Quiet

That first hint of Fall is always destabilizing. I guess I just wanted to be quiet. Tonight, I open the sliders, listen to the crickets, and enjoy the lower humidity. September. 

2:51 A.M.

This is my last planned weekend of on-call crisis work. Though, as always, I will do what I must. It's 2:51 AM, and I'm not sleeping. I've got another week of driving through the bucolic boundary lands between Central and Western Massachusetts. I've enjoyed that drive twice daily for a little over a year now. Three hours a day driving through woods, farms, winding rivers, and a storied reservoir and watershed. Past the bakery she liked so well and their buttery French pastries. Cheese danish. Something made with local pears. I'll exchange all that for the Massachusetts Turnpike and the commute into and out of Boston. Change is good though. Just turn the page. 

Rec

In my imagination, there's this bar I go to every once in a while when I feel like going out into the world. It's got a good juke box; there's live music now and then; the bartenders are competent, good humored and nice to look at; and the patrons are interesting. It must be a conglomeration of places I've been in my life. The point is though, I don't have such a place in my waking life and am reminded of that fact every time I try to go out - which has become increasingly less frequent over time.

A few evenings ago, I chose a Mexican place in a white college town in close proximity to a laundromat where a machine washed my clothes. I ordered a mezcal margarita with salt - which was good - although I'm no expert. The bartender was one of those people who do not seem to realize how loud they are. This is judgmental of me, I know, but it's a peeve of mine. Worse than loud was the small talk. Typical, but the kind you'd hear between people who are already acquainted with each other. We weren't. Two Xs.

There were three other people sitting at the bar. The woman to my right was a camp counselor stopping in for dinner after work. She was ok with me. The other two were a man and woman about my age talking to each other with a couple of stools between them. 

The woman was showing pictures or video on her phone of apparent paranormal activity in her home. She was petite with a bright smile, lively eyes, and a lot of energy. Attractive, with an occasional glance my way. She talked a continuous stream. She jumped from the paranormal to a new romantic interest. A gentleman with money she'd met at a jazz performance. She talked about his money a little too long and in a little too much detail. What she really wanted though, was a man who would engage her. The more she talked, the less engaged I became. 

The man was compact and lean. He appeared kind of stingy and cruel. He talked about his properties, his money, the idea of living on a cruise ship for a year and subletting his cabin for certain legs of the trip during which he'd prefer to explore other countries.

I ran with that idea for a while, but a cruise ship is jam-packed with people and, for me, that would get old inside of 24 hours. When I'd stopped day dreaming about sunrises and sunsets on the ocean, I tuned back into the conversation. 

He was talking about student loan forgiveness and how kids were missing out on the lesson about the value of hard work by having them so easily forgiven. He suggested that many of these same kids were, at least slightly, overweight due to the general lack of hard work in their lives. His solution was to put them on elliptical trainers connected to the power grid and to have them pay their loans back in that way. 

I wished a friend of mine a happy birthday recently on social media. We haven't seen each other in years. She said she hoped I wasn't becoming too much of a curmudgeon as I aged. I think I've still got some room to grow.

3:24 A.M.

But we sure had a good time

when we started way back when. 

Morning walks and bedroom talks,

Oh, how I loved you then.

Jim Croce stands up from somewhere in my sleeping head and leaves me with that as I wake and rise to pee. There's this feeling of devastation for a moment, and I'm one-hundred years old. The faces and names blurred and almost gone. An Etch-A-Sketch and one good shake.

Buddha doesn't need air conditioning

The room was humid and uncomfortably warm. An old hospital building. Institutional with generations of Catholic silence built into it. 

He told me the caller didn't have a close relationship with the Catholic Church, but it's something the dying man would want. 

He's dead already, really. The machine is providing only the mechanics of life. 

It had taken some doing for this man with the wooden beads on his wrist to find a priest willing to go to the bedside and perform the Last Rites so the family might let him go. It was not even remotely a part of his job.

"I'm a Buddhist," he said. "I will pray for them."

He looked me in the eye and said that all the people have become angry. He unfurled and raised his middle finger. 

"They'll show this to you," he said. "And all you can do is look at the ground or they will attack you. Maybe they'll shoot you."

"Not me," I said. 

"Not me too," he smiled sadly. 

Health

He was wearing a bracelet of brown wooden beads while he slowly guided me through my health screening. My blood had enough oxygen in it; my temperature was neither too low or too high; I could read the smallest line of print without too much trouble (except for that 3, or was it an 8?); my blood pressure was the textbook 120 over 80. 

He took a phone call while jotting down notes in my record. He put the call on speaker. He and another man were speaking a different language together. He gave the other man a telephone number. For a Catholic priest, I gathered. For someone on life support. 

1:14 A.M.

Sleep runs from you on a night like this. You close your eyes but the semi-dreams you have are nonsensicle and tinged with low grade anxiety. You want to get started. You'd like to avoid it all. 

8:46 P.M.

I can't see the Northern Lights from here. When I could see them, they sometimes made me lonely because there was no one there to see them with me. Lonelier than that, however, was the way it felt seeing them with someone who didn't experience them the way I did. What was pretty close to perfect were the moments when there was nothing but the cold air, the eternal night sky, and those crackling beautiful ribbons of shimmering light and me forgetting myself entirely. Remember those.

Redeemer

A flock of wild turkeys crossed the road in front of me this evening. Two hens led two different groups of young ones across while another adult acted as the crossing guard staring down the cars and not leaving the middle of the road until the last of the sprinting stragglers had made it safely across. I felt better. Have you noticed the leaves on the maples are starting to turn?

Moonlighter

I heard the phone ring in my dream about an hour before it started ringing in my life. They all lined up through the night, each with his/her own conundrum. I tried to figure out a safe next step and to get him/her to buy into the idea. After the talking and writing were finished, I had an hour and a half to sleep on a mat on the floor of my office. My dreams had a lot of activity in them. One of them featured lions. When it was time to get up, I washed my face in the sink, wet and combed down a couple of cowlicks, then walked down the street for coffee and a deluxe breakfast sandwich at Cumbie's. 

I accept you

Four days in a row in the gym. This body does not work the same as the one I walked into the gym with during the last short period of motivation (whenever that was). Humbling is the process of getting older. Humbling indeed. 

9:00 A.M.

What a difference lower humidity and ten degrees makes to one's mindset. This, right here, is the way I like it. Clerk, please include that in your transcriptions. Thank you.

I started looking for a place to live closer to the new job. Half-a-million might get me an old one bedroom condo. At this rate, I'll likely be able to make that move sometime in the latter quarter of my next life. It's good to have a plan though.

8:04 P.M. and mildly annoyed

I was just thinking about this feeling of revulsion I get lately in my guts when I hear people talking about gratitude. Did you write in your gratitude journal today? 

I'm a cranky old bastard. 

Mindful. Yeah, that's another one. Manifesting is one more. And these aren't the only ones.

But you know what? You do you (that's one I loathe too). 

And here's the funny thing about the concepts represented by these words that cause me such dyspepsia, I'm basically on board with them. They're generally good things. I encourage them.

It's the words leaving the mouths of others and their impact on my eardrum, I think. It's the way we operate. It's our lack of depth. Or maybe just mine. Who gets this annoyed over words anyway?

I mean, who does that?

2:06 A.M.

A lot has happened since I saw you last. It's freaking hot for one thing. The world is drying up, burning down, and tipping over under the weight of newly risen viruses and far too many angry, crazy, greedy people. We might be too dumb and too small to save it after all. We might not even want to. They say there's been some good TV, though I haven't seen much of it. I'm older. Grayer. My body's changing at a faster rate. Just like the Earth. I can't relate to today's pop music at all. They're taking pictures of things I cannot comprehend out there in deep, deep, deep space. My kids have grown into adults. I've settled into being alone and can't imagine it otherwise. I was just now remembering walking around the block with you and your dogs and it seemed like a fairy tale.

Morning

A long sleep with the fan. There's a change underway. I'm leaving again to begin again somewhere else again.

Refrescos

 

Chip

Sometimes, when you're pale, lethargic and de-conditioned, you might find yourself feeling a little timid, a little squeamish, about getting out there on a humid summer morning and walking. Before you know it, you're drenched and before much longer you are experiencing the chafe of saturated cotton against your tender areas - feet, crotch, nipples. Horseflies circle your head madly. The road you walk is not heavily traveled but you cannot help but notice that, without fail, whenever you walk around that particular bend where the road has no shoulder, there's traffic's coming at you from both ways. There you are on the narrow curve side by side with two vehicles traveling in opposite directions. One of them frequently seems to be a semi. You can start to take it personally after awhile. A narcissistic injury. But then the compressed chipmunk on the road with it eyes popped out provides some perspective. It reminds you, if grotesquely, to shut the hell up and enjoy your miserable life. 

What you do with time

If you don't watch TV, what do you do? I was kind of stumped. I don't know, really. Work, drive, sleep too much, write this stuff sometimes, read a little, see my son. That's about it. 

This morning, I noticed the heavy cement bowl of the bird bath had been knocked off its pedestal. Maybe the bear came through again. Or those demon-screamer raccoons. When I got home this evening, I went back there to fix it. 

Something was moving underneath. A mammal. I wasn't sure if it was sheltering under there or if the bowl had toppled over onto it. I got a long pry bar out of the basement and lifted the edge. A juvenile raccoon trying to but unable to move its limbs or head. Eyes were blinking and glistening. It's back must have been broken. I lifted the bowl completely off of it to give it room to flee. Wild things are freaking wild, so I thought maybe it'll recover with its circulation returning. I debated ending its suffering with a downward strike of the heavy bar for a moment. I talked to it. Give it a little time, I thought, and went back in the house. It died on its own a few minutes later. 

Teenagers raising a little hell on a hot summer night. Bet his parents are worried sick. 

Course

Ask. And so it has come into being. Well what do you know?

The last month of summer - until it all becomes summer - and on fire too.

August. That's all I've got to say on the subject. The wheel is turning.