the road on my return trip. It wasn't there on my way out. I like chipmunks and hate to see them killed by speeding idiots in pickup trucks with Trump flags flying in the back. 

I feel like there's lots of things happening that I can't prevent.

If Reagan was a B-Movie, Trump is Dystopic TV. It turns out the devolution will indeed be televised.

 

Another road day

Drove most of the way home from Ohio today in the swift and quiet rented Kia. Stopped and looked around a bit in Erie, Pennsylvania;  along the shore of Lake Erie in Barcelona, New York;  and in the city of Syracuse.  It all went smoothly until I got back to Worcester, where my own exceptionally high mileage car was waiting for me parked on the street with a flat tire. One problem lead to another until ultimately I took a $50 cab ride home at 1:00am in temporary defeat. But I made it home and I have a plan. 

On the surface

Slept more than 12 hours last night and am low on energy today. Not much appetite. Just noticed my eyes are glassy. I'm getting out of Ohio in the morning and into two weeks of quarantine back in Massachusetts.

A few items of note today. 

I overheard an animated discussion over lunch. A manager was dining with her immediate supervisor and making the case for discipline against one of her reports. The senior manager wanted to know her rationale.

"Yes, it's her attitude and her erotic behavior."

"Her what?"

"Her attitude and her recent erotic behavior."

"Do you mean erratic behavior? Because erotic is something else altogether"

"Oh..."

Later I saw a bumper sticker that said STRAIGHT OUTTA  MORDOR. I looked for the car's occupant but he/she was nowhere to be found. Wanted to see if the image in my head was true to life. 

At the hotel, there's a new Tesla in the lot. The vanity plate reads EWWW GAS. Not bad at all. 

I'm not praying for this.

Outside the gym, a his and her, six feet apart. 

Rust City is spiking but open for business.

A teenaged girl explains to her Dad that the mask doesn't really do anything to restrict his oxygen intake.

Kracker Jack's - the nightclub full of surprises - will remain closed for another two weeks.

I devour a Greek slice with wonderful crust, four garlic chicken wings, and two Great Lakes IPAs. 

Purchase a Frostie root beer for the connoisseur in the family on the way out. 

Couples in some stage of recovery on the street waiting for something.

The doors of an office building burst open, women stream through smiling at the end of their work day.

Listening to the bells chime waiting at a stop light behind an asphalt truck.

The smell and the sound are incongruous.

All the benches in the park are empty.

The grass is green, freshly mowed, and it smells much better than the truck.

Three men sit alone in adjacent doorways staring at their phones waiting for the meeting to convene.

Life goes on here. 

Entropy flips me off as I drive through.

With age

We were four stories above the sidewalk. There were no curtains in the windows so I had an unobstructed view of the blue sky. If I went apeshit, I asked him, do you think I could break it with a my fist or a chair? I'd already seen it happen in my head so I knew I could. We looked at the window closely. It wasn't glass, but it didn't seem very sturdy either. Wide panes without screens or reinforcement. Yeah, you probably could, he said. I thought about it for a second but I didn't even want to. 

Hotel Oh Well

I had a frozen margarita and dinner in a place I'd been the last time I was in Ohio. Ordered the same dish then remembered I didn't like it. Well, I didn't like it again. 

Went back to the room, got settled, and went to bed pretty early. 

In the room next door, the one at the end of the hall, I could hear the drone of conversation. There was a man's moronic laughter that kept getting louder, then a lull, then theatrical sex, then a lull, then sparse and quiet talking. One tone ended up retreating and mildly apologetic and the other slightly shaming. Not the words, which I couldn't decipher, just the tones. The door opened and closed. A single transaction. 

Good. 

Road day

1.  Morning arrives and I don't feel rested. It's a travel day. I need to pack, rent a car and drive to Ohio. 

2. Started with a rented Kia and a buffalo chicken omelette at the Miss Worcester Diner. Then west through the Berkshires and pretty much the entire length of the New York Thru Way. Such beautiful country along the body of the Erie Canal and it's mother the Mohawk River. One is a slave, jacketed and shackled, and the other is still part wild Indian. There are classic rock stations on the air crossing Upstate New York, and I harmonized with Sting to Roxanne somewhere out by the Finger Lakes. I was a troubadour, without an instrument or songs of my own, trying not to get killed before I reached Bombay. A police chief and his command staff were quitting their jobs as I skirted Rochester. I was annoyed by the slow travelers in the fast lane who wouldn't move to the slow lane. In All-American-Buffalo the traffic got heavy as the citizens left work. Beyond there, trellised fields with a crop I could not identify. Fall grapes draped on the fence at the rest area. Glimpses of Lake Erie, a visual sea, off to my right. And then the farm fields, silos, and deserted highways of Ohio as the sun came down. 

3. Now, I'm here living in a hotel room with the same layout and furnishings as the last room I lived in in West Texas. I am older than I was just a few months ago. 

Hope

The kids and their changes. One stays home to rest hoping her sore throat and slight fever doesn't mean Covid-19. She'll go for testing tomorrow. I eat seafood with the two boys. One is taller with more hair on his face than me. He shows me videos on his phone of an insane comedian on the New York subway not going over very well with this fellow passengers. He's hoping to play college sports again in 2021. Later,  I miss a call from the youngest one who's down to the wire with his summer reading paper. I call him back. He's set up to start, but isn't writing yet. He's nervous. I'm not sure what he needs from me. He wants this to be a new start. He hopes this new school will change his life. I hope so too. I hope many things.

Just called to let you know

My dreams were anxious last night. Probably due largely to Les Stroud, the Canadian wilderness survivor,  his struggles with the Norwegian winter and his bitter envy of the urine guzzling Bear Grylls. The temperatures here were only cool though, and sleep was a fine place to be. I'm thinking that it might seem pathetic to an outsider that sleep is the best place I know these days. Not love. Not adventure. Not engagement in the good fight. Just to lay down, switch it off, and let it slip.

What?

You didn't really feel that great. You came up with some half-assed things to complain about or wish were otherwise. But you had no real capital-p-Pain. No capital-f-Fear. No capital-l-Loss. You just did a day.  Congratulations. 

Relatable

Foggy night with the streets wet and black. The frogs trying to cross spend too much of their energy jumping high but not enough jumping forward which makes me think they didn't make it even though I can't feel them under my wheels.

A song on the radio stirs memories of feeling a very particular way. I'm grateful that I recognized what was happening when it was happening and soaked it all in back then. I have no idea if it helps me now.

Car radio

September starts

Yeah, primary voting today. Do it.

My mind keeps coming back to the death of that singer from Texas and the fact that no cause of death has been released to the world. Just don't let it be a suicide, I keep thinking. Too many believers following his lead. His was a voice of dissent against the status quo in a place where voicing that dissent may cost you something. He had convictions. People listened and looked to him. Good examples shouldn't go out that way. It kills us all some.