How the sausage is made

I thought about that girl today. And how she said that thing in such a direct and jarring way. 

I had asked her out to dinner. We ate a Spanish feast with gusto and drank a lot of wine. After the meal, she proposed to me. A business deal really. Don't get confused, she said. She needed to marry an American citizen to be able to remain in the country. No sex, but she could get me a couple thousand if I wanted it.

I'm not entirely against this sort of thing, but I think one should at least know the other party before leaping into such a venture.  I'd like to think I'd do it for a friend, but not likely for a beautiful stranger with an excellent appetite who might just have me killed shortly after the documents have been signed. 

We talked about marriage. About what it means or what it doesn't mean. About what it should mean... which is really just a story, you're probably right. 

She had great admiration for Trump. She thought of him as Alpha. Sure, he has money and he talks a lot of shit, I said. But he's also as foul a human being as there ever has been. She didn't agree with that at all. He's a provider. He's what women want.

What about you, she asked. Do you think some woman is just going to come along and love you for just being who you are?

She left the country eventually, to see her aging parents, and the Trump administration wouldn't let her back in. I didn't contact her again after that night except to say I couldn't be the help she was looking for.

She ended up in Bali, I think. Within a couple of years, she married a handsome, chic, older, European gentleman who appears prosperous. She seemed to be enjoying a lavish lifestyle in a tropical location. She had a baby with him rather quickly.

I just order a couple of small plates with a beer or glass of wine from the bar these days - if I go out at all. Then I call it a night.

Sing anyway

I judged a karaoke contest last night in which the prize was one thousand dollars. I shared the responsibility with two other men in their fifties. We didn't know each other. One of them brought two or three of his friends along. They very drunk reminding me of the dumbest guys I remember from high school and their budding alcoholism projected 35 years into the future. 

It was discouraging. Hard to do the job with these morons singing twice as loud as the featured singer and positioned between me and the stage. I moved my seat, not caring at all if it was rude.

We were given a one to ten scale to work with. Ten represented the best. There were about twenty singers. Probably fifteen of them were very good. Five of them earned a ten in my book. There could only be one winner though. 

More than a few people were really hoping for that prize money. Several of them looked me in the eyes  during the course of the evening seeking a sign of hope. It's sad really. Nearly everyone doesn't win. 

Trip

The Container Store depressed me. The mall itself wasn't too bad. The young woman in the store fixed me up with a pair of pants and a couple of new shirts. Spring colors I would not have chosen on my own. The place was full of families, couples, teenagers - shoppers and lots of stuff. Much of it very expensive. There's a supermarket attached to the mall that feels more like a theme park. I had a good cheeseburger and a beer in there. At some point, I became saturated with the experience. I fell asleep almost as soon as I got home.

Out

I've got to go and get myself a new shirt today so will venture out later to a mall I almost never go to. The idea of walking into this mall fills me with anticipatory dread, but I'm going to be a judge in a karaoke contest later this week. A man I know, who has patiently listened to me caterwaul in his establishment every once in a while through the last several years, has asked me to do so. Probably to prevent me from dropping in by chance and singing. Anyway, it's an honor to be remembered, so I'll do it. 

It's probably a good idea to do something other than drive, work, and sleep once in a while.

I've become avoidant though. Yesterday, I participated in a government survey on health care access that I've been involved in for a couple of years now. Every six months they ask me about the health care I've consumed and then send me a check for fifty bucks. It's an easy gig for both of us. 

The surveyor showed up at my front door right on time. Except that I'd assumed it would be conducted on the telephone like the others. I did not immediately answer the door because I was scurrying around straightening up the house. She called me. I told her I'd been caught a bit off guard. She offered to do it on the phone instead. I was instantly relieved. 

It's not really Covid I'm avoiding. 

Sawdust

There is no apparent exit from this sealed white painted room. This is the place I always find myself when I can't get started writing. I don't like the smell of paint. 

I went out to a school today to attend a meeting with a room full of professionals who find themselves unable to keep a young boy in class. The adults don't have it all figured out, kids. Not by a long shot.

I've got plumbing problems. In my bathroom too. Maybe tomorrow I'll unscrew the trap thing-a-ma-jig and see if that solves it. I did that once twenty years ago and nearly threw up. I guess it's probably due. 

She had to sit in the room with the family as they watched the video that documented the events leading up to the sudden death of their loved one. She's carrying a portion of their grief now. Those who do this work well seem to know how to take it on but have no idea of how to let it go.

Last night, I stopped off at a brewery on my way home. One of those craft beer places that have sprung up everywhere. It's spacious, barn-like. I went to the bar, selected my beer, found a table for two and occupied a chair for one. The moment that I started thinking this wasn't too bad, this guy gets on a microphone and initiates his version of bar trivia. Everything about him annoys me. 

I can't help but feel that the events surrounding me are someone's idea of a practical joke gone on way too long.  

The ugly

Well, another day that made me want to disavow any association with white maleness. The confirmation hearings and these Q-anon signaling fuck-heads badgering their painfully obvious moral and intellectual superior with nonsense questions designed to provide the brainwashed masses with something to get riled about. Pedophiles! Oh my God, Libs eat kids. I am ashamed for our country on one hand and optimistic for it on the other on the other. These fools are all but finished. May this be their last gasp. It's turning. 

It was otherwise a day dedicated to death. It was gray and rainy with a low cloud ceiling. Four of them. I spoke each of their names. Tried to console those who tried to save them. Tried to find something we could have done better. In the end, it's easier to say that sometimes people just make their own decisions regardless of what you do. But the question eats at you anyway, at least until the next one. 

Coricidin

I'm thinking of the kid who drank cold medicine all the time in order to feel like someone else. I often found him caught between dimensions, his soul jammed in a revolving door. Most of the time he'd recognize me. We'd get him in and stabilized. He'd always sleep for the first three days and gradually return to Earth. Within a week he'd become himself and I couldn't help but marvel at who was standing there in front of me. A personality - warmth, humor, intelligence, generosity, sensitivity. It hurts to be like that so he never stayed long. He'd have the cab driver take him directly to CVS at discharge. I wonder what became of him.

Hero

I didn't really have heroes as a kid. If you'd asked me about it in high school, I would have said I had something more like anti-heroes - a lot of people I didn't want to be anything like. 

There was one friend of mine, a few years older than I, who was a gymnast, a boxer, and kind of a decontextualized mountain man. A unique individual to be sure. He joined the Marines and ended up in Beirut when the barracks was blown up in '83. He survived. I'd enlisted on the delayed entry program by then as soon as I possibly could. I think it was my sixteenth birthday. Anyway, he was probably my first hero.

That same year, I heard Black Flag for the first time. The music was raging angry energy and the closest thing I'd ever heard to what I felt inside. It was a revelation. The singer was this tormented maniac who yelled his guts out and obliterated himself during performances. He wasn't faking it. His name was Henry Rollins. He became a hero of mine too. 

Over the years, I got to meet him a few times and see him perform. I wrote to him and was thrilled to receive his responses. I went to see him do his thing again last night. 

He's 61 years old now. He didn't scream out any demons up there but he did talk a steady stream for more than two hours from the moment he took the stage. He was obviously older. I think I've seen him at least once in each decade - his 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's and now 60's. It was great to see and hear him again, but it was startling and sad too. 

Time runs out. It happens to everyone. It's happening to you and me right now. Ready or not. Finished or not. Started or not. 

We all know it but somehow manage to avoid realizing it most of the time, probably so we can do more than lay about in a terror-stricken fetal position. Every now and then though, clarity.

I remember this image I saw years ago in a documentary about the treatment of animals on mega farms. These chicks, the absolute picture of innocence, riding a ridiculously fast-moving conveyor belt with its terminus in a grinder. That ride, the entire span of a life. 

It's raining today

 

Raining

It was a rainy night and now it is a rainy morning. The kind of night that gently pushes you down into the mattress. The sound of the rain makes you sleep deeper and later. It's welcome. 

In a state of half-dreaming, I remembered you. My body remembered. I sent you an invitation. I have no way of knowing if you received it. 

Spring arrives with nine tails

The Killing Stone in Japan split in two releasing a foxy nine-tailed demon upon the world. Great. Just in time for Spring. The sun came out today and it broke 75 degrees bringing out the people, and the swift silent electric bicycles, and the chesty Robins, and the guy on the bike path wearing a Free Hugs sign that I casually saluted but did not hug. A woman seemed to wave at me from across Main street. I was just out there walking to the store for some lunch feeling unsteady. Must have thought I was someone else. My belly was sticking out in front just a little further than my chest. I had the squinting, blinking, cringing feeling of a pale fat wood grub pried suddenly from deep within a rotting tree trunk and cast out into the light. It feels almost good but weird and uncomfortable. I want to wriggle back inside. 

It's weird to see all the people out. I don't know how, or if, I want to interact with them. 

Instagram told me today that going without sex for too long can make you anxious, depressed, and paranoid. 

Really? 

Who are you working for? Who sent you?

Cautiously optimistic - for a moment there at least

Walking helps. I'm also trying to occupy spaces other than my bed, my car, and my office.

A couple nights ago, all of my dreams were death related. Except for the last one, right before I woke, which featured a big bowl of Cheetos that turned out to actually be thick orange maggots wriggling away from my grasping hand. 

Since then there's been good lab results, healthy organs, and no findings to be a cause for concern in one sphere of life. In another, there's a man gone purple, de-animated in the course of a mundane activity, transformed into a lasting problem for others. 

I don't feel like walking tonight. Well, at least it's dusk so I don't need to feel wrong about climbing into bed. 

Try something

Last night I assigned myself a sort of program which I have tended to do rather often in the past but have not done in some time because I have been lacking motivation and energy. I had to try something to get out from under this exhausted feeling. Generally, I don't stick with these programs for very long but I do find some kind of temporary satisfaction in creating them. Anyway, today was the first day of my newest program and I completed everything I set out to do. Come on, let's give it a try.

Catching up to what I'm not sure

The sleep need descended upon me again over the weekend. I don't know what provoked it. Last week was basically a 40 hour week - nothing too demanding. I took a day off today to sleep in and then to get the basic weekend tasks, which I couldn't muster the energy to handle on the weekend, handled. I managed to get a goodly amount accomplished which included taking a walk in the woods and replacing the batteries in my scale. The medicine dream last week warned that my weight was creeping up to an unhealthy level and the scale provided confirmation of that fact. The exercise and the sunlight shifted things in my head a little, providing a lift, but it also tired me out more than it would have in the past. I saw an article posted today about the effects of Covid on the brain and chose to leave it unread. I don't know what to attribute this to or how to overcome it really. I just try to push through the day until I get the chance to lay down and sleep again for as long as possible. 

One hundred days

 

The same tale told over

Whatever darkness I have chosen or am afflicted with, Mark, it's not the same thing that kept you company and ultimately took your life. We live in a consumer culture so it stands to reason there's branding involved in matters of the soul as well. Choices to make. Budget or premium packages to purchase.

You chose the high mountain range of heroin with the image of the mystical Himalayas pictured on the label. But what you got is exactly what they've always gotten out of that box - the well-worn-so-low-the-gutter-looks-like-the-sky-opioid-road-to-nowhere-staycation. Dessication. Disappointed in you. I guess you were too.

You learned to sing while you were alive. To collaborate. You experienced an enormous outpouring. They will remember you.

I see myself in movie clips played by old men doing small flavorless tasks in a routine fashion. Not much expression on the face, no spring at all in the step. A life free of spark. No chance of bursting into flame at all. 

Love your fate. Come to love your fate. Amor fati.

I'm no outlaw in black like you wanted to be. It's been a long time since anything radiated out of me. Maybe tonight I'll eat BBQ. 

Gains and losses

About a million hours of sleep and glad to be waking without bed sores, I rise at 7 am. We go together out to breakfast where he eats very little and looks pale and uncomfortable. The doctor's office is made of plain wood and sparse. We look at our phones and wait. The doctor's questions are detailed and patiently asked. His responses are vague and teen-aged. I would speak up to fill in the gaps when he's finished talking but I don't really have any information. At some point, I'm asked to step out of the room. Something twinges sharply in the area of my right temple again. Should I say to the doctor something like, while we're here, doctor, can you tell me if this twinge is an aneurysm warming up or a stroke taking shape? She wants to work him up. Sends us down the street to a lab for blood work, gives me a number to call to schedule an MRI, gives him a bagged plastic hat and accessories to capture a stool sample the next time it becomes convenient to do so. We're about 15 minutes past the closing of the lab but the young woman at the desk gets us in since we've come so far without me asking. She has pretty dark eyes above her mask and I see kindness there. For a moment, I feel some sort of life beginning to return to my heart area until I realize she's at least 30 years my junior and then it's back to that dusty cobwebby sadness and the business at hand. The nurse in the lab is rather rude with me and short with my son. We've shortened her personal Saturday. The work takes less than five minutes. I marvel at the way nurses routinely get away with being unprofessional like others professionals can't. I wonder why that is? Maybe because the patient is in a one down. Whatever. Thanks for seeing us, I would have said, but she doesn't give me time to. And then he's picking out some DVDs in the presidential library and I am watching the snow fall on the roofs of the dark red brick campus across the street and on the branches of the thick oaks. It is nice to watch it fall. You give it that much while another twinge occurs in the same temple and you imagine that in a coma you will remember this vision through the window and other snapshots you've taken with your eyes throughout your life. And then you wonder, dreadfully, if your boy has enough of those stored up and worry that you have not given him what he needs to sustain himself in this often bleak world. You're thankful, though, that he's not having to flee a burning apartment block in the falling snow trying to sleep in a subway tunnel to avoid Russian rockets. What the fuck do you really know about bleak anyway? 

It's time to push the clocks forward again. It's that time of year when we lose an hour of sleep at the very least. 

Sleeper

Faux Spring day with bright sun and temperatures in the 50's. Tomorrow will likely rain and possibly snow but today was nice. 

I left work early to pick my son up from school and later found myself home, unusually, during daylight hours. I thought I might take a walk, but crawled instead into bed before dark. Glory be. 

That tired thing is back. I'm always ready to sleep. 

Dust devil

I wrote the formula in the sand, carefully, with a stick, so I wouldn't forget it. How could I ever really forget though? I mean, it came so easily. Naturally. 

The conditions at the time were pretty nearly ideal so maybe it's understandable that I didn't account for the wind. After all, I was looking forward. Thinking positive. Mostly. 

Time passed. Things changed. The wind blew. Then it blew again. And again. 

And the formula? It was entirely erased. Like it never was.

Now, I don't know how.

Dink

More snow than expected yesterday. The roads home were somewhat treacherous but I ignored the sliding and the fishtailing. Winter in New England gets tedious in March and April. It seems to leave for good then bursts back in without notice the minute you relax. Frankly, at this point, it's just boring. Ignore the SOB. 

Medicine dream

A doctor just told me in a dream that he was tired of writing "strenuous medications for coolio patients." I asked him who he was talking about since I'd never been on medication. He snickered as though he didn't believe me. It's true, I don't take medication. I don't even go to doctors. He started looking through my chart. Had me step on the scale. It was one of those scales with the sliding thing. I set it at 200 pounds but was way over. I set it at 250 and had to increase the fine adjustments from there. I couldn't believe it. I weighed over 260 pounds which was more than 30 pounds heavier than I'd ever been in my life. Yes, that's obesity. He showed me on a wall chart. I tried to make a joke about it. He laughed, but kind of sadly.

Tiramisu

Birthday dinner. It feels very good to have them all in one place. Together. 

MMG

Her birthday is today. Twenty-four. She's the reason I went to church yesterday. She and the rest of the choir were singing their light into the darkness. 

I didn't believe the priest and his radio presenter's voice reading the scriptures. And the enormous pipe organ was both overstated and annoying. 

But I believed the music that came forth from the choir. Those individual voices singing together. Her voice. I always hear it in the mix. I've been listening for it since she was six.

Beyond talent and technique - her voice, her music - from somewhere deep within her. The source. It's always been there.

That's what I believe in. That's what saves me. 

Take me to church

It's that whole argument over again. It happens in my head whenever I have to sit in a church and listen to the words. Sometimes it's all I can do not to yell out. They wait in joyful hope for the coming of their savior - the one who could have come at any moment over the last million or so days but hasn't. The one who could have blown the whistle at any time and prevented countless daily horrors but didn't. God is there in the silence, they say. God is the silence, I revise. Silence is god. Otherwise, he's just another fucking monster.

Gift

Hey, I saw something I would have brought home for you if you were living in my home. It was one of those metal signs made to look antique. The sign said, AND SHE LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER. It featured a smiling, rosy cheeked, vivacious looking woman leading a horse through a sunny green pasture. Two dogs trotted happily along with them - a terrier of some sort, and a collie carrying a picnic basket. 

The part I keep remembering

From where I was standing, I could see the boy's uncovered body. Still alive, if only artificially so. There were several nurses working in the room and they were strangely all the same height. The doctor was taller and she changed her clinical expression to a sad expression for just a second as she walked by me. I could see the feet and lower legs of the boy's father below the edge of the blue privacy curtain. His boots were facing the boy and they were awfully still.

Preparing for the birth of the new as the old world dies

The day began approaching desperation and then multiplied. I was fortified on the way into it by a bald eagle following the river's course with its white head illuminated by the rising sun. This is your territory, it said. You know what to do. And then I went on and did it.

Engaged

Three hours of driving, fourteen or fifteen of work, and six or seven of sleep. Too busy to write so far this week.