I worked the overnight and talked to several people whose respective drugs were suddenly not working for them. Heroin, Klonopin, Methadone, Alcohol and Zyprexa - a pantheon of pharmaceutical saints devoid of divinity. I slept on a mat in my office for a couple of hours when I was finished and nearly completely scrambled. I don't do as well as I used to on the overnights. I woke thinking about going to Ukraine, but instead I made a list of things that needed to be accomplished today and saw it through to the end. I scratched off each and every item for a change. Somewhere in the scurry though I lost about a half a pound of off-the-bone ham. Where the hell could that have gone?
I think that what the man was telling me is that sharing food, joy and pleasure is a higher expression of humanity - of manhood - than merely eating for sustenance, selfishly, in solitude. I don't disagree with that. But you have to work what you've got. No?
I shoveled yesterday's snowfall this morning. It was an effort. Then I drove out to my son's house and we went to the Chinese restaurant, run by two very hard working sisters, for lunch. They've had to cut their staff down to immediate family but they've so far managed to stay open through the pandemic. We go there because it's not crowded, the food is good, and we like the sisters. We're regulars.
Today, there was a couple sitting in the booth behind me. I heard them ordering and making small talk. I remember thinking there was something fake about the way the man was talking to the woman. Like he was placating, or managing, her and trying not to verbally step in any shit.
Before long, the woman stood up and said loudly and rather rudely to one of the sisters, "This isn't black bean sauce! It's sweet and I don't want this!"
My son's eyes narrowed and he shook his head slowly in recognition and disapproval. I felt my face go red and my anger rise. I felt that vicarious shame for another privileged, entitled, white person who believes it is her right to speak to someone that way over something so trivial.
Our friend tried to provide an explanation. She humbly tried to make things right for the complaining woman. She replaced the order and apologized repeatedly. The woman wouldn't even acknowledge the apologies. She continued to be rude and entitled or witholdingly silent each time she was given an opportunity to be graceful. The man joined her. He wanted their rice replaced because it had cooled in the time it took to replace the main course. He had the same tone in his voice. Like he was talking to someone less than.
My son's fortune cookie told him he would have the opportunity to learn something new today. He told me he was pretty sure he'd received the lesson.
So, to the man I mentioned at the outset of this post, I'd say, solitary joy is still joy. And, sadly, not all company is good company.
There is a North, South, East and West version of the town I work in. I took a ride out to the West one yesterday. Into the hills. Small dairy farms. Old, red barns in varying degrees of collapse. Networks of tapped maple trees tied together with surgical tubing and several steaming sugar houses. Beautiful forested hills. Right next door and yet I'd never seen it before.
Inside the house, my life had been frozen for years. I left things as they were in the wake of two phases of change some years apart. I let the dust settle down and cover everything over. I allowed rust to occur and mildew to run riot. I never invited anyone inside. I, myself, only slept and showered here. No one actually lived here.
Well, the time came to refinance the house. I needed a home inspection which required a human being to enter the premises. To make it bearable for me, I spent about 24 hours cleaning and throwing things away. I grouped together a pile of serviceable items that I never used but didn't want to waste. I thought I'd donate them to the Salvation Army. One of those items was a metal CD tower you gave me when you were conducting a similar purge of your own home years ago.
It hurt somewhat to leave it there. I felt an urge to look back as I was driving away but remembered that's something you didn't do. Something about giving the CD tower away allowed me to acknowledge that I don't like you too. Maybe next year I'll donate the crockpot.
Without love, this is an empty house. A cold house. A hungry house. Without dust, I can see that clearly now.
He'd let himself be swindled out of about a half-a-million bucks, as he tells it, over the course of five years. A stripper. Human contact, he said. We all want it. He thinks she'll likely blackmail him. He's got a wife who she said she'd tell and that gives her all the power. It scares him. His wife would likely divorce him and take him for all the money he has left. That's what he's thinking. He's also thinking that maybe he's been hustled. Maybe.
Sunny out there today. A preview of Spring. I saw two frisky squirrels chasing one another. The birdsong was spare but lovely. The ground is softening. I took a short walk in a neighboring town and just wanted to keep walking to wherever I ended up.
Yeah, everybody's amazing: the traumatized, the colonized, the Karens and the woke-folks. That word drives me back into my cave. The guard has changed, I guess. I don't know how to make it right (other than to disappear). I don't know how to participate in the discussion (other than to shut the hell up). Just let me scrape together a few bucks for a tiny rental out there in deep obscurity where my waning appetites and faulty assumptions can peter out. Can you grant me that much grace?
I got up and felt a dim spark of happiness remembering that I had a slice of spinach and feta quiche in the refrigerator. I tossed it in the microwave and then consumed it with considerable gusto. Real men don't eat it, they said. Do you remember that? Baby, I eat it real good, I'll tell you what.
A real man (whatever that is), I imagine, eats whatever the heck he wants to eat. French pronunciation isn't something that's going to deter him for a second. A real man would be undaunted - in fact delighted - by a fluffy combination of eggs and cheeses atop a flaky crust. A real man might even regard that delicious morsel wolfishly and involuntarily shout out something like hubba hubba!
You're probably right. Most people wouldn't get out of their car after returning home from a long day at work and throw half a turkey sandwich, not eaten in yesterday's school lunch, into the front yard. And do you want to know why that is? Because most people don't enjoy the same kind of relationship with the local coyotes that I do. Weirdos.
Someone sent me a quote that seemed to encourage me not to lose my spark. That's not the first time someone has said that to me.
You know, there are things I miss, like traveling, and when I think about it I feel a sort of loss, and then I remember people and places, and it saddens me. So it's better not to think of traveling. There are other things I miss. Like old friends. And when I think about them I feel a kind of loss too. And then I remember things we said and did that we don't say and do anymore and it saddens me. So it's better not to think about old friends too much either. There's something else I miss - being in love - and it hurts so much to remember that sad doesn't even begin to cover it. If I'm going to get out of bed in the morning, I can't think about being in love.
These are some of the things that, under the right circumstances, keep your spark jumping bright and healthy. It gets problematic when you let them go.
It's another cold one down around zero. I've got business in the city - a deviation from my usual morning routine. I forgot to make alternative arrangements to get my son to school. He rolled with it, which is the best thing I know to teach him. Be flexible, resilient, move on to Plan B or C or D. Endure.
She offered me a reading - draw a rune from the bag. The blank rune is the one I drew. Something about Odin. Wyrd. Possibly the death of something. Or possibly the beginning of something. Something. Or maybe nothing.
I woke up without an alarm before 4 AM and bathed in the deep sink of the still-closed delicatessen. Interrupting a state of absent minded tranquility, I wondered what had become of the person I'd thought of as my reader in Portugal. He, or she, seemed to have stopped coming by right around New Year's day. Was it a resolution? I couldn't help thinking it was.
In 2022, I resolve to stop wasting my time reading this junk...
Deep Purple - the band - had a song in the 1970's called My Woman From Tokyo. My Reader From Portugal has that same cadence and now I can't get it out of my head. The voices of the background singers, in a sort of cartoonish falsetto, are mocking me.
I could use a massage. Maybe a new identify.
Last year, at about this time, I was doing a lot of walking in the woods preparing myself for a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. I had an understanding boss then and a job that might well allow me to take a month off for that purpose. I had frequent flyer miles and a little money saved. All I needed was for myself and my family to survive the pandemic and for travel restrictions to lift.
And then, as they do, things changed. A new job, less money, no possibility of taking a month off. A different reality. Still, there is this urge to move stirring underneath the weight of hibernation.
The other day I was scribbling in a notebook in a coffee shop around the corner from the auto shop in which my car was having surgery. I'd had too much coffee and things started to seem possible. I had sudden ideas.
I started thinking that I wanted to go on tour in the way punk rock bands did in the early eighties. Traveling rough. Living close to the ground. No budget, no hotels. Just a van and a line of scheduled gigs out there in the great beyond. I felt like I wanted to do something like this.
I'm not in a band. I'm not even a musician. I don't really want to listen to, or smell, four other guys in a Ford Econoline for a few thousand miles. But I do want to go.
I have known the particular terror that comes with singing karaoke alone in a strange city, not knowing if the audience is friendly or hostile, when you're not much of a singer in the first place. There's an exuberance to the experience. Caffeine causes physiological symptoms that mimic exuberance.
Maybe I could map out and execute a solo karaoke tour. Say to New Orleans and back. Seven to ten days with performances every night in different venues. Get ten to twenty songs down as tight as I can and go. Then write about the experience. I was pretty high on the idea for a while.
The excitement subsided with the caffeine though. It lasted long enough for me to say it out loud to two or three people who encouraged (or humored) me as they might do a madman who they don't quite understand and think it better probably not to question.
Dreaming of listening to and talking with writers. Maybe something is happening. Maybe there's some forward movement. The lady in the fur coat standing in the lamplight on the foggy pier along the New Jersey shore reminded me that Frank McCourt published his first one at 66.
It was still only morning, but I couldn't overcome the drowsiness. Something very heavy was hanging from my wrists pulling my shoulders down, extending my neck, making my head as heavy as a cannonball. Sleep is all there is for it.
Sleep makes it all disappear.
I saw the cold horses out there this morning. They were wearing blankets, but I could feel that they were still miserable. They're always out. Even if they were in, that barn doesn't even have walls. It's hardly more than a roof supported by poles.
Two of them were standing close together. Their heads were kind of leaning forward and they were very still. I always think they're talking telepathically when I see them looking that way.
My thoughts drifted to wild horses. I imagined a herd of them. What does it look like when they sleep at night? Do they all lie down together? Do they separate into family units? Do they post sentries? Are they afraid of anyone? Men? Wolves? Rampaging grizzlies?
Wolves, like horses can run and run and run. The wolves are probably not as fast as the horses, but they're relentless.
The horses flee as a herd. There's a leader - the strongest and wisest among them. The young trust this horse entirely. He is what they want to be. The lead horse has problems the others cannot comprehend. Right now, it's how to shake these wolves that have been in pursuit for more than a day.
The weakest of them - the smallest young, the sick, the old - can't maintain this pace. The leader is mindful of this, trying hard to rally them, but doing the math in his head at the same time. Leaders have to make difficult decisions.
The young one, running hard but tiring fast, looks to the leader with absolute faith. He is afraid - as they all are - but he knows the leader will deliver him from the wolves. Their eyes meet. The leader communicates strength and will. The young one is heartened but his strength is flagging.
The leader has to think thoughts the others do not. The grim calculus. The wolves will stop the chase when they have something to eat. The leader kicks it into a higher gear. The others follow suit - those who are able.
Their eyes meet one last time. The young one, the one with all the faith, can't keep up. His eyes grow wide as the others pull away. The wolves are gaining. The leader looks away for the last time and charges on. The young one doesn't have the time to fully understand, but it's dawning on him, and the leader sees that moment. There must be sacrifice.
The wolves circle the young one in a frenzied tornado - tearing. The herd disappears in thundering dust to distant safety.
Later, the leader, once the sentries have been posted and the others have all bedded down, is alone with his thoughts. Each time his exhausted eyelids fall, he sees those round eyes. The faith.
No sleep was to be had during the night shift on call.
They were all crying last night. What made it unusual was that none of those tears felt real to me, and my reaction was disgust, embarrassment, and some kind of rage. I had a flash of turning one man's stretcher over with him in it.
Compassion fatigue? I don't know. I've been in and out of that for years. I don't think there's any avoiding it unless you get out of this work for good.
There was something false about these expressions of emotion. It felt calculated. Designed to have a particular effect. And it did.
There's an ugly entitlement here. Tantrums. Demands. Someone forgot to teach you how to suffer and shut the hell up about it. No one can fix it for you. Sorry.
All day since, I've been out of alignment with the way of things. Everything's annoying, frustrating, to be avoided if at all possible.
I went to the bank, did my laundry, got a school lunch together for my son. Let's call that victory enough and find our way back to bed.
It was about noon, cold and bright, and we were stopped at a red light. He was telling me about a reunion of friends he'd been a part of yesterday. They went to elementary school together. Some of them split off from the group during the transition to middle school. There were even more divergent paths moving on into hight school. He'd just finished telling me he didn't miss the him his friends did from back in those days. It was quiet, and that statement was ringing in my mind. The traffic light was thinking about changing, dangling there over the intersection from a horizontal yellow pole. Just above that, a wind-driven ribbon of white cloud was flying by beneath a madly flapping American flag. And above the flag was the clearest brightest blue. Everything inside the car seemed very still.
Some kind of a silence. It's deepened and lengthened now, and I don't even want to come out of it.
I was in that place again for lunch. This time it didn't feel right. That one waitress, whose every utterance is a trumpet blast, took care of me today. She startled me (again) with an offer of desert.
There was music playing overhead. The Eagles - I can't remember the song now - entering my left ear. Sweet Home Alabama was playing from another source entering my right. In the middle of my head was an unpleasant scramble of junk sound. Dissonance. Dischord.
That's not something I enjoy while eating a hot dog and fries. Alright? Ok?
There's definitely a psychological burden mixed up in the act of cleaning the house. Going through and getting rid of things from prior eras of my life. The people associated with it are gone. There's a lot I don't remember clearly. There's probably a lot I'd rather not look at or remember at all. Or maybe I would like to remember, but it hurts to and there's regret attached.
I took a day off to deal with a heap of deferred maintenance in my house. Before I began - which was/is, as usual, a series of false starts before I got/get into it - I went out for some breakfast at a local place. There was only one other patron in there and two family members who own and run the place. I ordered an omelette with spinach, tomato and feta with a side of bacon and coffee. The food arrived quickly. The portions were generous. And it all tasted very good. I was thinking about the work I had in front of me and not paying much attention to the people around me.
The television was droning on and on. The dour older gentleman down the counter belched unconsciously a couple of times. The owner flirted on the telephone with her sweetheart. I ate, not exactly joyfully, but pleasantly enough. I had that feeling you get, however, that these people knew each other well and that I was the obvious stranger. There's a sort of insular silence that goes with that, which I've felt many times before in this place that I sleep.
And then I started hearing about Hunter Biden, and $100,000 dollar trust funds, and pornography on his lap top, and that he's a perverted degenerate who slept with his own brother's wife and made sex tapes of it. It dawned on me kind of slowly. Was this some sort of breaking news? Then I realized it was Fox "News" and the same old saw of bullshit rehashed and developed again and again. I couldn't believe it was still going on.
I think it was owner's mother who said kind of dimly, "You see? All them other countries said the trump family was corrupt. It's really the Biden family that's the corrupt ones."
"Yep," the frequent belcher said with a particular kind of certainty and disgusted resignation.
I had an immediate internal reaction. I think I sighed or muttered Jesus Christ under my breath. I was on another planet all of a sudden. What was I going to do about it?
The incessant drip-drip poisoning in the background of the half-empty-fully-unconscious-half-of-the-American-psyche.
I took on extra work over the last couple of weeks for the purpose of earning "extra" money. In order to do this, I had to demand my high-mileage car run some extra miles. It did so, valiantly, but not flawlessly.
One night on the way to work, we slid on bald front tires in a snowstorm through a rotary and crashed the side of the right wheel into a curb rather hard. The crash bent the tie rod, knocked the wheel out of alignment, and the wheel bearing worked itself loose as a result. I knew my car was wounded but asked it to continue the march. It did so, again, valiantly.
More snow - a lot of it - came down over the weekend and it became very difficult to get around. The brake warning light came on, terrible grinding sounds happened in stop and go traffic, the abs light flickered every time I passed over a snowy surface, my tires spun in every intersection and I slid all over the place on the highway. We were tempting fate at this point.
Yesterday, I had no choice but to bring the car into the shop. Turns out there was indeed a lot wrong with her - even more than I had suspected and been in denial about. Let's triage this, I said to the manager. What do we need to do to get out this door and down the road safely? Well, tighten the wheel bearing, replace the front tires, replace the rear brakes and calipers, do an alignment, and you're past due for an oil change. This took about six hours, cost about $1,400, and there were some complications. The alignment is still off because of a bent tie rod. That'll need to be replaced ASAP, he said. Because of the way the tire will wear.
Thank you, I said, staggering out the door with my key in hand.
It's a good thing I took on that extra work, eh? I would have been better off staying in bed.
