Back to work

The first cold morning and it's dark at 6 AM. It might be below 40 out there, I'm not sure. A long sleep after a long day. It got busy. There was friction. In crisis there are often conflicting agendas. In one case, an autistic man, overwhelmed and escalated. The caller wanted us to take him away using force. I said no. The police and one of ours were involved. They were patient, moved slowly if at all, called me frequently. It took two hours but no force was used. That, at least, was good. Now it's time to go back.

Who was that?

I was telling a once frequently told story today. The actual event the story was based on happened more than 30 years ago and it had been a few years since I'd had occasion to tell it. At the end, I felt like I'd told a lie. I hadn't, but it felt like I had. I guess I'm just not that guy anymore. 

Catalyst

She cut about five pounds of it off of his head and then taught him how to condition and brush it. I watched him listening shyly. There was no money in the meter out in front. Lacking 25 cents will cost you 25 dollars. He was happy with his look which he checked in the mirror as we exited. Picture day is next week. Not many of those left for him. He's thinking about looking into community college now. And then there's this thing, just sort of hanging there in my head, not yet metabolized. It's going to change everything for him too. 

Listen

You hear about something that changed everything for her long ago. Now it changes everything for you.

Pain in the neck

Yes, I will likely buy one of those neck recliners. It feels less suicidal than those traction rigs you hang up over the top of your door. Sometimes you don't have to just live with it.

I had been talking to someone who'd suggested I learn a particular skill in order to win/earn/achieve the affection and admiration of a particular woman. Nah, I concluded. I'm too old for that. In other words, I'm unwilling. Find a young one who'll jump through those hoops. No more ordeals. Not for me. 

I'm just fine over here.

Moonlit

The light from the Harvest Moon wakes me at midnight. The air is cold out there tonight. A friend talked to me about meeting in the future - maybe in four months or seven months or eleven months. Sure, I said.

Some distant future in which anything could happen. 

You don't seem very excited. Well, it's been a long time since I pinned my hopes on another. That doesn't sound very positive. If it happens, it happens. You're so negative. Sure, I said.

Half a Sunday

Squandering a day off. You know you're wasting time when you wake up during a mundane dream. Boredom, bleakness, something like a depression. All the things you were going to do. Outside, the bees are still active on the goldenrod which is browning, and it's been awhile since you've seen a hummingbird. Perhaps they've moved South. Laundry, breakfast, coffee, a long walk in the woods, a job application left unfinished - there's still time for some of these. Not a total loss. 

Unusual

The new job is more engaging. I'm no longer permanently drowsy. Now it's heartburn and tension headaches. I still fall asleep as soon as I get home though. Already, It's dark in the morning at my departure and dark in the evening upon my return. 

Stark terror on the telephone this morning. A friend calls from out of the past. He is sorry to tell me that my brother has died in his sleep. He is crying. What? I say. What? What?

He keeps talking. My mind has seized. The world is upside down. What? I realize asking that question over and over is not obtaining any more clarity for me. Tell me the name of the person you are talking about, I think I said. When he did, it was not the name of my brother. I started breathing again.

But it was the name of his brother. He misdialed in calling me thinking he was calling his second brother. For less than a second I felt relief, but his grief was right there, too heavy and new for me to distance myself from. His world had turned upside down with me looking in.

Wondering

When it's finished, you feel ashamed. Automatically. Wouldn't it make better sense to feel that before it even starts? Does this happen only to Catholics?

A guy without them dreams of friends

In the dream, I was with three friends. Two of us were climbing a high ladder made from broccoli. The other two were completing some paperwork and would join us later. We were laughing and joking. There was the scent of raw broccoli and cauliflower about. It felt good to be there. And with them.

Still here

The shiniest black crow tears at a road-killed squirrel and a doe crosses the road in front of me. The leaves dry and change color seemingly by the minute. This is the season when you can't help but feel the passage of time acutely. Everything's slipping away from you. But you've seen a few of these by now, haven't you?

September half-moon

He's still not feeling well but he was hungry for chicken tikka masala, which I read as a good sign, and dropped an order off at his place. He texted later that he could actually taste it - slightly. He was more talkative and in a better mood today. He looked strong.

On the way back home, I stopped at a Cracker Barrel and ordered the fried chicken. I would have enjoyed it if not for the man about six feet away from me who was positioned in such a way that he seemed to be staring at the side of my chewing head. This annoyed me. In fact most everything human in that place annoyed me. 

Apparently I wasn't alone in that. The two ladies working the registers were giggling. The one taking care of me said she couldn't think straight. I told her the woman next to her was obviously jamming her signal. She told me she was always doing that. 

She said they'd been laughing because this young lady, who was now taking care of me, had been venting. "These ding-dang-diddly customers!" she'd said.

We three laughed and each of us said ding-dang-diddly, or some slight variation of that, aloud.

My grin faded slowly as I walked out of the restaurant. By the time I'd reached the parking lot it was gone without a trace. A half-moon had risen over the Comfort Inn. I wrote a little country lyric.

I'd like to spend tonight with you in the Comfort Inn

Dar-lin, my worried mind could use some comfortin'

The night felt pleasant. Inside the car, the radio played New Age ambient piano music. Nostalgia. September. It's what the Fall always does to you. 

Are you lonely? 

It was a female's voice, vaguely, from somewhere inside my head. She had a pat response built into the question, I could tell, so I didn't answer her directly.

Being around people only makes it more acute, I told her. 

There've been a few with whom it wasn't like that but, when I feel like this, it hurts too much to remember them.

This one's on my mind this morning

 

Tracer

He's feeling pretty lousy, tracing it back to his girlfriend's boss who opted not to get vaccinated and who came to work with symptoms. 

We suffer the stupid.

Positive

The news leads to disappointment. Missing the first tournament of the season. Tryouts for the volleyball team too. Not to mention a week of classes. 

All the testing sites are booked for days. There are rumors of the campus being overrun. 

They say the vaccinated get less sick if they're infected. I'm hoping that holds true.

Test anxiety

A sore throat and the sniffles evolved into shivering and a fever today. He's living off campus, but eating in the dining hall, attending classes, playing a varsity sport. It'd be good to have an answer quickly. Tomorrow we go for a rapid test as soon as the doors of the Urgent Care open. Appointments for testing are booked out for days in advance.

September remember

A scramble to hire with some positive results today. No longer drowsy all the time, at least not until I get home. Still have no idea where to fit a life into this time. September's happening now. Try not to miss it. 

Just a Tuesday

I got too busy at work to eat so took a break at about 3 in the afternoon to go and get a poke bowl a couple of blocks down the street. 

There was a little girl there, about four, dressed in a skirt and wearing a mask. She had a homemade cardboard sword wrapped in shiny aluminum foil which she tucked down inside her waistband and crept toward me under the tables. 

She drew the sword, but instead of attacking, decided to show it off. She showed me the special button she'd drawn on the handle in blue ink. If you press it, she said, "ZZZZHHHHHHHH!". She stiffened and vibrated as though electrocuted. 

There was another gizmo higher up on the blade that would apparently shoot me way up up into the sky. She was beautiful, a marvel, and I wanted everything to always be alright for her. She made me think of your daughter, who might look a lot like her. And, if she's anything like you, have a similar spirit. 

On the way home I caught a glimpse of the blackest, shiniest black bear prone in the bed of a pick-up truck. 

And then this song from the 80's came on, She's a Maniac. Those sacred times. A Tijuana disco on a series of Sunday afternoons. I would meet Irma Lopez there. She taught deaf children. She spoke almost no English and I almost no Spanish. Sometimes it was only the two of us and the DJ in there and we danced to everything he played all afternoon. I couldn't really dance at most other times, but I always could with Irma. We found moments of absolute freedom in that club made of mirrors. We held nothing back. When it was time to go, she hugged me so tightly, happy. That dancing was everything. Nothing more needed to occur.

A young man describes his anxiety to me. He's nauseous. He knows not where it comes from, as the world wobbles and spins madly under him, and I want everything to once again always be alright for him too. 

Regional differences

Because you can't just leave someone there alone, the shift becomes an 18 hour one. Most of it is quiet waiting, trying to stay awake, wondering what's in the mind of the light sleepers up and down throughout the night. Some of it is dealing with an asshole who calls frequently to threaten your life with a Louisville slugger. It's a hotline, he figures, they have to pick up the phone and put up with my shit. I'm a little unhinged myself, friend, you're thinking. I just might enjoy making your acquaintance too. He's mentally ill, the ladies who work there say, and they let him give voice to this abuse on a regular basis with professional tolerance and personal disregard. He feeds on the tolerance. 

On the nightshift

The basic ethos is if you can't staff it, you work it. I wasn't anticipating a double shift on a holiday weekend with the second of those being an unexpected overnight though. 

Many years ago, during my full time, unpaid graduate internship, I took a part time job in a program just like this working overnight shifts. I worked alone and was told I could write my thesis on the program's computer as long as I was available to the clients if they woke up. Most slept through the night. Some did not. 

One night, after typing for several hours, I found myself delirious in the last two hours of the shift. The sun hadn't risen yet and it became nearly impossible to keep my eyes open. My eyes kept rolling up into my head. I drifted in and out of semi-dream states. I tried to focus - slapped my own face, splashed cold water, when outside in January without a coat, drank gallons of coffee - but that last stretch of the shift was brutal. I leaned back in the office chair and closed my eyes. Sleep overwhelmed me. 

WAKE UP! a voice in my head said sharply not two minutes into my involuntary slumber. 

My eyes snapped open. A naked man was standing within two feet of me. He was painted from his hairline to his toes with black shoe polish. I rocketed backward in the chair and nearly tipped over. He turned - the back side of his body was not painted with black shoe polish - and walked out the front door into the frigid pre-dawn ice and snow. 

I wonder what tonight has in store.  

No way to start a holiday

An SUV laid upside down in the middle of the highway. Its top was crushed. Clothes and trash were strewn along the roadside for maybe one hundred feet. No other damaged vehicles were in sight. The state troopers had the highway blocked just a few feet from the wreck and detoured all of us commuters onto the exit ramp. The fire department was on scene but not working. The medics arrived a few minutes later. They weren't in any hurry. I could feel death before I saw the responders. I don't know if anyone actually died or if I just imagined it. 

Irene

 

After the rains

The Ware and Connecticut Rivers are wider and deeper than they were yesterday. For the moment, we here are fortunate and safe. Forces are in motion though. They won't stop just because the holiday weekend's nearly here, but you can be easily forgiven for thinking so after such a perfect day, sunny and 70 degrees with a gentle breeze and no humidity. September has often been sweet to us here, tentative tender flesh and bone. 

Pink

No, I will not sign the paper. 

The man is experimenting with chemicals and facing off with himself. One self reaches out and touches the other. He can feel both parties because he is both parties. One reportedly wants to kill the other. This is a conundrum for him. Also for his wife.

It's raining cats and dogs. He is running through the woods with a flashlight and a machete. Let's hope he does not come upon a dog walker. I'd suggest not consuming the stuff you imagine as synthetic marijuana which you manufactured in your basement. The real and natural stuff is legal and available on every other block in this area. It might make you hungry, silly, or stupid but it's probably not going to take you to the place you're currently visiting.  

Around six inches of rain is predicted to fall here in the next 24 hours. Meanwhile, the people continue coming together and falling apart. 

I can't wait