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.
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