Took myself out for a waffle and a walk in the cemetery. And you?

New Year's Eve is one of those holidays that almost always makes me feel worse. Like a Spring Break town. The herd. A Barnum and Bailey hustle culminating in a massive letdown of vomit, rape, arrests and broken glass. A mindless marking of time between chapters of a rolling disaster. Woo!

Cook for yourself

They were holding hands and praying at the table in Cracker Barrel. The woman behind me was talking loudly about 666 and some meaning she had gleaned from recent events. I was just waiting for a smothered hamburger steak and the end of this mess. 

Leon

Leon is the name of their new dog rescued from the shelter on his last day. Approximately eleven pounds of attachment-disordered terrier mutt. My youngest is getting to know him. They are getting to know each other. Both are already better for it. I can see it.

I did some cleaning in the kitchen tonight

Tonight I'd rather read Bob Dylan's lyrics than listen to him sing them. You know what I mean? Maybe you don't. I mean why should you?

Frank Zappa tells me, "there's no way to delay that trouble coming everyday." I do understand that, Frank. Yes, I truly do. 

Omicron took a chunk out of the staff schedule today and it's only just starting to roll. May it mean ten days of solid rest for those affected and nothing more. 

Christmas morning

Christmas allowed me to make it to the ER just as the rain was starting and would soon freeze. One is manic, running through the neighborhood breaking things. One is shaking hard in alcohol withdrawal (she's not yet thirty and nearly dead of it). The other would just like a break from his life. I talk to them, then I talk to the doctor, then I drive to the office and type it all up. And then I go to my ex-wife's house where our children have assembled and I get to see them all together among our gifts, happy for awhile.

Christmas Eve

I went to work for a few hours. One of them was suffering badly and could not say what was wrong. Yes, we should send her to the hospital even though it's against her will. She would not go for us, or for the medics, but the police officer moved her along using only necessary force, gentle enough, respectful. These holidays, the historical wounds of families. I stopped to buy some cards on the way home. Then I stayed in and quiet.

Some memories stirred. 

I remembered being in your house. Your bedroom. Your kitchen. The laundry room. Your spaces without you in them but filled with your essence. Your effort, a part of you, to keep them clean and cheerful. I liked to wash your clothes there and to help you make the bed.

My friend Ian. Tall, freckled, red-haired. He was an adopted boy. He had wounds he didn't speak about, I think. Something that was eating him too.

I love you, I'd say now.

Already

Christmas again. I'm pretty far from you, but you're right here beside me. Alright, I'll try. Christ. 

Hell

Hell, he told me, is simply the absence of God.

Its other face

It came up tonight all golden. As yellow and as round as the sun. Profound and articulate in its ascent. There should have been music or absolute silence to accompany it. The sound of an ever-rising wind. 

There's a great deal of time we merely wile away. There's some time we actually curse. We wish it never happened. We'd burn it if we could. 

But maybe there was a little precious time. Time you wished would never end. When you're in that kind of time, you want only more of it. Any other kind of time seems unbearable. 

You can call that kind of time love.

Cold Moon

I saw it rise last night - white and round and full. Wisps of black clouds blew across its face. There was a certain ferocity to it despite its stillness. It continued to rise as the clouds disappeared and the temperature dropped until it dominated everything.

Nice talking with you

We're talking at 3AM, and lucky to be, because twelve hours earlier he was dead in the back of a local transit authority bus. Narcan is a wonderful drug but it has a fault. For instance, it allows the subject to leap directly from death back into a life where the subject has dedicated oneself to the pursuit of the substance that killed him. What's often missing is the felt awareness that one was dead. That shit-scared feeling/understanding of going over the precipice and into the void. Perhaps part of the rescue protocol should be to take some photos or a minute of video to show the person later when things settle down. 

"Hey man, this is you, dead. See? Your lips are blue. You're all floppy and shit. What do you think of that?" 

Skoll

Yes, the drunken Norwegian's advice (Never Get Excited), becomes truer and on many different levels as I get closer now to the age he was then. What is an old love to you now? Someone who keeps you warm or costs you money or gives you pain? No, none of these things. A faded memory and nothing else. Soon to be gone forever into nothing. Just like you. 

Someone's terrible problem

When I'm not feeling well, everything is tainted. I'd better start with that qualification. 

It's the week before Christmas in New England at 6o degrees and it feels more like May. 

"Wooo!" exclaims the biker with his feet splayed out to both sides. 

Yeah, "Wooo," I'm thinking. 

"Wooo" as in: Gee, I'm Having A Blast ?

Or "Wooo" as in: Here Come the Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse ?

There's a man and a woman gesticulating as though possessed and screaming at one another in a gas station parking lot. It costs me nearly 40 bucks to fill the tank. Inflation. Suffocation.

The moon is blurred by clouds as the sun starts to sink. I'm thinking that I don't want to say that it's been a long time since I felt much for Christmas, because that's not entirely true, but I am more than a little sick of the repetition of seasonal marketing, a little more than sick of riding this wheel. 

I was dreaming in a chair today. It was a work dream. Someone's terrible problem.

First world problem

I got the third Moderna shot about 24 hours ago because I live in a country where I'm lucky enough to have it provided for me and my health insurance plan covers the cost; because  I work in health care; because I don't want to kill my family and because if we ever hope to get a handle on this virus we have to vaccinate the world's human population. That includes us. 

I woke up feeling fine. No side effects at all, I thought. A cinch. Now I'm shivering under the covers and ready to crash at 6pm after an achy, low-grade-fever, tired afternoon at work. It ain't that fun, but it ain't that much. 

You can do it too. 

Again

Something woke me early today - around 4 - and I don't know what. Whatever it is wouldn't allow me to go back to sleep. Now, it's the routine.

If you are reading this, I hope you will see the film "C'mon, C'mon". I also hope you will recommend it to everyone you know. Thank you.

Good morning, Sunshine

Waking after a long sleep to rain where there would ordinarily be snow. If there were an ordinary. 

News of devastating tornadoes in Kentucky, somewhere between fifty and one hundred killed overnight. News of a truckload of Central American migrants flipped over on the road with so many of them asphyxiated in each other. News of many people trapped in a collapsed Amazon warehouse while trying to ship your Christmas.

We are just trying to keep our little worlds together as the big one slides away beneath us.

Remembering the witch who told me we have to let the old one die and prepare for the birth of the new.

Merry and bright

Snow tires for her car will cost more than $700. You can't tell her to try to get by without them. Christmas too, on top of the regular bills. December is a drag.

Loop

That sweet girl has died. That sweet dead girl. Another one. 

Today was hard and gray here and, at dusk, the first snow began. It's snow cold outside. It's that kind of cold. 

My head has run on a loop today. The bad decider. You thinned the ranks alright. Yes, you did. 

Shamefaced and sick of how it works.

Didn't get far

Not sick but neither am I right. I'm a lower case "n" but not stocky and low like most of them but small  and hollow with a fragile shell. I got up alright but faded from there and left work early assuming I'm sickening. Fell into bed before 5 pm and slept solid right off the bat. It's raining now. I should get up and eat something. I should go back to sleep. That feeling in my head has shifted. There is a clear spot there behind my eyes now where before it was all humming static and heavy fuzz. 

Everybody else is dancing on Tik Tok, right? Everyone's vacationing at the Southern Most Point. The majority are probably on Carnival Cruises. The others are out there making all the money in the world. I let the world go ahead and shrink down around me and now I'm wearing it like a fat guy wears an old t-shirt, half his belly exposed. Screw it, I'm staying in. 

No go

Other people do influence the flow of words. Even if it's just a trickle of junk when you're alone in your mental landscape, it comes spontaneously and it's your own. When other people get involved, you start looking at it too closely, overthinking it. The flow gets diverted by their perceptions, mixes with their commentary. You get a headache. Someone's dammed the crick. You don't want to write anything.

Turmoil

Stasis, the science teacher taught, is what all things are moving toward. What do you call that impulse inside that shakes it all up again the instant you arrive?

Where am I?

In the dream, two young women are singing a karaoke duet. The song is catchy but kind of sad with a lyric about dying young. I am standing among a small crowd of backpackers and our large packs pretending to dance to amuse the group. We are standing in line waiting to order cooking fuel and food. There is a hostel of some kind. Bunk beds. I hang my towel to dry. There is a breeze. There is camaraderie. I feel good here.