Piddly

Early morning:

A new work assignment this week, filling in for a social worker on maternity leave on a geri-psych unit. A change of pace. Change is good. Been awake since 4 am after having crazy dreams I can no longer remember. Might as well get at it. 

Early evening:

Let me rephrase that. Some change is good. Sometimes change means the transformation from a brilliant intellect to a man who knows only his first name in the span of two months. Perspective. My troubles are mostly optional. And miniscule. 

Sunday with another human in my house

Morning:

I wonder if these morning birds bouncing off the bedroom slider are actually a demand to refill the feeders. Eat the cracked corn, you bougie bastards. I'm all out of black sunflower seeds. My son spent the night here. We took a walk in the woods, ate a meal, did homework and watched a movie together. He's got a lot to do today, and it's time to get started. 

I read something that's been rattling around in my head since. Have I already seen you for the last time?

Evening:

The moon is full and bright enough to read by tonight. I saw my son watching it rise through the car window and felt proud that he pays attention to such things. We saw Saturn and Jupiter appear to be moving closer to each other in the night sky. Soon they will seem to converge into one very bright planet for the first time since the middle ages. What does it portend?

Black hair

 

Feedback

A lady told me not too long ago that maybe I was in love with loss. Reading that made me bristle, which might mean it's not far from some kind of truth. Someone else called me fickle. That stuck in the back of my throat for a week or so. I could neither cough it up or swallow it down. Fickle to me means indecisive. Like I said before, a frivolous need to nibble every bon-bon in the box because one cannot make a selection. I asked her for clarification. By fickle she meant that what I seek in relationships is the want not the satisfaction of the want. I thought of the Nick Cave lyric in From Her to Eternity.

The desire to possess her is a wound and it's nagging at me like a shrew

But I know that to possess her is therefore not to desire her

So then you know, well then you know, that little girl will just have to go...

Both of those formulations kind of hit the nail, but not quite squarely, on the head. In any case, the eventual outcome is probably not good health. 

Not my black friday

The thump of a bird bouncing off the slider wakes me from a dream in which I'm trying to make improvements in a residential program I haven't worked in for 15 years. Yesterday, the settler's  holiday here in New England was comprised of some text messages, a video conference call with my mother and siblings, reading about traveling through the former Soviet republics and sleeping. In my family, Thanksgiving has always been a holiday in which everyone makes an effort to come home. There's a good feeling attached to it. For others, the day is called the National Day of Mourning. Some people you know scoff over that. Other people you know feel it deeply. For me, it was a quiet day, just upbeat enough to stay afloat. 

More quiet today. 

More time spent watching the song birds get pushed out by the jays that get pushed out but by the squirrels. All of them somehow finding a way to eat. 

Unplanned

Dinner was turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and cranberry sauce (the jellied kind that has the rings from the can stamped into the end slices). I substituted in coleslaw for the prescribed butternut squash (which still makes me gag, even in mere contemplation). The meal would have been too expensive at half the price, but I ate in good company. The waiter was a friendly guy. He's planning to spend the holiday with family after receiving negative Covid results a week ago. He feels like now his loved ones have some measure of protection. Personal voodoo. Later, strange stories were told, and my spirits were unexpectedly raised. 

Eve

A waitress woke me this morning by saying my middle child and I looked just alike. He'll be 20 before long. Waking on that thought gave me a taste of something like holiday blues. I've had them before. Lots of times. Like that time alone and drunk in a Tijuana Denny's at about my son's age. One strategy is denial - just make it an ordinary day. Sap it of sentimentality. Press on with ordinary activity or lack thereof. Or you can do that sort of holy thing, reviewing memories, sending love out quietly by yourself from the back booth while picking at your huevos rancheros. That waitress kept the coffee coming for as long as I sat there. It was just another day at work for her. Like a lifeguard.

Reflux

The fake president and his confederate dunces have apparently conceded. Voter fraud, of course, being just the next con in a long line, wiping clean the memories of those that came before. Bigger and bigger lies. A circus of ever increasing absurdities. I'm not sure the people of this country will ever share the same reality again. 

Maybe that's the purpose of the emergence and proliferation of this virus. A reality check in slow motion. It's real when it comes through your door, puts you or your loved one in the hospital, on a ventilator, in the ground. "It's real," we say then soberly, chastened. Both feet suddenly planted on the unreliable earth. Eyes wide and humble. "Please be careful,' we say earnestly, as though we'd never heard of the last eleven months and their twelve million American cases. 

It's still dark here as I write this.

But for a longer reach

She, with those brown eyes, rests in a small apartment in an Albuquerque complex. She's raising a kitten there. The kitten is her whole world right now. She's been sick lately and missing her Mom fifteen hundred miles away. New Mexico has risen to fourth on the list of states with the highest number of daily new cases.

One state over from there, someone has stolen the package I sent to raise the morale of a friend and her son for Christmas.

Further to the East, an old friend considers painting his Winnebago black and heading out into conspiracy fractured America. He will bring his telescope, guns and drones with him. I suggest psilocibin to add a spiritual dimension to the voyage. 

I find myself ready to embark. 

The morning begins with rain. The rain stops. The sun comes out. A wind rises and then settles. The sun sets. Others have bought up the black sunflower seeds my bird and squirrel and chipmunk friends now eat at a startling rate. Naps nip along the course of this abbreviation. Make coffee. Later a sandwich. Read and write e-mail. Initiate a phone call. Become complicit in a mutual misunderstanding. Do something gauche, regret it, and withdraw back into solitude.

I read about a man who writes about a land blighted by night, blinded by white, where the roads run on forever, and all of your well formed plans are transformed into steam and freeze upon the window glass. I can feel the buck and sway of the train car and the widening void of lost directions.

Wash 'n Wait

There aren't too may laundromats that I'd consider life affirming. That is, in my limited experience. In fact I can only remember one. It was called Soap and Suds, if memory serves, and it wasn't too far from the back gate of Camp Geiger in Jacksonville, North Carolina. You could wash your clothes there and drink beer, and somehow I was able to do that at 18 years of age. There was a Ponderosa Steakhouse down the street with an all-you-care-to-eat salad bar for cheap and also  a theater that ran horror and kung-fu movies continuously 24 hours a day where you could crash for a few hours without shelling out for a hotel or having to go back to base. Sometimes the usher would kick you out, but we were often surly and not worth the hassle, so they mostly let us sleep. Sometimes a creep would approach you in the dark, but you learned how to deal with that. That laundromat was a bright spot though, I had some laughs there. Not like in this one, with it's unmatched broken office chairs for furniture and the sickly green walls, where I'm waiting and barely remembering. 

Everybody's got a hungry heart

Is fickle the right word? 

I always thought an example of being fickle is someone who nibbles every bon bon in the box rather than selecting one to enjoy. Even the sound of the word evokes an image of someone trivial and unserious. 

Is being fickle a permanent disposition - a character trait? Or is it a temporary condition - momentary uncertainty? 

A heart doesn't like to be accused of being fickle though. Especially when it's starving.

I can't wait to get on the road again

In West Texas, I used to go to one particular restaurant several times a week for dinner. The dirt lot was always crowded with plus-sized pickups and the restaurant itself full of oil field workers just coming off the job. One could describe them as scruffy I suppose. I'd park my subcompact rental car and go inside. Dressed in business casual, I'd stand there by myself waiting for a table, drawing long looks from some of the other customers. It was a little squirmy at first, but that dissipated after the second or third visit. 

There was another place outside Shreveport. I was the only white man in there and it was packed to capacity. I received a few similar long looks there, but within minutes the waitresses were joking with me and I felt comfortable. I didn't belong there, I guess. But nobody told me that, and I enjoyed the whole thing immensely.

Last night I ate at a diner about five miles from where I live and about twenty miles form where I grew up. It was busy. All the customers were white, most have likely been here their whole lives, and no one gave me a second look when I came in. There was that excessive volume people use in bars when they talk. Exaggerated canned laughter. A harsh female bartender voice blessed with the regional accent pierced my ears. This is my home, allegedly. The place where I belong. 

What the hell am I doing here?

Come here my love

 

Setting up the morning.

Yes. Affirmative. Today I'm going to will into existence a productive day. I'm going to get shit done. The coffee is made. I've read the e-mails to prepare for parent teacher conferences this afternoon. I know when my three phone conferences are today, and I have a list of priorities to accomplish beyond those. 

This morning is the first really cold one - single digits. I forgot to empty the cement birdbath yesterday. Ice can crack it. Need to get a shallow plastic one and put a little water in every day. It ain't easy for a bird in winter to find water, or to do anything really.

This morning I washed this pretty stoneware dish you intended to hold my sponges and things next to the kitchen sink. You brought it over in the days when we'd unsealed my tomb, cleared out some of the dust, bought some new bedding and imposed a little order on my apathetic chaos. That dish is a beautiful detail. A symbol of a thought for me and an effort you made to pull me out of the muck. I treasure it. 

Harsh conditions. Remember that? It's almost as cold as that this morning, but I've got plenty of oil this time should you come over at 3 AM. 

The rituals I practiced - leaving the outside light on, making sure things were shoveled out and not too icy, leaving the door unlocked, keeping candles at the ready, hoping you would be standing there when I opened my eyes.  Magical thinking. Magic of the best kind. 

I miss you happily today.

I hope you are well and not working in the proximity of this Covid monster and the ignorant mask-hating population every day. There are blue jays out there this morning. I'd like to be frying us some eggs. 

Universo De Amor

 

Unsound

She spoke of needing healthy connections. That made me reflect. When did I become something else? 

And another lady, acting as a friend, illuminates something for me. Bitterly, I joke that all she has to do for me to fall in love is become inaccessible to me. She recommends that I think hard about that position. It's a place without hope or happiness, without even the possibility of those things. 

Yes, that's right. 

And if I cannot have those things, I cannot lose those things. Is that the truth I'm living?

Virtual magic

The bruja entered my mind as I was falling asleep. She came in the form of a silent blue cloud. Somehow I recognized her immediately. She didn't knock but neither did she force entry. She simply found me open and so entered. She was responding to my initial signal. She had come to authenticate it. Preventing that from taking place would have been like trying to stop water or smoke with my hands. 

Tonight, I looked for the Mexican witch but couldn't find her. She did not come into my mind. But she did send an icaro. A simple song of thanks to the ancestors for their medicine, to the spirits and the angels, and to other beings with beautiful names that I could not understand. A meditation of breath and flame. A special candle surgically filled with meaning and intentions unknown to me. The singer's voice itself was medicine. The rhythm of the candle flame.

Proof of life

After a weekend of sluggish procrastination, I woke at 4 AM and put in 12 hours of productive, self- directed work at home. I crossed things off the list, delivered deliverables, checked boxes, met or exceeded expectations - I hustled. I didn't feel too drowsy or too foggy. Activity is a good thing. Let's feel good about all that for a minute. Breathe. Look around you. Eat some dinner. Before you go looking for another reason to sink back into that muck. 

Just let it slip through your fingers

7:30 am

Is this tinnitus? That tone, like the far end of a hearing test. Except for the waitress yesterday, and the bald guy who dropped his cash when he took his phone out of his pocket, I didn't speak to anyone or hear anyone speak. I spent the day listening to silence and found myself frustrated by that interfering tone. Is that what silence sounds like to the human ear? Or is the experience sullied by some kind of damage I carry?

11:15 am

Trying to catch up on work I didn't finish during the week. I've yet to start. But I ate, and the girls at Dunk's screwed up my order and ended up giving me two coffee drinks for the price of one. This town is very white. Whenever I interact with anyone here, I think trump. I saw a house this morning with a flag over the door proudly proclaiming VETERAN. Below it was one of those porch statues - a footman holding a lantern - and it looked to me that his face had recently been repainted a glossy black. Am I seeing what I think I see?

I went home. 

Have I ever told you that your spontaneous use of the word whimsical broke my heart?

9:41pm

I needed to change the title. So at least I accomplished that much today, but very little else.

If I'm going to be with someone, I don't want to feel lonely when we're together. I don't want to feel far away, misunderstood, or like I'm watching her talking to me on a screen when she's right there in front of me. 

I don't know how not to feel that way. 

It wasn't like that when I was with you. Was it? I don't think so. Or is that just a trick of my memory?

Diwali

A festival of light - a time for overcoming darkness and for new beginnings. She sent a message asserting her wish to do just that. I was relieved. 

Later, a breakfast of coffee and bloody marys and a good omelette made with goat cheese, spinach and Canadian bacon at a table for one. I got sad watching the young siblings and their hula hoops on television and tears came. 

She was good to me. Smart, honest, beautiful, funny, spirited, unique and ready. It's that last one, I just couldn't match it. There's a wall inside me. 

Become inaccessible to me, and I may fall in love with you. 

I'll light a candle tonight too. 

I've got a feeling I just can't shake

 

Sun

Driving on a cold grey rainy day

I remembered you looking at me carefully

You said you liked my freckles

The ones on my shoulders

Hearing that felt better than it should have

Like a warm light coming on

Inside the surprised man

A small boy looking down with

Reddening cheeks, an involuntary smile

Inside the stunned boy

Seen now, gently,

A new warm orange glow shines

- - - - - - -

You are all through me today. The cardinals are here, arriving at dusk to feed. It's chilly, and I'm thinking of tea for warmth though I rarely drink the stuff. The green tea bags you left behind so long ago remain in the cabinet, and I smile as I prepare one wondering at what point tea becomes old hay. This signals another train of memory to wind it's way out of the tunnel. And just then the organ that opens "Push the Sky Away" kicks in.

Emergence

My head goes hollow and rings

Then the downward elevator feeling

And I've got to sleep to clear it out

The drive to Boston in

Pandemic sifted traffic

It felt good to be moving

Locked inside the place

The frightened face of paranoia

One-eyeing me from behind the door

She talks to me as if they won't understand us

How it's not a safe place to work

A man threatening her with an undetected knife

I take my notes, listening

Watch the people doing their daily work

Ordinary danger, never too distant death

Chester Siesta

I can hear wind stirring the trees and rain falling out there. Something tells me a cold front is moving in putting an end to our Indian Summer. I didn't get outside at all today. Worked from home, got a little done, and now I'm ready to sleep again prematurely with some kind of buzzing sensation under my forehead. 

I read the headline of a Covid study today which said something like 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 people infected with Covid end up with symptoms of mental illness. They mentioned depression, anxiety and insomnia. What about hypersomnia? I can't stop sleeping. I almost always want to sleep. 

Something is whispering below the buzz, "Why don't you find something to wake up for? 

"Shaddap," I tell it, "Shaddap."

Peril

Pompeo seems like just another pederastic used car salesman. Today he's making statements that seem designed to provoke a reaction which would justify a crackdown. We are imperiled by these people. 

There's something better than Fox

Magical thinking versus rational thinking - man, I can relate to that. I'm a magical thinker too. For instance, don't tell me love boils down to a body's reaction to oxytocin when I know damn well that it's my soul taking flight. I know what soaring on wings feels like. I'll take poetry over science six days out of seven any week. 

But during a pandemic, poetry is better read and written wearing a mask, and science is a worthy source to tune into for hearing about what's going on out there. It's not really about practicing one to the total exclusion of the other. But I do understand your attraction to the magical. Hell, I know for certain I wouldn't have gotten this far without it. 

But when the magic you conjur up comes down to conspiracy theories, QAnon, angels intervening in earthly elections and trump as some kind of savior, you should really ask yourself if that's the best you've got. I mean, if you're going to practice magic, why not practice the good stuff?

Another wake up

 Excessive sleep last night and still tired enough to return there. The sun is rising. The weekend was a warm slow dream. Indian Summer. 75 sunny degrees in November. Burnt and browning orange and red reflected on the surface of the reservoir. 

Jitters

Poor sleep last night. Repressed anxiety bleeding through. A dream of having to shuck an oyster quickly and flawlessly in front of world leaders - it had something to do with a Corona Virus cure. There was no time to practice. I began to worry about whether the oyster within would be dead or alive. That was a critical piece of this whole thing and I had no way of knowing. There was no one to consult. I started to spin but fought it back, knowing that to think about falling is to fall. 

It's a beautiful Indian Summer weekend. I'm going to meet my son this morning for a walk near the reservoir. 

Results

I don't know about you but I voted to depose a despot not really to elect my favorite person. This was a matter of survival for the national character. A contest for honor and decency. This is something that had to happen now while there are still some of us able to remember what those things are and why they matter. 

Mr. Biden, may you do better. 

Echo

Sometimes I wake up with the chorus of that Lenny Kravitz song playing in my head. 

All of my life, where have you been? I wonder if I'll ever see you again.

I'm not a fan exactly, but it captures the sentiment. 

I enjoyed your profile

She was an over-smiler, that was clear. I showed up out of shape and very casually dressed - just as I happened to exist in that moment in time without adornment, camouflage or effort. We ordered drinks. 

I'd consumed half of mine before she'd even touched hers. She asked questions and I answered them. When I spoke, she over-smiled and seemed to close her eyes completely in the process. To me, it appeared as though she were grimacing in pain. Crohn's disease or something else abdominal maybe. I fought back the urge to ask her if she was alright.

Maybe she was trying to mask a state of extreme terror. I reminded her perhaps of some past trauma or absolute horror. Maybe it was something surgical, some acid peel or botox procedure that hadn't settled yet. Or some new beauty trend, like those crazy eyebrows, that had come into fashion while I was institutionalized. I couldn't be sure. It was disconcerting though. To say the least. 

Frankly, I didn't want to be there. I couldn't be sure if I was interpretting her facial expressions accurately so began to doubt myself savagely. My confidence began to erode. Insecurity crept in. 

I asked her a question about her educational background. And as she responded through an exceedingly tight seemingly forced smile, I pretended to cough, brought my hand to my mouth and inserted four alka-seltzer tablets. I followed that with a generous sip of sparkling water. Then I stared at her blankly for a moment, widened my eyes, and began to tremble visibly. I let my eyes roll back and allowed myself to trust fall off the back of my stool. The alka-seltzer was foaming at this point and someone shrieked. Someone else called 911. A young waiter cradled my head in his lap and placed his wallet between my teeth. 

I just stared at the ceiling with my back arched burning calories with forced muscular convulsions. I didn't look in her direction, not once, but experience had taught me that if I just stuck it out for a few seconds more, she'd be gone. 

Georgia

The work of black women - stepping forward, speaking up, organizing, and following through. Making change. In the South. Making me believe.

Meanwhile, my little white town voted trump down by less than 200 votes. People that look like me - white men - were the bulk of his support around the country, regardless of their level of education. Is it their unearned status they're afraid of losing? I can't figure it. 

The balance in Pennsylvania just shifted. Philadelphia - black people - had something to say about that. Same was true in Michigan. I hope people hear the message. Show up and it can happen. Sit it out, and they'll run away with it. 

Regroup

I've got something in me that makes me tired more often than I should be tired. There's little motivation to write anything right now. This election is disheartening in that it illustrates this massive division we seemingly have here. And yet there are other things to celebrate like the largest voter turnout in something like 120 years. A trans woman was elected to the Senate. All the officials elected in New Mexico were women of color. AOC and the Squad were all re-elected. 

Have you noticed all the inspiring people as of late have been women?

Anyway, change doesn't often come in a wave and happen over night. It takes sustained effort, new energy, and clarity of vision. It happens by slow degree. Keep the picture in your head. Everybody counts. Everyone deserves a seat at the table. Call out those who say otherwise. 

Don't quit. 

The house of Mitch the treasonous ghoul

I'm sick on your behalf, Kentucky. 

South Carolina, you too. 

Maine?

What the fuck is wrong with all of you?

Listening to the chimes

Brisk out there today. I took a good hour's walk in the woods this morning with some short uphill running and a little rock lifting. I got stuff done today. Feeling less lethargic. Not much to say. 

Will tomorrow be the first day of the second American civil war?

Some things do

 

It begins

It's the first of November and the oaks are the last trees holding the thinning remnants of their golden orange leaves. This morning it was just under 40 degrees. Grey clouds move across the sky and a cold, light rain falls. The trees are getting close to that stark, bare look that gives me a feeling of empty austerity and hardship. Winter here, when you're feeling low, is like having an ice pick pushed through your heart over the course of five months. This year it started early. I felt the initial prick of it against my skin today. It's merciless. It gets on top of you, looks directly into your eyes (it's own face completely devoid of expression), places the point against your chest and begins to apply pressure. The pressure is constant -unbearably slow and relentlessly steady. And it keeps on until some day in late March, maybe April, or most definitely by early(ish) May. 

Then again there are the snow bunny types, the holidays, snowboarding, skiing, the festivities and the warm glow they create. All you have to do is find them and join in.

The kid at the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru window looked like the actor Adam Driver in a surgical mask. He asked if I did anything fun for Halloween.