Woke up wishing for fried pork chops or something

Fried pork chops with gravy seems like the right thing today. 

I'm missing the South. And you. I really only have two fried pork chop memories. 

The most recent came from a place called Brother Orlando's in Shreveport, Louisiana. It was a small, busy place. I noticed the staff, despite their hustling, never stopped joking, singing, and interacting with the customers and each other. It was a good place for a stranger to walk into, take a seat and eat a meal. By the time I'd finished eating, I didn't want to leave. The fried pork chops were juicy on the inside with hot crispy batter on the outside. The chef gave me an extra soup bowl of gravy and I drank up every drop. I wished hard that day that you were there with me.

My first noteworthy fried pork chop memory was the one where you and I found a roadside trailer selling soul food after your competition in Connecticut. You were famished. It gave me such pleasure to feed you that night, to find something you desired and to give it to you. I always loved eating with you. 

I ate some pretty decent fried pork chops at Cracker Barrel on my own today. It happened to be the Saturday special. They tasted good. They filled me up. But they didn't hit the spot.

Humble pie guy

The Emergency Department nurse was attacking me in a feigned attempt to bite. My job was to disengage, not get bit, and exit the vicinity. Not a problem (it's just practice). They teach you to shuffle away,  to maintain your center and your balance, to keep your hands raised. I guess I was feeling kind of playful after the tenth repetition and instead of shuffling back I kind of pirouetted. I wear a size 14 sneaker. They apparently became tangled in one another. I went down fast with a room shaking crash. This was my first bonafide  fall as an aging man. It would have certainly earned me a fall risk bracelet had I been a patient. Think about that. Not a slip or a stumble, when you catch yourself and recover, but a-full-on-bust-yo-ass-fall. Humbling. Yes.

Another young ED nurse - after she realized I was alright - dryly said,  "I think she won."

Love and limits

As a boy, he killed out of misdirected rage, sometimes out of malice or morbid curiosity, and sometimes as an expression of joy (just for fun). He doesn't do that now knowing how stacked the odds are against breathing things, how hard they struggle just to exist a little longer. 

Now, he coexists fairly well for a guy who lives alone. A couple of nights ago it was a lady bug attracted to the lamp in an otherwise dark house. Bonjour, Madame. Stay as long as you wish. 

And there was a daddy-longlegs who lived upon the bathroom ceiling all summer and fall completely unmolested. Bienvenido, Senior. Mi casa y su casa. 

However, a mouse ran across the top of the stove when he turned the kitchen light on this evening. Tonight the first snowfall is predicted. These folks wasted no time upgrading their digs. I can't lie though. Watching little homie run across the stove gave him a feeling of revulsion and the "kill it" voice returned. 

Thank you for your service

Today we practiced managing aggressive behavior aimed at health care workers. If you're one and a patient, visitor, coworker, or civilian comes at you with a stick, knife or a gun - I got you. If that ungrateful person grabs you, bear hugs, bites, punches, kicks you, pulls your hair or chokes you - we got something for that too. You came here to do this work because it pays pretty well and helping people seemed kind of cool, right?

Persephone

 

Sorry, pal

In the foyer of the auditorium is a life size statue of Jesus mounted on the wall. His right hand is extended as if to do one of his magical blessings. Someone snapped two fingers off and there's just a bit of metal left protruding there. The look on his face is one of helpless surprise. All too human.

Foggy night

 Dear World, 

And by that, this time, I mean the world of ghosts. The world of memory and the limits of memory. Of people and things and feelings departed. Of God and Santa Claus and stories. Of hope and meaning and the way things used to be even if they never really were. And of the final fading into absolute darkness when it passes from all living memory.

You're my home, if I have one. The place I come to sleep. The foggy grove I stroll through when my time belongs to me. I just want you to know how much you mean.

Love, 

Lemon is good

My youngest turned 15 over the weekend. We spent some time together, went out to eat, had the waitstaff do one of those "yeehaw" birthday tributes they do in front of a minimized pandemic audience. We went shopping for masks for in-person high school which begins on a limited basis tomorrow. We got a lemon flavored birthday cake. He passed on a haircut again which he's abstained from since quarantine began back in the winter. He plans on shaving his head when the restrictions are finally lifted. Sitting in the driveway today, he told me that if he becomes famous he'll bring people together in a way that's not offensive to anyone. He talked about Robin Williams. He said people today are very divided. Things change I told him. It was the only thing true I could think to say.

Good story though

What a woman doesn't want to hear is a story about another woman, even if it is a funny story. 

You had called me unexpectedly. I was in a bad place, feeling very low, having just left a local hotel. You invited me out for a drink with you and a friend of yours I didn't know. I declined claiming I had something to do. You asked what that something was. I said I had to return a vacuum cleaner. You asked where. Walmart, I answered. You asked what kind of vacuum cleaner. A Dirt Devil, I said. 

"No one uses Dirt Devils anymore. Just come out."

How could I not? 

Retelling the story made me smile. 

The woman I told the story to turned her back to me. She wasn't smiling. She said I was in love with you. She said I'd probably always be. 

Tonight

I can sense a panic just beyond my range of feeling. The numbers of infected are about to explode. Tonight I'll have sushi and focus on what's in front of me while avoiding the crowd. 

Trying to stay centered

It was 70 degrees today and changing over into dark October colors.

I saw five furry bumblebees piled in around a single cluster of small flowers. 

How far do they go? How long do they last? Does winter kill them off? 

I'm ashamed to know so little about them but delighted to watch them work

Bees mean hope, even though I try not to put much stake in that word, you know?

Do the work of today is what I try to tell myself and let that be enough

But to see those pollinators holding the circle together feels good

Then I went to the store for ham and cheese and milk and apple cider

Deviled Ham was on sale so I bought two cans of that

The plaza is located near a major intersection and there were probably 

Thirty of forty cars parked on the side of the road

Lots of blue flags in pickup truck beds

trump flags

A little rally, a couple of horns blaring their support

I've  always felt that this particular town was fucked up

Since childhood it's been wrong 

Maybe lead poisoned

I don't even like to drive through it

I'm an American, how can I vote for that asshole?

This is not meant to be a poem by the way

I just couldn't figure out how to change the alignment

 

Leaving meaning

 

Disclaimer

No, I have not come to that point and I'm not feeling that way. It's fiction. Or fictional. It's what was there when I sat down to write something. Actual events mixed with imaginary events into something that hopefully becomes a story of sorts until the inspiration runs out.

Hardly worth a mention

A nondescript day... 

What a fucking shame. 

Although blaming doesn't help- that's on you. Ok? 

Alright?

Look closer. Go deeper. 

Wake the hell up. 

A lady with a walker asked me for a dollar for something to eat while I was on my way into the post office today. I told her I'd see her on the way out. She muttered something. On the way out, I checked my wallet. I had two twenties. I gave her one. She said, "Thanks, hon."

I bought fifty pounds of black sunflower seeds and some suet bricks at the hardware store. 

I tipped the barista five dollars at the coffee drive up. 

I bought my son a down jacket and my daughter an electric blanket on line last night. 

I texted my oldest son after reading the headline of an article about a naked teen found covered in ranch dressing who crashed into a Kansas gas station. I haven't seen him in a couple of weeks. 

A man fixed my computer, but I could not log in to what I needed when I got home. 

I sent someone an e-mail advocating suicide risk screening in primary care doctors' offices. Research tells us that most suicides see their doctor within a month of their deaths. The patient almost never says it out loud. The doctor almost never asks. "Let me stop you there..." 

On average you get eight minutes of face time per visit with your PCP in America. That's what I've heard from the professionals.

I don't have one. I can ignore myself professionaly and I don't even bill for it. 

The man on my music player is chanting, "Why am I on this earth?" 

You should be careful what you're feeding yourself. 

Blink

Got up at 4 am to do work. Good on ye! The sun rose at about 7 am. I took some phone calls and committed myself to a couple more projects. I took a long walk in the woods at around noon, then made arrangements to get my work computer fixed and drove it to the place. Then I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner as one meal. And then it was dusk. Already the shortened days. 6 pm and I'm ready for bed. 

Soles worn thin

I think I've probably told a few people in my life that I'm worried about them over the years. It was certainly true. But it's jarring to hear those words spoken about you. 

Am I not alright? Relatively speaking, of course.

I'm eating bitter dark chocolate to shrink my grandiose prostate. I got a flu shot a few weeks ago and learned that my blood pressure was the same as it was when I was 18. I wear a mask in public. I'm going to vote this morning against that infectious disease in Washington. I'm paying some attention to my health and well being and maintaining some connection to and engagement in the world.

What probably isn't healthy is this hangover. It has nothing to do with alcohol. It has everything to do with allowing myself to go to the place I went yesterday morning - beside a sleeping somebody who may or may not still exist as I remember her and who moved on from me quite decisively years ago. Going there is easy - just relax, remember and glide. I glide through memory, the sound and feel of wind, trying to find a very particular feeling again. I get so close to it sometimes but eventually have to descend.  A long gradual downward slope. When I touch down, when the earth is firmly under my feet, I have no idea where I am. It takes time to get my bearings, to identify the time zone and the language spoken. Then I start walking all the way back to the present, feeling parched and hollow, where nothing is waiting when I arrive.

Rain this morning too

Whole days of necessary rain. Just one more like this  accompanied by wind  will transform the view and the state of mind. Bare stark trees against the grey sky. A November sight that bores it's way into you. I'm in no hurry. 

I wake with a clear head, rested, with no desire at all to get up. With my eyes closed, I revert to thinking of you sleeping beside me. Is it the cool temperatures that bring those thoughts and memories? That desire.

Did you trust me during those times? Did you feel safe beside me? Did you fall asleep in love the way that I did? And have you thought about doing so since then ? How about now? Would you consider it? Nothing else has to occur - no talking, no explaining, no filling in the gaps. I will have no questions waiting for you and I will keep the path to the door clear. 

Just come here, slip into bed beside me and find a comfortable position in which you can rest. I will move closer to you. Maybe you will move closer to me. Then we will find  again that place that for me was like heaven. And I will remain in that state of restful but alert stillness, feeling your breath deepen and your body relax. Feeling the heat of you. The miracles of your skin and hair. 

That music inside me starts quietly, sweetly. And the longer I am able to remain awake and receptive to you, the higher it builds. Soaring, swirling toward a crescendo and then descending again slowly, taking me regretfully toward sleep. The symphonies you inspired in me - just sleeping there - that you never got to hear. 

Toothbrush

There is a lot you will have to shed if you are to be out there connected to the world again. There is a lot you will have to pick up too. For now, it's strange dreams, poor sleep and a toothbrush.

This might be the birthday month of your daughter. Already, I've lost track of the years. I think she's three now. Three is about the age she may have been when I saw the two of you together in a daydream long before her conception. Walking hand in hand, her confident little steps. Both of you with the same black wild hair. I imagined it then as a possible, beautiful, but unlikely part of my life. That's not the case now, but it's something to know that she is part of yours. I wish I could see how she looks at you, if it's like the way I dreamed it. I hope it is.

Love letter

 

Dispatches

For the third morning this week I pick up an empty out of the driveway projected by a probable Canadian-American racist alcoholic. He seems to be targeting my Black Lives Matter sign. There aren't that many of those out here in this town. Homeboy drinks Molson and Bud Light. I'm imagining he's not too bright.  It's a pretty good bet he's flying a trump flag.

I'm also imagining staking him out, locating his residence, and emptying the contents of a dump truck - preferably rotting food waste - in his driveway. Return to sender.

A book arrived in my mailbox today. A collection of short pieces, something like what I write. Except these are about something and good. I don't know how the sender got my information, but I guess we're not so hard to find these days.

I left the dating site last week and feel a general sense of relief. But I kind of miss the habit of checking and returning messages. Stimulating correspondence is nice but it can become a lot to manage. When I talk to too many people - even via typed message - it's not long before I feel diluted, over exposed, and kind of stressed out. 

The old fashioned way - a letter arriving from overseas that took a month to find you - was best. You waited. You remembered. You imagined. You wrote down your thoughts. You tried to write down your heart.

There was silence between letters and time. Time for anticipation and yearning to develop. The waiting was so much of the experience. The distance created the agony and the desire. 

Bane

Just finished watching a documentary featuring a band and a young man I knew 30 years ago. He was a kid working on something back then. I remember him stalking the floor of the practice space talking to an imaginary audience. Now he's talked to millions of them face to face and around the world. He had something of his own which he beleieved in and developed and it blossomed and he happened in the world. I'm "moved". I don't like that word, but tears came out, so it fits. This little encapsulated life suddenly feels very small and almost joyless. Who chose this?

His children

At 4:30, I woke to the uncommon sound of rain and laid there listening to it in the dark. A car drove by and the periphery of it's headlights entered through the window and moved quickly across my bedroom ceiling. I remembered laying in the dark in my room at about age 6 wondering if that movement of light was an angel. Specifically, if it was my dead father in angelic form. You are left in the wake of a sudden death with sickness, disorientation and the things people tell you - he's watching over you from heaven, he's with God now. You learn to pray, honest and direct, out of fear. You speak directly to God, beseeching him. He doesn't answer so you start interpreting passing car headlights as maybe a sign of his love for you.

Screw it

I wrote a short story in a dream last night. 

I'd been working in this place for a long time. A place with hard floors, shock resistant boots, hearing protection and repetition. Alcoholism, loud marriages, marijuana, football, methamphetamine, a new truck, oxies was how most of the others seemed to kill the remaining time. For some it was church and family occasions- always some kind of celebration, something to dress up for, a million cousins. For others it was an ankle bracelet, a room, and white knuckles. 

I don't know what Anthony did with his time off the floor. I do know that he didn't use many words, and when he did use them, they were always arranged in the same way, spoken in the same manner, like a recording. Sometimes I'd mouth the words as he said them. 

I know that much about him. I also know that he farted. Anthony farted all the time. He lived in a perpetual mildly noxious cloud. And the smell was always exactly the same - never a shock to the system, never a "whaaat the fuck is that?" Anthony was consistent. He definitely was that.

This morning I was distracted by a head full of the kinds of thoughts I don't know what to do with when I happened to walk into his cloud. The smell was bland, vaguely like potato chips, insulting. 

Nowhere. Nothing. This. FOREVER. 

I stabbed him twice with the screwdriver right where I'd imagined his kidneys would be. He leapt in the air, yelled something, then fell to the floor.

He moved around down there in a spontaneous way, like he wasn't too sure what he was supposed to do next. I was walking quickly and I was feeling that way too.

Floor

A pale thing of the forest floor beneath the damp fallen leaves and the smooth skinned salamanders and the tiniest of brown toads. An ecosystem. A rainforest in miniature. Tendrils grow up and around me from somewhere within the moist mystery of earth in exchange for my essential chemicals. I wake at one point, startled for the last time, knowing I cannot rise. Wrapped am I and pulled asunder, gently, toward home.

Not peace precisely

Of course it won't happen in one jump. Last evening, before it was even dark, I sunk into this bed for another 12 hours or so and I could just go on sleeping and sleeping without effort. Is it a tsetse fly that's gotten to me? In the afternoon a fog moves in, behind my eyes, I think, though I can't really see it. It's palpable though. It has weight. I want to sweep it aside but it stays and settles down over me. I yawn and yawn. The dismal moors of my prefrontal cortex. If there is a chance to take an afternoon nap, sometimes the fog clears in an hour or less. Someimes I just keep on sleeping until morning or even later. Maybe during a pandemic this is an adaptive function. Keeps you out of the milieu.

Don't go back in there

What if all of a sudden it's as easy as opening the curtains? Deciding and taking a little action. It didn't work last time I checked but it just might now. I'm going to hire some movers to come and move me and my life out of this bed. Yup, I just might pick up that phone. Could be. It's possible. Yes.

Sleeping against me on a boat to an island

I live alone, so in the case of a pandemic, and it's requisite limited contact with the outside world, there is no one here to turn to. Or to turn against. And I am very thankful for that last part. If you and I lived together during these times what would it be like? Would you have come to hate the sight of me, the sound of me, the smell of me? Would we be sleeping separately? That's how I got to thinking of this, by trying to sleep separately from you. And remembering, as I so often do, you falling asleep next to me. And I falling asleep next to you. I remember far less about actually waking up wih you. You were always in motion, busy, maybe that's why. But when you'd fallen asleep, I could be with you without interruption. Feel you breathing. Hear the music of everything.

Lean

I kept waking up with sore teeth. Clenching. There was a moaning in the trees behind the house. A new sound. I imagained a calf, a sheep, a bear cub. In truth, it is that broken tree leaning on the others. Their relationship was altered by yesterday's supercell. You are just waiting to fall. They say, "We've got you". But they're just waitng too.

Advance

The heat kicked on this morning. Sunrise is later and sunset is earlier. The yellow leaves and orange needles fall steadily around the house. You can feel the pace increasing inside of 24 hours. I found and rescued a honey bee drowning in the birdbath. Made me wonder what it was thinking and if it had any change in attitude since then. I've been listening to a thunder storm approaching for about 15 minutes. Feels like something big.

Alibi

Spoke with my good neighbor today. He ventured across the street while I was taking some trash out. We bonded in mutual hatred of the other neighbors with their dirt bikes and leaf blowers, the current president, the speeding traffic, Covid-19's resurgence and socializing with humans in general. He's got a license to carry. And he recently got internet access. There's no longer a need to leave the house. Why are we this way, I asked him. Why do we avoid contact with people in a time when everyone craves it? He blames trump for dividing us. I wish that explained it.

Story

He's published now. I remember him in college being a little older than me and very focused on wanting to move on from his job in construction to becoming a published writer. He asked today about certain moments. The ones that stick. He wondered aloud if they're all we really have. I think so. I do. That's why I try to hold on to them, to remember them, to write them down. A family bible, a photo album, your own personal mythology. I retold myself a story today of one of those moments thirty-something years ago beside a frozen Lowell canal in a merciless, early winter wind. How she felt inside her long black coat, the warmth of her body against mine, then a kiss that stopped everything inside and outside of me.

Not my turn

What trouble do I really know? I learned today of a friend who's teen son is involved in a murder. In just the last couple of weeks a friend who lost a lover to suicide and a coworker's son's anniversary of a fatal opiate overdose and a lady friend's daughter is found safe in a jail cell after being missing for several days. We are trout trying to swim up the firehose every day. Right this minute, I am only watching.

Vitamin D

The package arrived yesterday. I've got enough Vitamin D now for a total body suntan. Inside of a week, not only will I be euphoric of mood and Corona proof but I shall occupy a bronzed, salt and pepper topped, Dad bod. Yesterday we watched trout struggling mightily upstream and uphill to get back to their hatchery. Basically, it's like trying to swim up a firehose. My son has not had a haircut since the pandemic began. He was talking about how good it felt to be in nature. Discovering for himself that humans are better when they are experiencing that connection for themselves. I hoped he could store some of that feeling. That the sun light and the colored leaves would top of his Vitamin D storage tank and show him a way forward.

Change your heart

Change your face

The actor, Mickey Rourke, sent me some advice yesterday via You Tube. Sure, it wasn't addressed to me specifically, it was an interview, but it spoke to me. He answered vaguely questions about early experiences that shaped his inner world. Things like the loss of his father at age 6, familial alcoholism, a step father and his unacknowledged violence. He didn't use too many words, but his pain was apparent. The interviewer talked about his success in Nine And A Half Weeks which pushed him to the forefront and made him the leader of the Brat Pack. A respected actor and a sex symbol. Very soon after acheiving this status, he began the work of throwing it away. When he had burned all his bridges, he returned to boxing for a few more years of punishment. Then he paid a professional to rearrange his famous handsome vulnerable tough guy's face with what soon became known as one of the more unfortunate plastic surgery mishaps. Mr. Rourke illustrated how no matter how high you fly, how many accolades you receive, how much you win or lose or suffer or repent, you've internalized the belief that the person looking back at you from the mirror is not worthy of love and should be destroyed. I understood that and remembered a lot of broken mirrors. He talked about the love of his life in similarly few and painful words. They were two damaged people who recognized each other, he said. The interviewer suggested that he'd never gotten over her, and Mickey agreed that he'd likely never feel that way about someone else again. Another example of how the mirror mechanism works and another resonance.

As it is, not as it's supposed to be

Unrecognized. Who is this, I think, looking at myself from outside. And her, a foot away, as if through a screen.

How is it that you cannot recognize and appreciate a gift when it is dropped upon you? What is this reluctance? Why this turning away? Your time here is almost up.