Home, James.

I can no longer function well enough on inadequate sleep. Getting home last night was a challenge. Nodding off at the wheel momentarily while dreaming of crossing the center line into an oncoming family's minivan while they're on their way to the beach. My head snaps up, eyes scared wide. The next time it's a kid on a bicycle riding along the shoulder while I'm drifting and the sound of his impact. Dangerous. Don't do that. 

Reflection

You've got fibromyalgia and a little bit of a hangover. The humid rainy morning makes your joints ache and every movement hurt. Your job is to keep the place clean. 

Looking back on it now, you remember hearing a crash which you didn't really think twice about because there's always doors slamming in that suite of offices. And then a little later, come to think of it, you were vacuuming the stairwell and you saw these shod feet sticking out from under a desk through the window. It registered as unusual, but you thought maybe the guy was plugging something in or fiddling with some connection under there. 

You remember these things while lying sleepless beside the knowledge of what you now know. 

It didn't occur to you then that the man in the shoes had tipped over in his chair while experiencing cardiac arrest. Your coworkers found him about an hour and a half later. They initiated a code, called 911, started CPR, produced three AEDs and affixed the pads of one to his torso. But the man was already cold and purple. Blood had pooled under his head and in his mouth. The paramedics couldn't get him back either.

And now this morning, knowing what you now know, you are wondering if things might have gone differently had you investigated that crash you assumed was a slamming door. You can't understand why you didn't go and check out why those feet were protruding from under the desk. Your coworkers, who did chest compressions on their friend for 20 minutes can't understand why you didn't either.

One conversation at a time, I see a story taking shape. Your coworker died suddenly and tragically - likely due to a massive heart attack - in your workplace on an early morning in the midst of another mundane work day. That's one version. The other version, the one you're trying hard not to tell yourself now, is that your coworker died suddenly and tragically - likely from a massive heart attack - in your workplace on an early morning in the midst of another mundane work day, and it was my fault.

Oriented

It's great to no longer be caught in inertia's sticky web. The heavy strands dragged me down through the mattress and made it seem impossible to stand. A thick fog settled down over me and pressed me flat. I lived that way for the better part of five years.

Let's not think of it as wasted life. Let's think of it as a coma. A state in which all activity had to cease in order for the soul to heal. In my coma, I dreamed of the past believing I still lived there and might yet again.

As I began to stir, the healer spoke. That time has passed. Matter of factly, firmly, gently. It was not the first time I'd heard those words, but this time I accepted them as true. 

And when I had awoken fully I saw that I'd grown older.

Right now, I'd like to be sleeping. It's almost 1 A.M. and my alarm is set for 3:15. I've got to go to a factory this morning  in which someone died during the course of his or her daily work. My job will be to remain awake and to support those who remain alive. 

I am thinking forward this morning.

Low

It seems impossible not to drop into a lower vibration the moment I encounter another car on the road. I'm suddenly a steady stream of curses and name calling, elevated blood pressure and clenched teeth. What's the point of this? My perceived enemies don't suffer any damage that I can discern. It's only me sitting there stewing in frustration. It's time to start playing audio books on my phone, I reckon. 

Departure

I left the mountain top with all of my personal property having been packed away and hauled along. My ruminations have ceased. Before leaving, I offered my long hibernation to the fire. My inertia. The flames accepted and consumed it ravenously. Cremation. From the ash, a man - now walking forward - assembled himself.

While we are still alive

She's in her 80's now. She has travelled with her son and two young apprentices the three thousand miles from Columbia to bring the medicine to us. On little sleep, they worked through two nights in the rain to administer the sacrament, to watch over us, and to sing us through the journey. The magnitude of their generosity broke open my heart. 

"My love," she said. And then she showed me.

A good and regular day

I completed my list again today. Tomorrow it's car repairs, human resources paperwork, a Zoom interview,  and a drive back to New Hampshire for a weekend of ceremony. I feel something building.

Gig economics

Busy and forgot to write yesterday. 

Went to work to provide support to the co-workers in the wake of a suicide. A very talkative, social person. Had friends from all walks of life. Always willing to help. Knew something about everything and fashioned this knowledge into a story designed to help you with whatever your problem was. Always willing to take on more. Always, the first concern was for the other. No one could believe it was this person who is no longer with us. 

NH

I responded to a request for help today and something told me to bring a shovel. The drive up through northern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire was hazy. The haze is actually smoke from the wildfires in the burning West more than three thousand miles away. No one seemed alarmed. 

At the retreat center, there was a young man about to begin digging a trench in the stony New Hampshire soil with a pick and grub axe. He was certainly glad to see me and my shovel arrive. Well within the hour I had sweat through my clothes and the fact that I am 55 and not 25 was made perfectly clear to me. Still, the work felt good, in an unpleasant sort of way, and was much appreciated. I sweat through a leather wallet too and made soggy the paper social security card that I've been carrying since I was 14. 

On the return trip, I stopped at a country store in order to address my depletion. My hands were cramping holding the steering wheel. I'd sweat out all my salt. Gatorade, water, celery, hummus, a block of smoked extra-sharp and local cheddar, and a whoopie pie. I ate and drank a portion of it at a picnic table while looking out across rolling rocky green fields at the distant mountains through the smoke. There was no one around except me, the storekeeper inside, and the purple finches at the window feeder. Serenity despite the duress.

Motion

The changes continue. I made a list this morning and, after a few unproductive hours of spinning and avoidance, I got into it and knocked off every item and then some. Miraculously, the mighty tree that fell toward my house didn't damage the roof or the wall or the picture window. The treetop is leaning against the edge of the roof and extending up over the top. I started cutting it up today. I also applied for per diem work in a couple of places. And I made a decision to accept a full time position out in the western part of the state. I feel like maybe I'm breaking through. Like maybe this stagnation is ending.

Here comes another one (if a sinkhole doesn't swallow us first)

An unexpected week of cutting ties and thinking in possible new directions while the rest of the world drowns or burns or continues producing, consuming, and disposing of more and more things that never go away. I'm looking for an upside here. I'm shopping for houses with inflated prices. House hunting, like shopping flea markets or thrift stores, depresses me. Ghosts. Traces of other lives. Histories. Stains. Smells. And then there's what to do with this one. Too many things happening at once. I've got to find a starting point and just begin. The first step leads to the second and so on. You know? 

This feeling you have that you think of as falling might just as well be flying.

Why not change everything?

I popped my head up into the attic in order to take the next step in the damage assessment process. I could see no branches coming through the roof, no daylight, no water streaming in. All good signs. Tomorrow I hope to ascend to the roof and start removing the interloping tree top. 

I was looking out the sliding screen door at the rain this evening and apparently disturbed the resident black bear slinking noiselessly across the overgrown yard and vanishing into the trees. I'll miss that part of this place when I move from here. The possibility is becoming more real by the hour. 

Sometimes it happens

Suit and tie this morning. Polish on the shoes. It was a hot and sticky one, so I changed into the outfit in a convenience store bathroom when I'd gotten closer to my interview. Casual Friday - the CEO was in jeans. An hour interview became two. I liked, and shared, a lot of the ideas we discussed. It was about another hour's drive home. When I arrived, they'd already extended me an offer. 

You said what now?

Thursday, I remind myself. 

There's a tree on my house. A man wants to charge me $650 to remove only the part of that tree that's atop the house from the roof to the ground. I told that man to get bent. I will remove what I can of the trespassing tree from my roof and live in harmony with the rest. Peace out.

The situation is evolving

When the bottom drops out, it means a great deal when someone reaches out to you. Everything looks different when you realize you have options. I put the suit in the cleaners, got a hair cut, bought a couple of better fitting shirts, and got back out there and started interviewing. 

Mine's just one

Spiritually, I'm with the disenchanted young people of China who have decided to lie flat. I feel inclined to do the same, but there are other people counting on me. It's time for new ventures. 

Yesterday, I found myself thinking that if we get any more rain the trees near my house could fall. When I woke up this morning, I found one laying across my backstairs having missed the house by mere centimeters. This is the second time that's occurred. 

California burns again, a billion sea creatures have boiled in their habitat, the Gulf of Mexico is on fire, Siberia's permafrost is proving to be only semi-perma, the Alaska salmon run is the slowest it's been in many years and can no longer feed the people who rely on it. It's a time of change. No one is immune. 

Thanks

And then suddenly there is a change.

Burnt one

Nothing at all. You?

No, I didn't.

Nope.

Not one damn thing.

Mezcal memory

Not that I'm any kind of expert, but mezcal has a distinctive vibe to it. It alters me uniquely. Today, I found myself remembering along a different frequency a photograph of you taken many years ago. You were 19 years old then and we'd known each other for about six months. Plenty long enough for me to have gone crazy. 

You'd moved to the Cape for the summer, found a job in a kind of fancy brick oven pizza place on the main drag, and a room in a rooming house. The owners of the restaurant were a bi-racial couple in their early 30's. He seemed mellow, sensible and even tempered. She was a flame. They were pregnant and planned to have an all natural home birth which turned out to consist of her walking out into a field alone, squatting down and delivering sans assistance. He cooked the placenta in a cast iron frying pan with onions and ate it in order to be an integral part of things. 

There was this photo of you looking out the window of that restaurant taken from outside. You seemed unaware of being photographed. I spent a lot of jealous energy wondering who took that photo that summer. Your face was so beautiful, but when you showed it to me, my heart immediately sank. We were a part of each other by then. In each other's chemistry. But I could see no trace of my presence in your eyes. You were looking out and forward. You seemed hungry and anticipating. Meanwhile, I'd been looking in and backward, toward memories of you. 

I remember a man named David frequently sitting in that place. He wore all his clothes at once. They probably called him a schizophrenic, but to us then he was a sort of holy man. A shaman. I knew he wasn't there for the free coffee and water you gave him. He was there for you, just as I was. He was there to watch you move about the room, doing your work, hoping you'd look our way with your dark Spanish eyes and the gift of your smile. 

He spoke to you gently. His voice was soft and high. 

Jennifer, he'd say. So young. So pretty.

He said it with the same ache.

Imagining Astoria

Thinking about taking a trip into the city with my son. We'll take the train into Pennsylvania Station.

He'll be thrilled to know Good Fellas was filmed in the streets of Astoria. He wants to see The Museum of The Moving Image there. Maybe we'll look for DeNiro in Tribeca too. And walk Chinatown and Little Italy. Roosevelt Avenue. Climb the stairs of the Empire State Building. Sit on a bench in Central Park. Ride the subway out to Flushing. Eat all kinds of things. New York's a fine city to walk around in. 

It's about time we did something like a vacation

While you were out

A tropical storm moves up the coast looking for me. 

I've been on edge today with apocalyptic thoughts.  Might have been something to do with a news story I read about some of my favorite edible mollusks being boiled alive in the shallows of the northern Pacific Ocean generating a mysterious stench along the beaches of British Columbia. 

The cascade effect.

I believe I can feel in my body that this could (is) happen(ing) much faster than they said it might (will). 

That last statement was made while attempting to exercise great restraint. No one wants to be made nervous. May cooler heads prevail, eh?

Not what you see but how

Thinking about perceiving people. 

Usually I do so with doubt - some degree of skepticism, a measure of distance, even complete distrust sometimes. 

Other times it's with empathy. I feel some of what I think you're feeling. But there's often a certain kind of distance built into it. 

In certain circumstances, like when I'm traveling and have been alone and quiet for some time, people become visible and within arm's reach. I can talk to them, laugh, drink, dance, maybe even confide in them. It's real, but it's somehow even more temporal than the rest of life. There's a level of risk to it, but a certain kind of safety built into it too. A scene in a movie. A short chapter in a novel.

Remembering a moment when I perceived another person with complete openness, total acceptance, and no distance at all. That person had really done nothing to earn or deserve my trust. But it occurred nonetheless.

I can't remember how that moment happened. Is it a trick of memory? The rose colored glasses of self-preserving cognition? 

It doesn't seem possible now. 

Interaction

It was dusk and I was executing a three point turn on a dead end street. There was a cat sitting upright on the edge of the road not moving a muscle as I backed closer to it. The cat had a peculiar expression on its face. I began thinking that cat looks kind of spaced out when something very fast darted out of the grass. It was a rat this cat must have been stalking before I showed up. The rat saw the approach of my car and the flash of red brake lights as the only diversion it would likely be granted so it made a break for it. The cat hardly moved. Just a single precision lighting-fast lunge and the rat was in it's jaws. The cat scampered away with its entire tiny-tiger-killing-machine-body looking completely satisfied.

Sex

The woman in my dream sat close to me. She was teaching me how to do something on a computer. When she spoke, she did so softly, and I could feel her words on my skin. A gentle exhalation. Less than half a breath, lightly, through a single nostril and into my ear.

Five years

I met a man a few years older than I the other night whose anxiety and heartbreak were clearly visible. I called it before we even spoke. Turns out he was involved with a younger woman and she was involved with even younger men. 

He's paying her bills and eating his heart out when she doesn't come home at night. Yeah, he's letting her stay with him too. She throws him a bone when he's at the end of his rope in order to keep the gravy flowing I'm supposing. 

We commiserated about this sort of thing for awhile. We sang a song together.

It was really his vanity that had taken a shot, I think. He said they'd been together for 15 years. He told me I should see her - she's absolutely beautiful.  And then he showed me photos of himself on his phone - professional headshots, press coverage, accolades. He talked about the things he owned, the money he'd made. Losing her, I think, was a trophy off his shelf. 

Okay. This guy will be just fine. All he's got to do is find (or purchase) another adoring (or convincing) groupie. 

I told him he ought to move her out and let her go. Unless, of course, he was ok with the current arrangement. He didn't want to hear that so I shut up about it. Nobody listens when they're in that state of mind. 

Give it time, friend. Like five years. At least five years. 

I hear fireworks out there right now. Some small town's finale. 

Next day

Another night of karaoke, high spirits, and temporary friend making. That's twice in a month, I'd better pace myself. This hangover seconds that. 

My memory of last night starts to return in fragments.

There was the singing of a duet with brokenhearted Don, a charter boat captain and sometimes commercial actor. I think we did alright. 

Then, later, I danced to Selena with the occupants of the multiethnic table beside me. 

Then, when the place was drunk and full, just before closing time, I sang Ace Of Spades. I got a lot of fist bumps after. A young lady told me I was the performer of the night. I was feeling good.

Went outside to get air and a young man followed me out to have a smoke. He told me that I'd killed it. Within the first minute of talking, we recognized each other as marines. He more recently than I. He'd fought in Fallujah. I'd never gone to war. We had some experiences in common despite the time gap between our hitches and in no time we were laughing our asses off. 

"Come drink with me," he said. 

We walked down toward the seedier end of the street. Before we'd travelled a block, a man ran past us with a look of terror upon his face. I had the impression he didn't see us as he ran past as though he was running in a nightmare. 

"You okay, man?" I said automatically.

"Best if you don't talk to them," my new friend said gently.

Two men followed close behind him, walking fast, toward us. I saw one of them stick a handgun in the back of his pants.

"Dude on the right is packing," I warned.

And then we were intermingled.

"Hi," I said to the man in the hood with the gun.

"S'up," he said while walking by and not shooting me.

And then we're at the bar.  

My friend says, "Hey bro, this place is kinda ghetto. You ok with that?"

I say, "You're with a grey haired white boy in a cowboy shirt. You ok with that?"

Last call. Drunk people trying to order Bud Lights in cans from the overwhelmed bartender. No one looks very happy. I play The Doors on the jukebox - Break On Through To the Other Side. 

My friend introduces me to a friend of his from high school. I do a double-take because the guy looks a lot like the recently deceased rapper, DMX. He's been in some trouble, sounds like he might have a TBI, but he tells me he stands back up every time he falls down. My friend introduces me around as an older marine, and I'm given momentary respect. 

I go stand at the bar to get DMX a Bud Light. A man comes up behind me and asks what am I doing here. He wants to know if I've got a girlfriend or a wife with me. I'm beyond all that, I tell him. He says he's got a husband at home, but he's a ho. He tells me his name and I tell him mine. I tell him he's got a serial killer's name. He tells me not to be nervous if I wake up in the morning and find him in my shower. We laugh. 

Think it over, he says, it's really just a spectrum. 

My combat veteran friend tells me this is where he's from. He says these people were his friends once and, no matter what they're like now, they'll always be his friends. You stand up for that shit, he says. That's what combat teaches you.

Birthday

Today, I turned 55. I took the day off work, not so much to celebrate, but to obtain a new driver's license because mine expires today. 

I remember the last time I replaced it. I just walked into an RMV office in a town I happened to be driving through and got it done. Things have changed since then. 

This time two armed young men with modern hairdos intercepted me in the doorway. 

Do you have an appointment?

No. It's my birthday. I need to replace my driver's license.

Do you have your documentation?

I have my driver's license...

Sir, you're going to need an appointment, a copy of your birth certificate - stamped, a bill or other piece of mail with your address on it and your social security card. 

Wait. I'm the same guy I was five years ago when I got my last driver's license replaced. 

Yes, I understand, sir. But the rules changed back in 2018.

I told him I just needed to walk over to the courthouse to get a birth certificate. 

When I'd managed to do that, I returned and the second armed and unsmiling security officer walked me inside, gestured toward the end of the line (of people with legitimate appointments) and told me I was "all set". I thanked him feeling like the tottering old guy who's granted a mildly annoyed favor to prevent him from succumbing to his own befuddlement.

The only painful part of the process after that was seeing the photo. For five years, I've been waiting to get rid of that last driver's license photo. It was taken three days before I saw you for the last time. I look lost. 

In this new replacement photo, I look old and not exactly found either. But I make jokes with the girl at the counter and she smiles more than once. 

There aren't very many of those at the RMV. Smiles, I mean. Fuck 'em, I did it anyway.

Stray cat strut

A couple of days ago, I noticed what looked like scar tissue on the shoulder of a grey squirrel eating on the platform feeder. What got ahold of you, I wondered. Later the same day, while walking through the fields of a small college's former equestrian program, I noticed several scattered wild turkey feathers. Not many - four or five over the course of 20 or 30 yards - but enough to make me think some sort of dust-up had occurred.

Early this afternoon, while walking in the same area, through humidity and sporadic showers of rain, a bobcat crossed the road in front of me. It was closer than 20 yards. Tallish, shorthaired, strong-limbed with something like a small mane and pointed ears, it was not at all hurried by my approach. There was a certain apex swagger to the creature's demeanor. All cat class and cat style.

Respect.