Ordinary

 It's his first day of school and I get to drive him in. My new job allows for more regular contact beyond the weekends. My shoulder aches a little after the Tetanus, Diptheria, Pertussis booster. There's Flu and the Covid booster to remember to get too. Shaking myself out of excess sleep and resisting the urge to go back under for half an hour. Anxiety about increased demand for a program and no staff on the schedule to accommodate it. 

Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back

Welcome back to management in the nonprofit sector where making ends meet is as challenging as the work itself. I've got positions to fill and no resumes. I guess I know where I'll be for the foreseeable future.

Had you turned right

I could have lived there with your dark eyes and your good humor out beyond the windmills in that town beside the river and its eternally wandering longhorns. You're so much younger though. The people would have snickered and called me your gringo padre or something. But sometimes I can see it in my mind, you and your happy boy, and it's nice. 

Cars and stuff

This denial thing. I do it with my health and with everything else too. It works like this. You notice something's not quite right but you get distracted or you have other things to worry about so you put the thing aside and continue on. Later, you notice something is definitely not right but you don't have time or money to deal with it right now and it's probably not that bad anyway. Then you realize something is certainly wrong but even then you keep going, if the situation allows, until sooner or later it doesn't. 

In this case, it's my car. There's been this god-awful sound coming from the right wheel getting worse over the last couple of weeks. I'm driving at least 100 miles daily to and from a new job with no real time to take it to the shop. I'm thinking it's the brakes. I'm going to need pads, rotors, calipers. Man, I waited too long again. But worn brakes don't make that churning sound, they make a grinding sound. So today - a day off - I got up early and was waiting at the shop when it opened. 

Yes, your rear brakes need to be replaced they told me. What about the noise in the front, I ask. They go back to take a look, drive it around the block, and call me back later. We've got some bad news, the guy says. And I'm amazed you even made it here. You'd better come and see this. 

I walk back to the garage from the coffee shop up the road. The car is on the lift. He shakes the wheel with is hands. It's very wobbly. He said he doesn't know how it didn't come off while I was driving. The wheel bearings are completely shot. 

I've got almost 350,000 miles on this car. Three warning lights have been permanently on for probably a year. I failed inspection - something about the Check Engine light and emissions - probably a sensor needs replacing someone told me. My sticker says "R". A tree fell on it last week denting the roof and breaking the windshield. Someone is going to meet me Wednesday at my place of work to replace that. That is, if it's out of surgery by then. 

If it was a dog, the mechanic/veterinarian would be having a frank discussion with me about quality of life at this point. 350,000 miles, Buddy, I'd tell him. Do you have any idea what that means? For as long as there's life in that critter, we're gonna go on rolling together. Here's to a half a million miles!

So now I've got a rental that seems to cost me more than it should. It features a backup camera. The steering wheel vibrates when I drift even the slightest bit. And I can't figure out the radio. 

They wouldn't let me sleep in the garage tonight. I'm not even a car guy, but 350,000 miles? You'd best believe in that. 

Lemonaid

The man said that both of them should by rights be dead. One got shot close to the groin, in the femoral artery where you bleed out very quickly. A fast acting police officer with a tourniquet flat out saved his life. The other was saved by his teeth which sacrificed themselves for him. He was reportedly shot directly in the mouth at close range. The bullet travelled around his teeth and decided to exit through his cheek instead of laying waste to his brain stem. If you have to get shot in a public restroom, that just might be the way to go. 

Someday

Every morning I offer myself the opportunity to take a morning walk before the sun rises. And every morning I politely decline and choose another half hour of sleep. 

Why you dirty rotten...

I no longer have to contend with congested highways on my morning and evening commute. Now it's just back roads with slow drivers, road construction, oversize trucks and farm vehicles. However, I think venting my angst through a steady monologue of curses while driving has become an integral part of my routine. Let's call it radical self-care. Bubble baths don't work for everyone.

The scent of cherries

Everything is trauma now - individual and intergenerational. Did you know that they researched this idea by conditioning rats to fear the smell of cherries? Yup. And wouldn't you know it? Subsequent generations of rats were born with the fear of that particular scent without experiencing any conditioning at all. The son truly bears the weight of the sins of the father. On and on and on and on. Until we heal. Think about that for a second and then give us about a millennium or so to work our shit out.

Big box

Someone once said something like, "violence is the tragic expression of unmet needs." Someone else chased two kids into the store's bathroom just beyond Customer Service and shot them both - one in the face. I went in there to piss the following evening and, except for a couple of buzzing flies, it was very clean. You'd never think that something like that happened in there.

We thought we lived in this bubble of safety, the lady said.

Company

Here now comes the wind. 

I started the morning in a garage as an addition to a circle of mostly men preparing to work through an impending hurricane and it's near-future aftermath while trying to come to terms with the recent on the job electrocution of a coworker. 

I'm there for support. No one uses it though. Working men - nobody talks, at least not very often. By the look of some of the blearier eyes, they've found other ways to cope. 

One of the supervisors says a prayer aloud. He's asking God to bless these men about to face the storm and to bless the young man in the hospital, burned now inside and out, and his young family and the hands of the doctors and the nurses who are taking care of him. This brings a few involuntary tears to some. The door at least has been opened. 

On the way home, there's a run on the liquor store. Two drunk men are marveling about the ass on the woman who just walked out with a gallon of pink wine. I must have missed it. One of them spills a pocket full of change on the floor. He lets me go ahead of him and I pay for my purchase. 

Slow and steady, he tells me. Yes indeed, I respond. 

Je suis

So there's a Frenchman reportedly making his way up the coast. 

Henri, mon ami, please don't drop any trees on my house or my car or me or my family s'il vous plait. 

Ca va aller?

Merci beaucoup.

Rock on, kid

And bless that boy walking along the road in his black framed glasses with a little smile on his face. He's got music in his head, I can see that. He's better for it and so are we. Thanks, kid. 

I stop into a bar for a beer and then a cocktail after work. The place doesn't work for me. I'm remembering a primarily Mexican joint in San Angelo, Texas where I had a few beers and was party to some good talk and real laughs with strangers while waiting there for a girl. 

I walk back to my car and stop into a store that sells wine and cheese and craft beer and very precious small-batch condiments. There was a salesman in there talking too loud introducing wines to various hipsters. Do they still call them that? Anyway, he kept using the word structured to describe some aspect of the wine he was hawking. 

In my head, I approached him saying, "Young man, if you say the word structured one more time, I am going to gut you right here with a trench knife."

I'm not well, and it's right and proper that I live alone. 

Driving home I was thinking about my first two or three years of school and how I don't have many memories of those years. From kindergarten, I remember the teacher leading us in a song. The lyrics might have been a mix of English and maybe German-tinged nonsense. 

"My hunts by my sides, my teacher dear..."

And I remember being partners with a girl named Diane Avery. Her hands were warm and it felt nice to hold one when we walked to and from school. I felt happy when we held hands. She seemed like she always felt happy. She had freckles on her cheeks and she wore her hair in dark braids. I think walking with her was my favorite thing about that year. 

I got in trouble for stealing erasers and other stuff the following year. And I was afraid to use the bathroom at school. I remember knocking and knocking on the front door of our house after running all the way up the street having to pee and not being able to hold on any longer. That feeling of defeat. 

Like there was no help anywhere. 

----------------------------------------

And by the way, Mr. President? I forget stuff too if I don't make a list (in order of priority). For example:

    1.     Evacuate American government employees, contractors and other civilians.

    2.     Evacuate all the Afghans, and their families, who provided assistance to our military operations.

    3.     Notify the Afghan government and military, and our military allies, that we're leaving pretty soon.

    4.     Have a planned, orderly change of command ceremony filled with gratitude and encouragement. 

    5.     Finally, when everything seems somewhat buttoned up, withdraw our troops. 

It's very important to remember to start at the TOP of the list.

Don't want to

Felt the humidity arrive in the middle of the night along with what's left of the tropical storm. Rain is on the menu today. Now, somehow, I have to get out of this bed. 

Last evening, while driving home along quiet backroads, I saw cows grazing along a green hillside. There were freshly mowed hay fields and a long stand of sunflowers on the river bank all facing the sinking sun. The corn stood green and tall. I felt that urge I used to get when I needed to show you something beautiful.

This morning the rain on the drive in feels kind of sinister. Flood rain. Let's hope it eases up.

Captured

I'll always love you for capturing that feeling so plainly and exactly with your words - basking in romance.

                    

You said it in humor, but that's exactly what I was doing. I think I'll always love you for many other reasons too.

Things we do and don't do

The discouraging part for me is how selfish so many of them seem. Narcissistic. Expecting a certain outcome instantly. Consumers. Hardly even slowing down before they're off to the next thing. They talk too damn much. They come to simplistic conclusions, sum it all up, take a selfie, write a review. They feel entitled. They don't listen. They don't show respect. 

And I stew in anger judging them while the world burns down around us.

Boy

In the dream your oldest boy is still young. He is enjoying eating an ice cream sundae and you are enjoying watching him do so. He is telling you all the things he likes about it and you (the lucid part of you) are feeling guilty because not enough of these conversations actually occurred. Later, you put him to bed. He has a mild sore throat and a light cough. You fear Covid and cover him with an extra blanket. 

Sunday morning waking up

Broken sleep and lots of dreams. It's as though some sort of internal reordering was taking shape. Most of the dreams are just beyond remembering. One had to do with you and a realignment between us. It was good to see you again. 

Later, I take a ride to mail the bills and go to the bank. I stop at a place for lunch and am annoyed by the bartender who appears bland and inattentive like the repetitive contemporary pop playing overhead is bland. There's nothing holding me back is exactly right, my Disney Channel friend. What the fuck am I doing here? 

The guy next to me is talking sports and Keno monotone in the local dialect. I hear clocks ticking in my head -the seconds are like hours- and see tallies of an eternity of days scratched into cement walls. I spent my early childhood less than half a mile from here. I still feel imprisoned by ordinary life here. I still only want out.

Meanwhile, Kabul falls to the Taliban. I think about what it must be like to be an American veteran of that war who lost friends or limbs or innocence there; or an Afghan interpreter or government official who drank the Kool-Aid about change and human rights, democratic values and modernization; or a girl in school with ambition, intelligence and hope for the future wondering what does all this mean. You are stuck in traffic with your family fleeing the city to god knows where now. America is again the giant bumbling oaf of hubris and destruction leaving those who assisted it to face their fate alone.

I take my laundry to town and read about herbal medicine while the machines are doing their work. Sometime recently, when I wasn't paying attention, things changed. The leaves on the the maples in the swamp and the poison ivy along the roadside are going red. Dusk is falling at 7:15 pm. 

The heat remains, but Summer is slipping away.

The fan made it possible

The night moved along its course from just a little too hot to sleep to comfortable with the fan pointed directly at me. I imagined us talking in the dark comfortably. Slowly and sleepily. When it was time to return to sleep, you leaned your body lightly against me. My hand was on your hip, in my imagination.

Someone was recently talking about death doulas. A person to be there, with and for you, when it's time to leave this world. And then I recalled this imprinted image of you on top of me. You looked long into my eyes. It felt as though we were seeing each other for the first time. There was magic in your face, and the white ceiling above you gave way to a black sky filled with brilliant stars. I felt ready to leave this world then, to become a part of the stars, with you so close to me like that, making all things align somehow perfectly.

It seems impossible for a connection like that to no longer be. Such significance. I could live the rest of my days sustained by just that memory. But it was only a moment falling through space among an infinitude of other tumbling moments flashing into being and then going dark.

Long enough

We tire, I guess, of emergencies and escape to wherever we can until our own personal one comes to claim us.

Driving home from work tonight I surprised myself by saying aloud, "I hope you found what you wanted." I remember when that was peace of mind.

Show me how

I'm trying to remember how a life fits into time and what one does with it. Drive, work, drive, sleep. Dates - I've got a few but I don't really want them. 

There's a thunderstorm on top of me here right now. I'm gonna go for a walk. 

I took a walk through warm soup and got straight into a cold shower when I returned. I'm a little more awake now that it's time for bed. 

A friend and former co-worker calls from a Texas hospital. She's part of the executive leadership and is a week deep in 20 hour days because they're overrun with Covid cases. She's asking me questions about staffing regulations which they are no longer able to comply with. She doesn't know my position in the company was eliminated a month ago. I tell her what she's already doing is the best course of action. 

You can only do the best you can with what you have to work with. 

For your consideration

Have you considered the fact that your air conditioner warms the planet while it cools your bedroom?

Have you considered the possibility that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis sold flood damaged cars as new before he sold his jaundiced soul to Satan?

Tabula rasa

The last several books I read were memoirs written by people who made the same journey on foot I hope to make one day and also write about. So far, I haven't liked any of them for long. Not the books, I mean the people. I imagine walking along beside them but not too far. 

I'd certainly end up walking alone out there - more or less by choice - but not because I did not want for a companion. 

Remembering a therapeutic conversation I overheard yesterday. The person in the client role gave a summary of her week. She emphasized an episode during which she snapped at a friend on the telephone and hung up on him abruptly. A few minutes later she realized this was a patterned response of hers, and she decided she didn't want to be stuck in that pattern anymore. She called her friend back and apologized, not only for this episode, but for every time that she'd behaved this way toward him in the past. 

The person in the therapist role said he wanted to issue her a challenge for homework. The assignment was to write down, in detail, exactly what she'd like her life to look like. I rolled my eyes internally.

That assignment came to mind several times today. Each time it came up, I gave it a few seconds of thought before escaping into some other distraction. Each time I drew a blank. 

People person

He told me I had a good ear after our first long talk. He'd come to the program directly from prison where he'd spent the majority of his adult life. He said for the first couple of weeks he stayed in the upstairs bathroom, even ate his meals sitting on the toilet, because it was about the same size as the cell he'd spent so many years in. He couldn't be in a large room with other people. He told me someone needs to write a book on how to deinstitutionalize one's mind. 

He came back to the program today looking for the collared shirt he'd left behind to wear to court tomorrow morning. He's picked up another minor charge. He can't blend in this town. He's marked by the color of his skin. He called me big brother today. I'm hoping they don't lock him up again. That place is a fucking magnet.

I saw my youngest boy walking through town with a group of his friends while driving tonight. I smiled the whole way home.

In a restaurant, the Chinese waiter went to great lengths to explain the fish dish I'd ordered without really knowing what it was. It's Cantonese, he let me know, and then listed all the ingredients and how they were prepared. When I appeared to be enjoying the dish, he looked very proud. That made me smile too. 

This particular town has more than its share of anxiety, gummy smiles, allergies, sensitivities, special orders and complaints. I'm trying to keep smiling anyway. 

Maybe it's because I'm a step child, but I've never felt entitled to anything. And even though we look alike, you don't feel at all like my people.

Sunday passed

Sunday passed. The desire to sleep was my most noteworthy feeling today. I did laundry and the dishes, paid a bill, filled the hummingbird feeder, wiped down the tub and the toilet, emptied the refrigerator of rotting food and took two naps. I read a couple of chapters in a book about a woman and her walk along the Road of Saint James. That seemed like something I'd be doing myself any day now just a few weeks ago. Change came and now that possibility seems remote. There's an owl out there tonight that makes me remember the wild antics of the two I heard two weeks ago now during the ceremony. I remember  the singing of the shaman and her son. Now, it's time for integration. Integration and sleep. 

Rita

 

A loss to all the world

Less than two weeks ago I had a visit from an elder, a teacher of mine, who has been dead for several years. He had told me something about myself many years ago that was absolutely accurate. He pointed out for me something I needed to heal from. That particular thing had been trying to strangle me all of my life, so it wasn't news to me, but he could see it clearly. I think he came by to visit recently to let me know that maybe I was finally making some headway. He smiled. 

Today I learned about the death of the last of the elders who taught me back then - Rita. She was one of the world's Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. I read the news in a message on my phone while eating dinner in a restaurant. Tears ran down my face. I've always choked up and started to cry when speaking of her. It's been that way for more than 25 years now. Rita was a healer. The closest thing to light a human being could be.

She worked on me once. Standing behind me as I sat in a chair, she was moving something inside of me around without actually touching me. I could feel it. She began to sing. One long note, softly, and it just broke me. I started to cry. I shook and sobbed. I wept. Something I had not done in a very long time, if I ever had. When it was over, I felt as though a ton had been lifted off of me. 

"I think maybe you needed that," she said. There was such warmth in her face.

Friday

July, here, was cool and wet after the hottest June in history. August has begun with a string of fine sleeping nights. I'm not gloating. I don't assume we're going to be ok. I know others are suffering terribly. Change, at a rate we cannot even comprehend, is upon us now. It's already Friday.

Better to sleep

I've split the days into equal parts sleep and wakefulness. Waking just now, I'm grateful not to be Andrew Cuomo (to the extent that I'm not). I remember the young woman behind the bar at a pizza restaurant rattled by an older man who asked her for her phone number embarrassing her in front of the whole place. Worse than that, she was already dreading the parking lot after her shift. The darkness. 

Different

The whole thing is different now. New people, new surroundings, and a new sense of purpose. 

I'm feeling alright. 

Does this mean there's nothing left to write about?

Transmuted

She spent some time with me with the intention of restoring me. It's true, I'd been diminished. I told her I'd come here because I could feel the world dying and needed to know what I could do to prevent it. You can let it go, she told me. Let it die and be glad because so much here needs to pass away. Then be present to help facilitate the birth of a new world. 

Affirmative

Someone told me tonight that I seemed healthier then they'd seen me in a while. 

I am. 

Recuperating not hibernating

That thing overtook me again yesterday. 

Fatigue, exhaustion or whatever. It always feels the same - hollow, weak and like there's an impenetrable tangle of tumbleweeds in my brain. I took to my bed some time in the afternoon and didn't come back out until this morning. I got a lot of sleep. 

Of course, now I feel shaky and weak, but at least that tangle has cleared. For awhile I thought this was a side effect of laziness and inactivity, that if I just picked up the pace I'd adapt and it would clear. Now, I'm wondering if it's a lingering Covid effect or maybe Lyme disease. Well, I guess if you live long enough, eventually you catch a case. 

The male hummingbird is making passes by the window. The feeder has gone dry and he's letting me know.